/5eg/ - Fifth Edition General

Don't worry, my setting document is 60 pages, and that's before I even get to the rules.

No one is going to learn different names for months and days, though. It is completely irrelevant to the world unless the fact that they are named after X is some important historical fact, and even then that's not important anyway. All of those names are interchangeable and it's unlikely to ever be brought up, because having an NPC say "come back on Totallynotmonday" just makes the players ask "and what day is today", which wastes time when you could just say "come back in four days".

how is celestial patron warlock? I want to be a cute female magical girl halfling, is this the correct choice?

Reposting just in case.

What's stopping you from making up a regional culture about the race you play?

>Humans are still ridiculously good at all around characters, since they get 6 ASIs

Well it would help if the ASIs weren't fucking double what they used to be as well. But normies need their instant gratification and that's (((Wizards))) new target market.

So I'm running Phandelver, this is my second D&D session ever and I'm also new to GMing. Do you all have any DM tips specific to the adventure? Or for handling Phandalin?

Hey /5eg/, New GM here; is the "Sunless Citadel" module in Tales From the Yawning Portal a good followup to the Lost Mines of Phandelver if I'm running for mostly new players?

I like doing this too. I'll let everyone take something that helps flesh out their character. My players don't rush for shit that are overused. They take stuff like Healer for a Thief Rogue who used to be a combat medic or Tavern Brawler for a bottom feeding drunk who only adventures to pay for more booze.

We actually are going to try something like this next campaign but with racial feats from the UA

I've actually thought of running a game like that, only using Pathfinder's Advanced Race Guide. Of course, the big surprise is all players are basically abominations created by a wizard attempting to create souls artificially.

That said, I've already done that for a homebrew, only I tossed out everything but humanity. Every race in question was created from the ground up, and aren't just 'elves but snake people.' Sure, used inspiration from history, but some are just piles of themes that get my nippies hard, then extrapolating their culture, technology, and geopolitical behavior on those lines.

What level are your players? If they're starting Sunless Citadel above level 3 it will be a cake walk. Otherwise, yes, it's quite good.

How do you roleplay your characters? Do you default to certain roleplaying style or character types?

Well... The GMs, mostly.

Go and say "oh yeah I have -my- gnolls / orcs / kobs here let me tell ya about it"
GMs be like "wow no gnolls / orcs / kobs are evil-locked abominations with THAT origin story, THAT culture", etc. At best, I get compromises.

>no racial pride from being simple evolved beasts self-determining their identity as a people

>Fancy Noble Ball
>Half-Orc PC with an INT of 6 instantly falls in love with another Half-Orc who's secretly a Lycanthrope
>Tells him she's a Werebear and he'll be stronger, actually is lying through her teeth all night and is a pathetic WereRat
>Half-Orc wakes up with WereRat curse, goes nuts the next night since it's a full moon, gives it to another PC
>Party now trying to track down a cure for the curse (they have one lead, but it'll only cure one of them)
Any fun stuff I can do with this? I already have it planned since their new Lycanthropes they'll lose control pretty often earlier on and cause a ruckus some nights, but I suspect it'll be sticking around for a couple more sessions so I wanna know what kind of fun scenarios I can put my players in.

We have an ongoing game at the moment so they haven't made any new characters yet. But they finished their most recent quest recently so I gave them a magical object that was made up of a mixture of both the race/skill feats so they can try em out a bit.

Depends whether it is an online game or in person. Meatspace gets a less flexible approach, in which I favor the thinking man's brute or a smarmy face. Online? I'll play whoever I think is fun.

If you take falling damage as a result of jumping (not being pushed off a cliff or walking over an unseen pitfall), you subtract your jump height from the distance of the fall.

A character who can jump 40 feet straight up will not take damage if they do so and then land.
If they jump 40 feet up to clear a castle wall but don't realize the whole castle is on a 20 foot cliff, they will take 20 feet of damage as they fall past their own jump height.
If they are pushed off that 20 foot tall cliff, they still take 20 feet of damage, despite being able to jump 40 (because they didn't).

That tripped me out when I learned it. Also, finding out that Slow Fall was "reduce damage by 5 x Monk level", not "ignore 5 feet of falling per Monk level". Way better now. I have done absurd things with Shadow Monk's teleport as a result.

Well

Have the female Half-Orc come back in the story and still be kinda... You know, a "good" person he can actually still love? Give her motivations for lying, I can think of a thousand.

"...I was just, so alone, and people thought I was a monster because of my curse; a pathetic monster, even... Who would have wanted me?"

Has anyone actually run a modern magic game with the UA?

THE TAINT
MUST
BE
PURGED

Actually, there are two examples of that, as well.
Cephaloths: Picture a bipedal octopus man with all the color-changing abilities that are so natural that half their language is subtle changes in color and movement. They worship their god Leviathan, guardian of the sea of souls and mother of monsters, by consuming the flesh of such beasts.
Leppies: Short rabbit people forcibly uplifted by the Fae during a failed invasion. Half of them are trying to unravel their technology, while they other have gone half-feral, seeking to carve their own place in the world. This did start with the extermination of their baseline progenitors, and taking their place as a far more dangerous analog to goblins.

> I really love it when players don't optimize their characters but build them around a back story.

I really like playing well-built characters, that also have great personality.

A class is a set of mechanics, not a job, or some shit like that. Fighter, Cleric, etc as "classes" don't exist in any setting. There are clerics, that may or may not have Cleric levels, or whatever.

I had a fellow player ask an NPC "So where do the rangers hang out?" when we had a new player joining that was a ranger. People who think classes like that exist in settings are flat out wrong 100% of the time.

Or, it's a different game, and built that way.

It's not 4e, it's not 3.5e. It's not even AD&D 2e.

It's 5e.

I wanna spice up my OoA pally by multiclass with Archfey lock, which pact boon should I take?

Hope I'm not annoying anyone with this

It's the only choice.

You might get a kick out of this:
imgur.com/gallery/BWnHF

I'm about to.

little bit, considering it is 100% redundant, and in an inferior format compared to the OP site. Good on you for making it, but you've basically reinvented the abacus, spamming adverts for it, and I'm sitting here with my TI-89.

What is the opinion of the Zealot Barbarian Path? I can help but find it a little disappointing: it just doesn't feel Holy enough. Other than the magical Aura at 3rd level nothing about it really screams "Rage From The Heavens" for me.

Ohh cool hope it goes well tell me what you think

>Fighter, Cleric, etc as "classes" don't exist in any setting.
I wish this other player would get this through his skull.
>of course I'm eloquent and charming, I'm a bard
>I'm a bard, so I'm the self-proclaimed leader
>all rogues hoard money
>our rogue is by herself, I bet she got in trouble
Fuck this guy, I'm a goddamn detective and I don't do charity work unless someone's really down on their luck or a child.

Fair enough i'll chill

Hate to break it to you but Cleric was e x p l i c t i l y a class-as-job in past editions of most D&D settings and likely still is.
>wah i'm devoted enough to my god that i think i should receive magical powers for it but i can't be assed to be part of the official heirarchy
JOIN YOUR FUCKING CHURCH

Because someday my Barbarian may be playing chess while seducing a Dragon and that +1 that moved my dump stats to 9....well will still be irrelevant but I can pretend base human isn't shit and cling to the BS that everything printed works fine

>explicitily
i have shamed deneir

For shame indeed. I'm not a cleric but that I can understand.

What's this about experience from encounters being multiplied by some difficulty modifier? Don't you just add together the experience from each creature then divide it by amount of party members?

I recommend you watch some Westerns for inspiration, and really play up the Wild West frontier tone of the adventure. I regret DMing Phandalin as a forgettably generic fantasy town.

I also suggest you also weave in some foreshadowing for the doppelgängers who appear towards the end of the adventure. For example, while my players were escorting Sildar from the goblin hideout at the start of the campaign, one of them caught a glimpse of Sildar's exact double spying on the party from the treeline before fleeing. In the next session, the Cleric heard from the innkeeper that someone who looked just like him was trying to gain access to his room. It makes the eventual doppelgänger reveal feel like less of an ass-pull.

>Barbarian
You want 3 stats. You get all 3 stats as a human. That's the 3 ASI that everyone else gets.

That you get +1 to 3 stats makes no fucking difference outside of the first 3 levels, and who gives a shit.

You are also quite the retard to take 8 in a stat if you know you will get +1. If you don't care at all, leaving it at 8 is fine... but then you dont get to complain about that 9 in your "irrelevant" stat.

>in past editions

This is the key.

When you're playing 5e, you're playing 5e, not any other edition.

I'm explicitly talking about 5e, in the 5e general.

It's not a job in this edition, which is the same as every other class.

>Humans are still ridiculously good at all around characters

They're easily worthless.

I'd pick pretty much every other race (at least the PHB ones) over basic human. Basic human is fucking garbage.

My characters are all just magnified versions of part of my personality. Easiest to roleplay that way because I just focus on that mindset and it comes naturally. I've been complimented on it before but I'm really worried about branching out to anything that doesn't fall into that method.

I want to make an Arcane Trickster. Preferably an elf for the longbow proficiency.

How much INT do I need? I was planning on just getting to 20 Dex ASAP and then putting points in Int afterwards. Is this alright, or do I need Con and Int as well?

It's just to calculate the difficulty of the encounter, you don't actually give multiplied experience.

Obligatory: kobold.club/fight/#/encounter-builder
A party of 4 4th level characters has a medium encounter against 2 Azer, but a deadly one against 3. Winning it, they only get the 1350, not 2700.

A wererat is a pretty good candidate for rat king. Rat kings are fucking cool. Introduce some Necromancer or something with a swarm of rats at his command, have them diplomacy the things, turn them on him. Fun.

Then pick something else. What's your problem, faggot? You still get your feat. You have literally nothing to be a bitch about.

But you are what you are, I guess.

No, because fighting ten orcs at once is more difficult than fighting two groups of five orcs with a rest in-between. Use the encounter builder in the OP or the table on page 82 of the DMG.

Well, I just don't find GMs that let me rewrite part of their setting, that's all.

I honestly don't understand this drive to fix to a canon of theirs, for a setting that doesn't exist outside of our small group of 4 people when they're playing it.

When I'm GM, people can ask whatever they want, and I make the setting around that. It's how I work. Not hard, especially when you can reuse assets.

I'm just pointing out your error.

No need to get so angry, bud.

I agree that a feat at level 1 for everyone is a much more fun way to play, though.

>a number in the edition changes
>ergo all of the setting lore is thrown right out of the window
Yeah, all these control freak gods who are literally empowered by belief are just letting their super-magic faithful run around all willy-nilly doing what the fuck ever with absolutely no mortal oversight, just a bunch of ad hoc churches with no chain of command and everyone casting shit over everyone else, total chaos, because a few players got butthurt that GOD HAS RULES.

I love "refluff shit" and "open up the classes to different concepts" and "you don't have to literally be X" more than most people here, but all this shit with Clerics and Paladins being divine free agents is horseshit. At least Wizards ostensibly have to read a few goddamn books.

Depend on your build. You will be fine even with 8 INT if you focus on spell without saving throw (invisibility, Mirror image etc).

CON 12-14 is alright, since you will not be getting hit anyway.

>I'm just pointing out your error.
Literally no difference when you use 3 stats. +3 just like
Literally.
Every.
Single.
Race.

Your perception of them being "worthless" is on par with redditors calling Bladelock op.

>i want to be a Bard
nice
>who doesn't play musical instruments
cool
>or sing
go for it
>and isn't very charming
we'll make it work
>and doesn't do magic of any sort
uh
>or fight with weapons
so does he just punch things or
>no. also he's mute
so he has psionic powers?
>i said no magic of any sort
so what does he do
>he sits there and gives the party bardic inspiration
how
>he's a pretty-looking rock

But then what does the adjusted XP actually mean? Do you just ignore it?

Now I'm getting mixed messages. That does make sense though.

>Paladins

Except paladins aren't forced to follow a god like clerics this edition. They get their powers from their oaths, it's just that WotC is too stupid to actually come up with different names to ensure this confusion doesn't happen with abilities like channel divinity.

What part of what you just wrote doesn't fit into "Paladins being divine free agents is horseshit"?

>Do you just ignore it?
Yes, it's only a balancing tool, not a reward. You only give out the actual experience values of the creatures.

Or you just do milestone leveling and avoiding that autism.

I want to make a bard that instead of supporting by playing nice music he just has a really annoying bell that he rings in monsters faces and instead of singing he just fucking screams in their face. I want any buff he'd give to the party to effect the enemy negatively, like instead of +hit because nice song it's -hit because AHHHH RING RING AAAHHHH RING.

If you were my DM would you allow this?

How is the newest college of the blade? There doesn't seems to be a good option for offensive blade flourish.

I'm about to have the last session of a 15 month long campaign that is at level 20. They're coming up on an encounter with a balor and a goristro controlled by a lich who has the Wand of Orcus and is trying to bring Orcus to the material plane.

How fucked are they? They have a lore bard, tempest cleric, thief rogue, GOO warlock, and evoker wizard.

>It's 5e.
And its got a badly designed asi system meant for normies' instant gratification

Deal with it.

If you arent obnoxious about it, sure

The whole they're not divine part

I add swashbuckler to it as it does lack some major damage options, but it is pretty defensive.

>opinions

I like it. Makes it so clerics that follow philosophers gods and the like are a thing now. I'd much prefer a cleric that believed in something akin to Plotinus' "the one" than have to be shackled with D&D's baggage.

I'd tell you "No," then say I'm feeling sick and tonight's session is cancelled. As soon as everyone's out of the house I text everyone but you and tell them to circle the block and come back.

No, I'm saying that +1 to each stat is significantly less valuable than +2 to one stat, and +1 to another.

If you were to give a race +3 to one stat, and that's it, that's inherently more powerful than a +1 to all stats, because a +3 is worth more than the sum of its parts.

The fact of the matter is that every other race is better at doing things (and Half-Elves are better generalists) than base Humans, so their value is pretty close to 0.

No

Why is Barbarian (Berserker) so bad?

Frenzy is pathetic unless and until you get a weapon that tacks on extra dice for a hit (flametongue, etc). That's not how shit should be balanced. Then there's exhaustion to screw with you as a downside for their limp-wristed attack.

Intimidating Gaze or whatever it is called is completely terrible.

Totem Barbarian gets to do almost the same amount of damage while having a whole host of powerful abilities.

It's just bullshit.

>JOIN YOUR FUCKING CHURCH

This is the fucking stupid thing about D&D clerics. They seem to assume implicitly that every religion is fucking Roman Catholicism or something.

But why? I haven't gone out and bought the bell yet

> thief rogue
> wand or orcus
Guess who gonna get his wand stolen and abuse?

Don't care it's a stupid gimmick like 3D tv and everyone knows it except (you).

Certainly badly designed from your perspective.

3.5e's was abysmal though. Here's a bunch of +1s, that aren't tied to class advancement, so you get them regardless of how much multiclassing you do. Oh, and they're in feats. And you can get more than a 20 in a stat, just through these regular ASIs.

What a horrible system it was.

Does Animate Weapon work with Lethal Strike? Do most DMs rule that it doesn't?

He'll sure show that guy, stealing an item that will try to dominate and/or kill him.

Divine != coming from Gods, as far as D&D Is concerned. It refers to energies springing forth from basic truths of the universe, like Good, Evil, Law, or Chaos; belief in its purest form. Swearing and Oath so hard that it gives you magic is an example of a Divine power source, even if there are no Gods involved in the delivery of that power to you. So you've got it exactly backwards: the Gods are Divine because they followed that route to get there, either being born of the universe as a necessity or being created by the belief of mortals. The Divine supercedes and encompasses them, it is not the same or descending from them.

>If you were my DM would you allow this?
No.

I wouldn't be your DM.

Berserker would be fine if it just didn't give exhaustion.

Would it deal more damage? Yeah. Would it deal a LOT more damage? No.

Berserker could make 3 attacks with a greatsword at 5, for 6d6+(str*3)

Totem could make 3 attacks with a polearm at 5, for 2d10+1d4+(str*3)

With crits and whatnot, the berserker would deal more damage, but have less utility, which is fine.

Tome gives you CHA Shillelagh that synergizes with PAM and shield.

PHB Bladelock is doody.

Chain can give you some RP potential and perma-advantage to hit enemies but is otherwise underwhelming.

>name: rocky
>movement speed: 0 feet
>racial trait: resistance to all damage
>racial trait: throwing weapon (deals 1d4 bludgeoning damage if someone throws you)
>languages: terran, but can't actually speak it
>proficiency: music (rock and roll)
>personality traits: sedimentary and chill, ideally wants to laze around all day, bond is to the laws of gravity, racist against pebbles
>background: his great grandfather was an iron ore and was mined by the villain's great grandfather, now he wants revenge
>alignment: chaotic evil

>mfw our Moon Druid is asking the DM for a special ability that "he developed through his years of isolation during his Hermit background"
>rolls a d20 every time he uses Wild Shape, if he rolls a 20 he "Mega Evolves", grows much larger in his beast form, and gains all the effects of a basic Berserker rage
>with every level, the roll requirement is expanded by one (so at 2nd level he gets to mega evolve on a 19 or 20, at 3rd he needs to get an 18-20, etc.)
>DM is new and a pushover and is considering giving it to him
>literally everyone else thinks it's autistic as well as a bad idea gameplay-wise, Wild Shape already makes this guy practically invincible and he's basically asking for a level of Berserker without officially multiclassing

What do?

Oh shit that's right I completely forgot about that.

However I'm still of the opinion that it isn't that big of a deal other than wanting this edition to follow more closely to earlier editions. 5e was made for a different type of crowd and most people don't care about being part of one organization or another just to use x class.

Here's the official tier list
Best tier
Chain, with a modicum of creativity
Great tier
Tome
Shit tier
Blade
What the fuck are you doing tier
Chain with no creativity

The only answer is to kill him before he gets more powerful

Ask for something equally stupid yourself. The DM will learn if he's taught the hard way.

talk it out like reasonable adults

Christ this board sometimes

Get together with the others and tell the DM you all will just not be apart of this bullshit if he gives into this. Explain why it's stupid and shouldn't be allowed.