/5eg/ Fifth Edition General

Figured as much, thanks

Or rather, completely separate from Spellcasting. The spell slots you get are freely usable by either class' spells/features.

Fighter pulls out his legendary enchanted bow and fires over half a dozen shots in a single round using magic anti-beholder arrows +3.

Beholder dies a horrible death as the Fighter stands victorious as the lone-survivor because the rest of the team were squishy mages.

Guys, let's say I want to create a combat encounter that happens in waves. For instance, the PCs are fighting some undead warriors and they come as follows:

>a few sword and board dudes
>a couple archers and some pikemen
>barbarians and sorcerers
>mixed fighters with buffing bards
>maybe something else, IDK

How would I go around on making a combat like this bearable? I mean timewise, I hate encounters that consume over half a session.

(reposting from last thread because I posted just when that one died)

How does it make any logical sense that ability score increases are attached to classes?

What about being a barbarian lets you increase your int?

I hate to say the same old shit that's been hashed out again and again, but not all locks are studying the occult in their free time.
At the heart of the warlock, you've made a pact with some being of higher power, and you've either entreating them for said power, or leeching off of it in the case of most GOOs
There's merits to both INT and CHA, but unfortunately there's no precedent (at least in 5e) for a dual mental stat class.
3.5 had archetypes that changes the mental stats for certain classes, but that's likely not something WOTC is looking to implement, even with UA pacts

How is the Arcane Archer? Anyone played either version? What's the verdict?

But then how do we give the fighter/rogue something interesting to do

How would you develop Genasi based around the Five Chinese elements or Wu Xing? They are Fire, Water, Earth, Wood, and Metal.

On the alternative, how would you combine the Wu Xing to align to the classical elements of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water?

4e also had classes capable of speccing in multiple attributes, but you'd rather forget 4e had any good ideas wouldn't you satan?

>How would I go around on making a combat like this bearable? I mean timewise, I hate encounters that consume over half a session.
if your group has good aoe, hordes upon hordes of low hp enemies, use average damage for monsters, have them rush him and get rekt, this will have the benefit of eating up group resources without posing an actual risk.

If your group doesn't have solid aoe, use less monsters but have traps and such that can be utilized by the PC's to thin numbers.

With fighters it makes sense if you think about it as pushing your limits via sheer discipline or martial prowess. The actual reason is that without the extra ASIs they would be super shitty compared to other martials until they got the second extra attack

Post decent homebrew classes/races

I've got really limited experience with 4e, so my apologies on that

done. Pic related.

Am I wrong in thinking Wizard subclasses are way to similar thematically if not mechanically? If I feel like if I were to look at all of them except for Bladesinger and Necromancer I would just see people in robes and pointy hats and maybe they're a different color depending on their school.

To expand on this what I see when I look at Wizards:
>Evoker
Red Wizard
>Diviner
Blue Wizard
>Conjurer
Purple Wizard
>Enchanter
Green Wizard
>Illusion
Light Blue Wizard

Vs Warlocks:
>Fiend
A charming looking person on the surface who has an undertone of sinister intentions
>Great Old One
A crazy gibbering fool with tinfoil on his head preaching about how the end is nigh
>Hexblade
Basically Siegfried when he went full Nightmare in Soul Calibur

And Sorcs:
>Dragon
A lizardy man that I guess thwips its tongue out at people and talks about how inferior other races are to dragons
>Phoenix
Pyro from TF2
>Stone
Ben Grimm
>Sea
Dread Pirate
>Storm
Young Odin

And martials are easy to differentiate too. Rouge has common criminal, hardcore assassin, dirty politician and pirate all accounted for. Fighter has dumb meat-head soldier, smart "war is hell" soldier, knight in shining armor, and knight in shining armor on a horse. And for Barbarian, Totem and Battlerager are distinct with their wildling mythos and spiked armor, and while Beserker Barbarian is bland it doesn't need half a dozen classes to spread its blandness around in.

Good luck with that if you're a STR Fighter.

This idea seems pretty fundamentally flawed, because generally speaking, combat with more than twice the number of enemies as you have players is going to take half the session.

If you do want to do this, make it an actual horde, that the players can't hope to beat by playing fair. Instead of rolling for individual attacks, do group rules (in the DMG somewhere IIRC), and put several objective type things in the encounter, that if the players can get to and activate (which is the challenge), they can eliminate large portions of the horde.

Stages can be waves of the horde, with similar objectives. For instance, there might be a boulder on the other side of the encounter from the players, that if they can get to and push, they can flatten a large portion of the horde. Next they realize that in the spot they just left is an open gate that a large horde is about to come through, so they have to close it. etc, etc.

wizard diversity comes from spell choice. While the subclasses feel similar, an evocationist and trasmuter will function quite differently

>smite invocations
Explain this to me, people keep saying this but I don't get the comparison between warlocks and paladins.

How do I effectively tank when every enemy just ignores me and runs around me to the squishies?

use terrain to your advantage. You're not fighting in blank 100x100ft rooms, right?

Fighters get an additional fighting style and get more ASI's than they know what to do with. You don't need to have +5 Dex to fire a bow. Having 18/20 Strength and 12/14 Dex is more than enough to use it when you need to, especially when you get +2 to hit with the fighting style and you're spamming with action surge and likely enchanted bows and arrows by the time you'll ever be likely to face a beholder.

Evoker: the Demoman
Diviner: Just according to Keikaku*
Conjurer: The pet summoner
Enchanter: The mind control fetishist
Illusion: The Literally Cartoon Mage
Necromancer: The other pet summoner

Besides Necromancer and Conjurer, they all play pretty different.

In both UAs, there are invocations that allow the warlock player to convert spell slots for additional damage after successfully hitting someone. Just like a paladin does with smiting.

One of the issues might be that you backloaded the spellcasters so that they come into play with full long-rest resources against a player party that has possibly shot its load.

On the other hand you're holding back the buffers until many of their beneficiaries are already dead.

Diviners are pretty clear cut. They're prophets, astrologists and anyone who tells the future in general. Enchanters and Illusionists I imagine as the kind of magician you would see as antagonists on a chivalric romance novel. Evokers are standard rpg kill shit wizards and conjurers make things appear

I figured it was UA nonsense. That's silly.

I really hope it won't be in the book of everything when that comes out later.

This is mostly why I ignore UA crap. Why they thought giving Warlock's more things to spend a non-supply of spell slots on when it's just a rip-off of paladin smites is beyond me.

We've only had two combat scenarios so far, one in a courtyard and the other in a street

Because they have fuckawful spell selection to work with around said slots, and playing a bladelock over EB turret is actively hamstringing yourself

It was mostly an attempt to make the bladelock not a trap option, and in the first UA, it offered very efficient damage conversion. Of course, lebbit complained or something, and in the next UA they halved the conversion, making it a trap option again.

Pretty awesome. While you can only use super special moves twice per rest, you get the free +1 and curving shots.

Combine it with Sharpshooter and the Archery Fighting Style and you can you get -2 to hit for +11 damage. Plus if you miss you can just target another enemy with it.

Consider the Sentinel feat

This reeks of "I teleport behind him and say, "Nothing personal kid"

Your squishies burn Shield, turn into a Bear, or dodge in full plate while concentrating on Spiritual Something or Others.

Tanking is kind of dead unless you are a Barbarian.

Oh and transmuters I see as alchemists and reductionist science-y wizards in general if it makes sense. It's very broad, like conjuration, so hard to pinpoint

Transmuters are just cucks. They're the least thrilling and most terrible specialization you can take, and it could have been so interesting.

Not him, copying from last thread what I came up with was:
Blade gets Thirsting Blade baseline (at 5th).
Chain gets Voice baseline.
Tome gets Ancient Secrets baseline.
So all boons are actually interesting instead the cool feature being behind the invocation paywall.

Eldritch Invocations: make a system of Eldritch points (multiply Invocations known column by 2)
Make the must-have/strong Invocations costing 2 points while the fluff only costs 1 (greater and lesser invocations).
The ones that grant spells at the cost of a slot are 1, at will depending on the spell (detect magic 1, levitate and mage armor 2).
Maybe up the Eldritch Invocations capstone to 5th level, this is a bit extreme but would ultimately fix the dip problem.

At 7th, they get a capstone called Improved Eldritch Blast, it gives the agonising blast invocation choice of one of the new EB invocations or streamline into the patrons as in the UA before. Or make it 5th if you give Invocations at 2nd.

That's really what Wizards are though. A bunch of Veeky Forums tier autists who squabble over "Nuh uh, my powers are cooler".

If you really want to make them different I'd suggest only having specific schools taught in specific areas. The Abjuration school in a freezing tundra full of tough tribals , the Diviners living on top of a mountain in a library where they spend all their day sorting knowledge and etc.

>Enchanter: The mind control fetishist

Is it wrong if I mind control people into performing my fetishes? I never knew that. Though any martial character would probably do it better.

Ancestor Barbarian, Crown Paladin, Tunnel Fighter, Knight, Protection, Warding Bond, Sentinel feat and Redemption Paladin.

You have to actually build around being a tank, luckily Martials main job is high damage output while casters perform control in combat. Tanking's not really needed.

They always looked neat to me, changing rock buffs on the fly, then breaking it for something neat, free polymorph. The first transmutation is really limited but you can still turn prison bars into something malleable like gold.

Pugilist from Sterling Vermin, it's a reskinned monk, but it has its merits.

Had a discussion on the local group yesterday.

My Rogue has Mage Slayer. GM had an enemy spellblade NPC attack me with Booming Blade to stop me from running away.

I said I would use my reaction to attack him, as per mage slayer, but the GM said that Booming Blade was a melee attack with a magical effect, and not a spell as such, and therefore wouldn't give me a reaction attack.

I thought it was pretty clear that casting a spell, no matter what kind or how it is cast, triggers the reaction attack, regardless of what that spell might be. My GM disagreed.

How is this supposed to work? Which interpretation is correct?

It honestly sounds like they'd have crazy utility if nothing else

Casted a spell. Booming Blade uses the cast a spell action, not the attack action. Making a melee attack is a side effect of casting the spell.

your DM is both wrong and stupid.

Until you realize how limited their defining features are. The best thing you can say about them is they get a crappy wild shape every short rest.

DM is wrong.

Bad call from your DM. Mage Slayer would've wrecked his shit.

>The ones that grant spells at the cost of a slot are 1, at will depending on the spell (detect magic 1, levitate and mage armor 2).
No.

All the spell invocations should give 1 free use of the spell, and the ability to cast it using spell slots afterwards.

That 1 free cast should be baseline, always. An invocation that still requires you spend a precious spell slot, needs to be horrifically overpowered to make up for this fact, because you are not just choosing a spell, you are also wasting a very limited and essential resource (invocation) to get it, and you STILL have to spend an even more limited spell slot to use it.

Just no. Considering we even have shit like alter self at will, getting 1 free cast at the cost of an invocation would be fine.

Free resistances is good enough for people to praise the Nature Cleric, and if nothing else you get a free Con save proficiency.

What's the verdict on Storm King's Thunder? How does it compare to the rest of the officially published campaigns?

Okay, thank you.

I just needed to confirm I hadn't missed something. My googlefu failed to find an answer, so I wasn't entirely sure if I was right.

It's honestly nowhere near as bad as you're trying to sell it. Wizards could literally not have any archetype features and still be gods.

People on Veeky Forums will tell you that anything except Lore Master, Diviner and Abjurer are worthless.

Honestly Clerics and Wizards are both good for subclasses, none of them are bad. At worst they're boring or meh.

>All the spell invocations should give 1 free use of the spell, and the ability to cast it using spell slots afterwards.
Now that's quite a buff, either let them cast without limit or 1 free cast, both is too much.

Reminds me, anyone have the extra fight clubs pdf?

Of course user, but we're talking about the balance between wizard archetypes.

>Transmutation is the worst wizard archetype
"Yeah but wizards are good" isn't a relevant response.

Those are okay, but self contradictory, since the resistances come at the cost of the con save and vice versa. Also, those features are boring.

Does the Curved Shot and the +1 Attack from version 2 make up for the fewer skills, the non-regenerating arcane shots in longer battles, and the extra save allowance?

Am I blind? Where is Tunnel Fighter?

It's.. . A mixed bag. Large parts of the campaign feels messy, because it tries to do this open world thing, which just really doesn't work. A lot of it relies on the players making a decision, based on meta knowledge (We should be able to do this, because the campaign is tailored to our level) rather than character knowledge.

It is less railroady than shit like LMoP, which often smacks you in the head for not doing exactly what you are supposed to do, but it is still my least favourite campaign so far. The feel of the campaign was great, but the execution was just terrible.

Feats are already somewhat scarcely applied. As a rule of thumb if the feat should or could most likely cover it you should probably rule in favor of it since it so rarely comes up to begin with. There are exceptions (of course) but I think your DM made a mistake with that one.

Unless I'm mistaken, you can get it for free on dmsguild.

Yes. Your always on accuracy and damage will make you much better at damage dealing then other Fighters all day long. It's effectively +5% to hit that's always on and +1 Damage.

The better arrows (Bursting and Grasping) don't even allow saves at first. Grasping Arrow being a straight +2d6 and they have to use an action to have a chance to remove them.

For Archers, Arcane Archer is much better then Battlemaster. It's burst rounds with the arrows are a bit worse but the effects from them are much more powerful, and it's always on effects completely out do it. Battlemaster's advantages is it can burn every resource to nova slightly better and can switch weapons.

War Cleric here looking to choose one of these angelic seals for a feat- do any of them in particular stand out? Mind you I can't access the greater seal version cause I'm no wizerd
I'm fine with dying so the glory (3 temp hp per kill) and the fortitude (reaction, +2AC) aren't really high on the list either

Not really +5% to hit unless you already would only have missed on a 2 or 1. There was talk about this a couple threads ago.

It's a nice throwback to the Warden from 4e.

>Those are okay, but self contradictory
But you can swap to the Con save right before casting a Concentration spell then change it to a resistance during a short rest before fighting an elemental or dragon.

I have 18 Cha as a Warlock and I'm about to reach 4, do I go for 20 Cha or pick Resilient for the Con save?

All these are pretty minor I think. Clarity seems generally nice and Recovery would make it even less likely for your character to die if you play smart and you don't have a killer DM

For all those people who want to play melee Warlocks.

Wouldn't making EB a melee spell attack where you can move between attacks like a normal weapon attack be enough? Between defensive spells and repelling blast you can even be fairly survivable.

Thanks kindly, wanted one of them for rp purposes more than anything
Am I just gimping myself then? Would you have any recommendations for a feat I could pick up as a War Cleric, third party or otherwise? Already have War Caster cause I don't want to lose my concentration spells. Was originally going to go with Heavy Armor Master, but I realized I was fine with dying

I think my GM was mostly pissed at the mage slayer feat, since he likes using mages, and my Rogue is giving him a really hard time because of how good he is at killing mages, and how easily he can shut them down.

How would you fix Pact of the Chain?

It's quite underwhelming.

I'm thinking of a Barbarian X/Stone Sorcerer 1-3. I know it sounds kinda retarded but I figured there's some decent spells for out of combat use and that I get a better AC calculation.

Thoughts?

Mages are squishy. Smart wizards will cast fly and rain death from above, stay out of the way of your backstab, and all around generally avoid saying "please stab me sir."

As a war cleric you could pick a weapon feat. But honestly if it's for RP there's no issue in picking whatever you want

I'd apply the Raven Queen stuff into it. Specially that she's dead now (unless they're giving 3 patrons to Warlock)

I just had a great season with my players after postponing our meeting three times. The monk got so drunk he made a villager break his 10 year sobriety. The bard earned the party free lodging with his music. And the wizard made a bunch of allies for the showdown in the morning. We had to cut it short because it got too late but it was fun.

Chain is fine though. Like tome it mostly gives utility, just in the form of a super-familiar rather than ritual casting and cantrips

One of the main appeals of Blade Pacts or even Shillelagh is that you can attack something that is immune to cantrips, unlike anything locked into EB. It sucks to be in a long campaign to defeat Tiamat only be absolutely useless against her.

This.

Personally I let cantrip bypass magic resistance up to a level equal to the caster's level/2. I feel like that otherwise, casters literally have to sit there with a thumb up their ass after casting some buff spells.

I don't really mess with UA so I'm not sure what you mean, honestly.

Nobody ever picks chain because it's lackluster. You get a minion and.. well, that's it. You get the equivalent of a level 1 spell: find familiar, which you can get through the Pact of the Tome.

I see literally no reason you would ever want to take Chain except for the cool flavor invocations that let you sense-share through your familiar, but frankly that's more or less for flavor and roleplay scenes and information gathering at best. I see no reason not to take Tome instead since you gain 3 cantrips and 2 level 1 rituals including find familiar and the ability to learn any amount of rituals you can get your hands on.

It's bad.

How does a DM actually keep track of time? I get that 10 rounds is a minute, meaning any combat encounter doesn't really pass any time, but what happens to a spell with a time limit after that? Like how long does a party spend inside a dungeon, or between rooms, walking down hallways looking for traps etc.
And overworld travel takes hours and stuff, that's not too bad..

It's still a rogue, and it is thr arcane trickster archetype. Grab a longbow, while the familiar is pestering the flying wizard, and enjoy taking your concentration save at a disadvantage.

This character is built around fucking over mages specifically, and that pissed off my GM. Despite all of his tricks, I always manage to get around it somehow.

The first header of PHB Chapter 8 covers the passing of time in that regard.

That's the main issue with the pacts, and has been from the start.

Time is interesting, and has so many cool options. It feels like a subclass itself.

Chain and blade are lazy as fuck, and can be replicated by the Tome, just to really highlight how pointless they are.

New invocations and even patrons are trying to change that, but Tome still has utility the other two can't hope to compete with.

Pact of the Chain is the best pact actually.

It goes like this:

Tier 1: Literally perfect if you have creativity:
Pact of the Chain
Tier 2: Great, doesn't require creativity
Tome
Tier 3: Shit
Blade

You can't get any of the Chain familiars through find familiar, to start with

Speaking of Tomelock, which patron is really good for that?

Hexblade is tailor made for Blade Pact, Raven Queen is tailor made for chain... what about Tome? Which pact just fits the utility style of Tomelock the best?

yeah, things like the imp being able to turn invisible or shape shift really make it completely outclass a normal familiar.