/5eg/ Fifth Edition General

What's a good starting race for a straight barbarogue? Also, won't your stealth suffer if you're focusing str and not Dex?

Strength barbarogue*

I don't think I really got across what I want, because I'm not possitive what that is. Really I feel like 5e is kind of limited in class options sometimes.

I wish they'd make Variant Classes or something somewhere, I don't hhave any key ideas but it feels like each class has a very specific thing it does in combat and not much else it will ever do.

Actually Monster Hunter looks pretty fun. I like Battlemaster but the fact it doesn't get anything past level 3 really pisses me off because our games go to high levels often.

Won't your stealth suffer if you're using strength on a barbarian instead of dex?

Nothing says rogues need high stealth, unless you're going assassin and the ability to hide as a bonus action. Rogues otherwise need stealth just as much as everybody else does, I guess.

For strength, half-orc works, mountain dwarf works..
For either, triton works.mountain dwarf works, variant human works
For dex, dwarf (hill) works, halfling (stout) is very good indeed.

Generally just 'Does it give high str/dex/con?' is what you want to ask, then other features like lucky or an extra feat or whatever are just icing on the cake. Though you probably don't want to be small on strength as it hurts grappling capabilities.

Bugbear. Also you'll still have 14 DEX and Expertise from Rogue so you can sneak better then most.

Honestly, all fighter kits should have Monster Hunter levels of utility. But alas.

Our swashbuckler asked me about multiclassing a while back. Rogue/fighter apparently pretty good? Extra attacks, action surge and fighting style. Battlemaster for riposte to sneak attack on enemy turns and other maneuvers.
He's level 9 right now and since we rolled for stats he's got 20 cha and 16 dex. If he put the 11 remaining levels in fighter he woulds still get his dex up to 20 and could take the dual wielder feat since he wants to use two weapons.
Any other good options for a level 9 swashbuckler?

More importantly Fighter's should have gotten Expertise, considering they can only help with mundane abilities they should at least be good at them.

Well /5eg/... I think it's finally happened. I've burned out of D&D for a bit...

I've been playing with a group of friends for about 6 months now, every saturday. About 6-7 Hour long sessions.

We started with LMoP and then moved into a custom campaign down in waterdeep and it's been fun... but lately... I'm not sure if it's me, or if it's the DM that's just burned the fun out.

So here's a few things I feel that could add some clarity, maybe you guys can tell me what's up...

>Delves into Crypts, Dungeons, Caves, Political intrigue, no longer give rewards aside from small amount of XP. Half the time, the group is left battered, beaten and with nothing to show for their adventures.
>The DM plays the entire world against us. The only "Nice" NPC we've ever met was Carp, an 8 year old halfling child from the LMoP campaign. Everyone else is an asshole, or a jew merchant who tries to hustle us with insane prices.
>20's give us no advantage and are not even seen as "Oh hey, a 20!" the DM doesn't register high rolls against NPCs. If we roll a 20, he usually has us roll until we roll shitty, then plays the NPC off as an asshole who won't listen to us.
> He uses Strong magic against us, a level 5 party, in situations where it would warrant him an advantage. (Get Jailed, the guards cast Detect Truth on us, have true seeing, etc.)

Any NPC's we could use to help us, mysteriously cut contact off from us for no reason and we can never find them again.

Is it me? Or is it how we're being treated?

Rogues are fine with multiclassing into pretty much anything with extra attack.

Bard (valor), fighter, barbarian, bladelock, monk, bladesinger, favoured soul (original draft) sorcerer, paladin, whatever.

What implications does a hands-free arcane focus have for gameplay? My DM and myself are struggling to see where problems might come from if this dude's Warlock has a magic hat instead of a magic stick.

I'd also like to add, that we've attempted to sit in libraries to find places to go adventure, magical items or legends to go delve, but we never roll high enough to find anything. We've sat for a month in Waterdeep but our rolls don't impress us. The DM is railroading his campaign to go back North to Icewind Dale, but was the original sole reason we went to Waterdeep in the first place.

Personally, none of us as players want to go to Icewind dale, we've tried to buy a boat and sail East to become pirates, He's sunk BOTH boats each time and said that we can't. (One was a water tornado! the other, a fucking rock when we rolled low while steering it.)

He originally started the campaign telling us we had freedom to roam anywhere, we have a huge printed map of the Sword coast on our wall, with markers in it of possible locations to go to, or places we've failed to go to from his own actions stopping us...

Sounds like your DM is being an asshat.

The play experience you've described is so awful I'm convinced it's either hyperbole or you've fabricated the entire situation. Before you argue with me about that fact, in the event this is really happening, consider if this campaign is worth being in.

...

The sweet thing about being a Rogue is mainly immunity to opportunity attacks, wicked opportunity attacks, and smooth damage bonus progression from sneak attack. You only have to gang up on an enemy with a single ally, and you're golden; which is honestly a nice layer of tactical decision making that the Fighter lacks.

Rogues with extra attack from multiclassing have a much lower chance of wasting their 1/turn sneak attack damage, and get to absolutely annihilate monsters with their opportunity attacks (1/turn means it also applies on an enemy turn if you get the chance.)

If you were, say, a pure Fighter, you'd have to live with your damage being extremely inconsistent (very low before you get each new extra attack, then high immediately after, then low again, and so on; a rollercoaster ride) and your opportunity attacks drop off in relevance like a rock off a cliff.

It's also worth noting that two-handed weapons (e.g. when playing a fighter) genuinely aren't worth it if you can't select weapon feats. The reason the two-hander feats are so good is because it's not a good option out of the box. (though, GWM clearly overshot the mark)

I've already skipped the last two sessions, because us not finding treasure has slowly siphoned any coin we had and we're sleeping on the tavern roof at night.

I don't really think it is, but I wanted to make sure I wasn't being "that guy". I've been lurking here long enough and I thought this would never happen to me... Just glad that my peers can see something is up, you know?

Your DM is shit, so of course you're not enjoying yourself.

More examples...

>We kill Venomfang, but before we can try to loot his corpse. Gnolls attack us and burn the field he is in, which the flames from the grass, suddenly combust and burn the Green Dragons body, which to the DM's statement, makes any scales, teeth, skull, talons, etc. Worthless. Charred. ?????

> We take over Tresender mansion, spend 3,000 gold rebuilding it that we all pooled together. (Labor, materials, traveling expenses, etc.) Immediately when we leave, word comes to us that bandits attack the mansion, have killed the guards, and burned it to the ground. The original Town now hates us for their friends/families deaths and we are not welcome back by warning of Angry Mob / Lords Alliance Sildar NPC.

> On our way to Waterdeep, the flameskull our two Wizards made is dispelled by a HILL GIANT from 250 feet away, on top of a cliff. It is then immediately crushed by a Boulder thrown by a second hill giant. We kill the duo, but they have no items or trinkets on them.

Like... seriously...

Tell your DM to quit being a faggot

Sounds like your DM is being a piece of shit.
Ask yourself if you want to play in a bad game?

Nah I'm done, I just wanted to share my terrible experience. It's made me a better person, when I run my campaign, whenever I do after this break, I'll make sure to never do this shit to my players.

Thanks for listening /5eg/. Love ya.

>Your DM has been trolling you the entire time for 6 or 7 months and you've only now just decided to bail

Yeah, he's either lying or actually retarded.

What can I make for pic related.

Wow who's the artist?

I have people practically lining up to be my players, and the reason why is basically that I had a shit GM really early on, which made me decide I would never make his mistakes.

Godspeed user.

>that sword

Why do you have a picture of a young vampire hunter D?

It's magic, ain't gotta explain shit.

It was really fun an exciting at first, we had a blast. I've known these guys for years, hell, decades. A few of my close friends who I served with sit at that table. But my buddy just doesn't make a good DM, or he doesn't want to run the campaign anymore. Took a while for me to see this.

Not sure, got the Image here, from one of the threads.
Will make for a great boss in the Grung Campaign I have ready to run.

That's a running trend I've noticed. Although looking back, the guy wasn't totally wrong on some things. Just... Really didn't like player agency, it felt like most times.

She's clearly female.

D's hair is black.

Unless he dyes it I guess.

>no armour, huge sword
Barbarian
>no armour, smaller sword
Kensei
>light armour, some sort of homebrew dex two hander
Any martial or cleric

Magic can't stop it from being impractical.
Or maybe it can if that appearance is just an illusion and the actual weapon is a bit more sensible.

Have you seen ANY description of D?
His hair is whatever he wants it to be, canonically.

She looks way too feminine.

But being inherently magical means it can be impractical and still be functional.

>She looks way too feminine.
HAVE YOU SEEN ANY DESCRIPTION OF D?
Seriously, user, he is feminine in such a way only the Japanese with their buggery could find attractive in a man.

>But being inherently magical means it can be impractical and still be functional.
So due to magic the weapon is incapable of accidentally poking a friends eye out when swinging it?

Redemption Paladin

Currently running a wilderness hexcrawl. Using encumbrance because it's fitting. Players hate it so I let them use the easy mode encumbrance rules. 10x str before become encumbered.

Just realised players likely forgot to update their weights last session so will have to remind them to update it next session.

Fun so far !

That sounds like a personal problem.

I've seen Vampire Hunter D, they don't alike at all. There's also no need to be autistic.

I'm thinking of playing a Monster Hunter in my next game. Current plan is to be a Firbolg and use Two-Handers.

Is Martial Adept worth it? Way I see it, it'll basically give me some more options to spend dice on and an extra die.

>I've seen Vampire Hunter D
I said read, user.
There is more to the franchise than 2 mediocre movies, there is like 25 novels.

>mediocre

I thought they were kinda good? Maybe aside from those monster mercenaries being absolute jobbers.

Our level 4 party got a TPK against an encounter which was, according to our DM, CR 2, but which could kill one party member per turn, including some major AoE damage. That felt like bullshit, too, and we often go through several sessions without any XP or meaningful loot aside from 'some rusty warhammers' or whatever the orcs leave behind. Honestly it's kinda hard to stay motivated in such situations.

The first was good, but royally fucked the characters and setting beyond belief (the strength of vampire society was scientific mastery of space/time, not magic, the count's "men" were actually world famous giant hunters he hired to kill D).
The second not only fucked over the plot, the setting, the characters, everything you could imagine, it's only saving grace was it's score and decent animation.

Vampire Hunter D was good, mate.

That one panel where he loses his dragon meat to the dark elf makes me angry and sad.

Is there any difference between a halberd and glaive?

Looks elven to me, probably even an avatar.

sprite or pseudodragon that shares magic resistance as familiar as a bard lock? Would Tome pact be any better?

And then there is our DM who drops some deadly bullshit on us at every step, complains about it not being hard enough despite nearly wiping the floor with us, we get inflated XP, DM complains that newly unlocked spells and/or abilities are too good, cycle repeats itself.

Yeah, the names?

Gold cost IIRC, unfortunately no in-built multiple damage types befitting the halberd.

>UA Paladins
>Redemption, too

What are the best weapon damage types for a melee attacker? I feel like there's not much point in using anything other than bludgeoning (2H maul vs greatsword in particular) since that's the only one I've seen weaknesses against (mostly skeletons).

OP here.
I'm currently using an inventory system.
You have these slots:
>left hand
>right hand
>armour (if not wearing armour or wearing, say, padded or ring mail or something trashy you can put something in here instead)
>slot 1
>slot 2
>slot 3
>10+str only slot 4
>13+str only slot 5
>16+str only slot 6
>19+str only slot 7
>bear barbarian level 6 /goliath only slot 8
>bear barbarian level 6 /goliath only slot 9

Each slot is essentially a bag. A backpack might be several slots if you want. You don't have to describe bags for each, but it's nice.
You can fit, say, a full 50ft rope and something or a weapon or a shield or maybe four potions or a tool kit in a slot. However, nothing stops you from trying to fit, say, eight potions in a slot. However, overloading a slot like that might get you punished as it'll be considered a possibility that an ogre smashing into you with a club or a big drop might cause some of those potions to shatter, whereas a 4 potion slot has a lot more protection space for the potions.

It's a bit arbitrary as there's no solid 'you can only carry this much' but I think that's good too - there's not a load of calculations, you just kinda do what you feel fits right.

Only been playtesting it a bit and it seems to work out alright, but it's not like I have any proper experience on it yet.

If theres one thing I know people play tabletops for, its inventory management

Anyone got any guidelines for expanding the range of revised ranger animal companions?

In terms of animals you can use or what the animals can do?

Cleric of Lucifer here trying to figure out my character's traits and mannerisms. So far I have;
>Never Lies (don't have to answer straight either)
>Vengance is okay
>Help those who deserve it, not ingrates
>Will not take what does not belong to me
>Proud, will not bend the knee
>Freedom of will, will try to cast down tyrants
>Will not attack animals unless they attack first
Am trying to mix in the good and bad. Any suggestions?

So if a character is riding a mount and they make the mount disengage as an action, do neither the rider nor the mount provoke oppotunity attacks? Also, does the rider retain their action, because it was the mount taking the action?

Adolf Hirémy-Hirschl

The painting is called "The Souls of Acheron"

They are your friends. You had fun at first. Some DMs do a great job using a published campaign, but do poorly on their own. All DMs get burned out eventually. Some DMs are unaware or deny that they burning out. Some DMs have out-of-game issues that mess with the game. Talk to the other players. If they agree with you, have someone offer to run games for a while. If everyone likes their characters, you could even run the same characters and let your DM make a character and join the party. Retire your character if you do that.
Don't play a game that is not fun, but do try to fix it.
They are your friends, hanging out with them is a good thing even if it is just poker, pizza, and beer.
Don't be hesitant to have the 'You need a break, dude.' talk with your DM/friend.
If this was a table full of jerkwads, I would say 'Walk away.'

No. The rider is the one 'being moved', he isn't moving on his own. It's comparable I think to knocking an enemy past an ally using Repelling Blast, that also doesn't provoke AoU's. There's a Sage Advice, too: sageadvice.eu/2015/06/09/mount-disengage/

As for the rider retaining his action, I guess it depends? According to the rules, if you're directing it you can only make it take the Dash, Disengage or Dodge actions, so no attacks, but intelligent creatures can attack, although I'd say the threshold for intelligence should be left up to the DM, and maybe the actions the mount takes in that case should also be taken by the DM (or you could roll dice to see what it does). For example, say you're riding a bear because you made a really good animal handling check. It's understandable that said bear would attack the orcs threatening you and it by proxy, but at the same time he might also get pissed off at the Sorcerer shooting firebolts past his face, even if they're directed at those same orcs.

In short though if you're doing the riding on a nonintelligent mount and you make the mount disengage you retain your action.

I seem to perpetually have the opposite problem: before every campaign, I always end up calculating exactly how much I can carry and then buying as much utility items from the shop that would bring me just to that limit, and every DM so far just foregoes carrying capacity and weight limits outside of actions and ignores food and drink requirements making my meticulous planning go to waste. Every. Single. Time.
Gee if I wanted to play a video game with hammer space and no need to ever eat or drink I'd have gone and done that, at least I could mod one to satisfy my logistics itch.

Thanks for the info, very useful for my mounted paladin build I'm planning. I was thinking on going Polearm Master/Sentinel at level 5 with variant human. Sad to see that Polearm Master doesn't work for lances.

Dave?

It is pretty good.

My GM started making us trek through tunnels to prevent my Mounted Combat Paladin from running over every encounter pretty much by himself.

carrying capacity should never really come up anyway, unless the DM is using encumbrance rules
WIth carrying capacity, you have more than enough
With encumbrance, you have enough for your armour and a weapon or two before you start losing speed

Do you want a non magic martial that's good? Well, pick champion fighter or battlemaster, and you'll be good in combat (and combat only). Now if you want a nonmagic martial that doesn't make you want to sleep while playing, that's impossible in this edition.

>dm gave me a wicked magical +3 bow
>party didn't assfuck itself first session and be rude as fuck
>campaign might actually go well this time
:D

>first session
>+3 bow
what level are you?

Bard school of swords

I see what you're trying by not having Lucifer be inherently evil, but, he kind of is. At least, according to alignments. Lucifer is ego. You do what you want to do when you want to do it. You want to kill a person just to kill a person? Go ahead. Who's God to tell you not to? He and the other fallen angels fight against Michael and the rest of God's angels. He is the ultimate evil because he was created divine and good and he freely CHOSE to be evil.

You can't so much change his ideals as you can change how his ideals are viewed. The most you can really do is say "What if God is the evil one for 'denying free will'?". Have the cleric be a champion of choice, free will and pride, even if that means the choice to be evil.

I don't explicitly keep track of it but I keep tabs on the fighter who has a hardon for taking trophies (read: heads) from everything they kill. He's Dex of course so he gets busted frequently.

The inventory system I mentioned is much simpler than calculating weights, I believe.

There's no set 'Okay, you're now encumbered'. It rewards you more space for having higher strength. And it also feels nicer than just having a list of things, because each slot is like a bag.

Literally all you have to do is mark down a number of slots to be bags and put stuff in bags. No funny calculations or anything, just use common sense.

It's more important in a dungeon crawler or something where you can lose or gain lots of key items and items might help get to certain places in the dungeon or be a monster's weakness, etc.

>Any NPC's we could use to help us, mysteriously cut contact off from us for no reason and we can never find them again.

This shit triggers me hard, especially as a Bard

Stat me

In terms of animals you can use, like what acceptable stat ranges are

10 levels of kill yourself.

That's stupid, he clearly isn't a fighter or barbarian, the only classes that make me want to kill myself.

What's /5eg/s opinion on handouts? Like when you break into someone's room and instead of just narrating their diary the DM gives you an actual printed handout or a map or whatever.

Good idea? Bad idea?

My players always love it, but putting together a whole diary seems like a lot of work - keep it simple for your own sake

Best Idea.

I hate being told a ton of information, because it is impossible to remember, and we practically have to take a 10 minute break in order for any of ua to write it all down.

As a GM I also love making all sorts of stupid props and handing out to my players. Loads of fun.

I think it's better. Easier to remember important information, tkes less time and you can read it in your own time.

Well alright then.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaAaaa
How the fuck do you do for a group of pure chaotic/le group of players? I had them encounter a LG/cg group of npcs and the npcs wanted to take a bandit camp together, but split the bounty. Which was fine. They baited the guards to break away from their routes and the lg guys just knocked them out, not killing them. The player characters then just start sawing off their hands after waking the npc bandits up, because he's a fallen assimar and collects hands (idk I'm stuck with retarded edgy players) the lg and cg NPCs tell them the deal is off, and while the players are busy entering the camp from the front, the cg/lg NPCs sneak in back and ride off with the bandit leader in tow for the bounty reward (since the reward was only for the camp leader). The player party. murdered all the other bandits, (even the ones that surrendered, tried to flee with no weapons, killed bandit children too) the assimar cut off all their hands and offers them to his God, bane. How the fuck do I deal with murderhobo party's? Do I just build up a group of lg/cg NPCs who's goal is to stop this gang of murderers? Do I end the campaign when they die? I've already made a fuckin of details for this setting. I don't want to see it go.

Tldr: help me never dmed for le/ce/cn party before.