/5eg/ - Fifth Edition General

Are bards good at low leves? Your only damage cantrip (vicious mockery) deals 1d4 damage, you don't have most blasting spells, can recover spell slots, can't heal as good as clerics...

Worship Imix

The four goblins in the first round of Mines of Phandelver wiped my three-man party

I don't even have an entertaining story behind it. The goblins rolled exceptionally well and the party rolled exceptionally poorly. I spent three weeks getting my friend group to agree to a time and place and now nobody wants to play anymore.

I meant rolling in order, if you assign of course the problem likely persists as you put your lowest/next lowest in int.

I've always wanted to play a barb or fighter that's not always 'I hit thing because I like it' but I'm forever dm.

>one minotaur is easy for my group
I'm not falling for that shit this time.

Speaking of things that dwell in dank places how do some of you have monsters just patrolling or even hunting in some areas?

>first round
first encounter, I mean

Use a Crossbow or Rapier. 1d8+2 damage most likely.

Remember you're on the same level of combat as a Cleric and tankiness as a Rogue. You'll be a bit worse but -1 Atk isn't very much.

I played a half-orc Barbarian Librarian once in Pathfinder. I was the second highest Int in the group

Oh, do tell.
No, they just have a lot of sources of radiant damage so the dude got blasted so hard into yesterday that he never even got to call in his wolves. Never seen a group of gnomes kill a vampire so brutally.

>Oh, do tell.

That was the whole story. Turn Undead, round one, combat over.

What was the monster like? I'm surprised it failed the save if the Cleric is only level 3.

I think it was called a Bone Naga?

>they just have a lot of sources of radiant damage
That'd do it.

I don't know how you played him, but Vampires aren't dumb. Them actually cornering him into a fight should be incredibly difficult when he can turn into a bat and run away.

Play him like some Vietnam Skirmish crap and the players wouldn't stand a chance. He can jump out, take a sizeable amount off health off them and run away to regenerate, the party will run out of spells and HP loooooong before he does.

Reminds me of a better Warlock. I like it.

I would to expand on the profanities for the final version. I haven't read them all, just glanced, but I like the concept.

1d12 hit dice made me wary at first, but I think it's fine after reading the whole thing.

The mounted ability might be too strong. Grants disadvantage to any attack roll made against you within 30 feet. I understand the intent but it feels hellastrong.

>SENTINEL: When a creature within 5 feet of you makes an attack against a target other than you (and that target doesn’t have this feat), you can use your reaction to make a melee weapon attack against the attacking creature.

Also, can't it potentially be """abused""" by using it in conjunction with Sentinel?

He was actually a new vampire, sent in as a distraction by a much stronger vampire.

So he was played as a cocky brute that was hyped up on his new power and he didn't realize he needed to escape before it was too late.

They didn't attack his mist form though so he's learned his lesson.

Alright, that doesn't seem to bad. Making his attacks a recurring thing where he keeps getting a little bit smarter could be fun, hopefully the party can match that though.

Please tell me this isn't CoS though? I love Vampire themed story stuff but dislike Ravenloft for going too edgy. Personally I prefer the party having to hunt for a Vampire in a normal city being plagued by attacks.

Nah, it's a home setting. The Vampire that is in charge of the fledgling Vampire is trying to buy time in order to summon his master (an ancient Void Dragon) and is not above turning people into Vampires to slow the party down.

Sounds pretty fun, I've always wondered how an encounter with multiple Vampires versing a party would end. Seems like they could do some serious damage to players if they worked together.

>versing

I remember an encounter I had for a 4 man party where they felt slight tremors in the group and decided to stand still and wait for whatever was in the ground to come out. Had them make a stealth check and they succeeded barely. I remember describing to them that the tremors grew closer but eventually faded, which gave them some relief. I then had a bulette come out of the ground some distance away and tore apart a nearby flock of sheep. The players noped the fuck out afterward even though they could have managed to take it down easily.

I like to build some suspense with one monster encounters just to make the players think twice before engaging rather than the usual "kill everything, get exp" mentality.

You could also do point buy 30+ which encourages putting higher stats in dump stats.

With rolled stats you can still dump a hideously low score on int anyway.

This is where you fudge rolls to let them get away by the skin of their teeth. This is bad, especially when it comes to starting new players off.

you should taunt them for being bad

Dear Veeky Forums, two of my players want to play dancers, but they dont want to be bards.
Should i refluff the bard? Any suggestion?

>things other players in your group do that bother you

You know how in games--and I mean, not just DnD, but video games and anything with combat too--if you're fighting multiple enemies, generally you want to reduce their numbers as quickly as possible to reduce incoming damage?

Like, if there are 3 enemies, and two of them are at full health and the third one has already been fucked up by your teammates, all else equal, you take out the third guy so the enemy team makes fewer attacks per round?

There's this girl in my group that doesn't seem to grasp this. I don't know how to bring it up without sounding condescending.

What's the consensus on Tomb of Horrors: Tales from the Yawning Portal edition, anons?

Dancing is a proffesion/hobby, so you can honestly play whatever class you want

If they insist that their class be related to dancing they can play a rouge, monk, dex fighter, or ranger. I can think of more ideas, but I don't want to type them all so in short, this is not an actual problem.

Inform them that dancer is not a player class and they'll have to pick something else. However, they can pick the entertainer background and be fighters/warlocks/rogues/whatever that are good at dancing.

I want to be a celestial tomelock with shillelagh!

Yeah, I don't know what this means exactly. They want to be good at dancing? Take a proficiency in performance/the appropriate background.

They want their combat to be defined by dancing? Either be something dex or be some kind of caster whose somatic components are refluffed as dances.

You planning on driving the snakes out of Ireland?

The various effects that deal with the profanity score seem like they'd be wildly overpowered at higher levels.

Heart strike seems pretty strong, too. Maybe guarantee a hit instead of changing a hit into a crit. Or maybe - as with the source - a weak cleave? Say half damage to a second target within 5 feet of the primary target.

No army of the dead or death and decay? I don't know if this is good for balance or bad for flavor. Both?

This homebrew is considerably better than dndwiki material. With a little more tuning, I would say that this looks pretty good.

Referring to everything in game terms in character, and spelling out things about the character. Yes, we get it, you're a class with a fancy background that you think makes you exempt from needing money. Stereotype me one more time and I'll act on that bullshit.

They want something like dancers from Fire Emblem, they want to support the party through dance moves and have some kind of minor dance-related magic/power.

They want to play bards, or maybe clerics

One of my players sometimes tries to rest -mid- battle when her hp is low

>Yes, we get it, you're a class with a fancy background that you think makes you exempt from needing money. Stereotype me one more time and I'll act on that bullshit.

what

>Using MBMP's character sheet
>DM decided to allow Heroes of the Orient
>Go to make a Kensai
>Nobody's made the syntax for it yet
Is Javascript hard?

I just had the greatest idea for a cleric of Ilmater. Motherfucking Joshua Graham, the Burned Man. Oh I am so excited to make this character now. Constantly suffering from the burns, a reminder of his past as a ruthless killer. He suffers as a reminder for what he has done, and it keeps him on the path of redemption, faithful and loyal to Ilmater. Goddamn this is gonna be fun. I just need a reason for the burn wounds. That's a difficult thing to come up with. I want it related to his time as an evil character, to help show that Ilmater will literally forgive anyone who means it and is truly willing to change.
I think I actually found a character that I could really stick with for the long haul.

Refluff mystic. It's the only class that has "give your ally more action"

They play a bard that refuses money because he has a rich family background. I play a rogue and despite saying I run my own private investigator service he constantly goes "you're a rogue, so you're a cutthroat and always steal things".

Question about the Sword Of Wounding. If I cast the spell Booming blade or Greenflame Blade can I still activate the bleeding effect?

Put the profanity score on the class table if it's going to be a thing.

So is Snare as fun as I think it will be to use? The fact they have disadvantage on the saves to escape seems cool.

Would you let ranger snipe unseen enemy with primeval awareness?

Thinking about rolling a wild sorc for a new campaign, but had some questions. How often should a Wild Sorc be rolling on the wild magic table? Reading Tides seems like I should be rolling quite a bit, but after reading different things online, it seems that its really dependent on the GM.

Wizard players, how close do you stick to your Arcane Tradition?

If you pick illusionist, for example, will you only use illusions? Mostly? On-par with other spells?

Well the thing with primeval awareness is that it just gives you a vague idea of where certain types of enemies are, not their exact number.

My party wizard had a similar idea and asked if my ranger could do that, but I couldn't for the aforementioned reasons. If said wizard has a familiar that can fly however and relay information to the wizard via telepathic link and have them tell you roughly where to aim, you could snipe enemies from a good distance away without having them in sight, especially if you have the sharpshooter feat. Though this would ultimately be up to your DM, that's how I went about doing it.

Nice to hear some feedback finally, especially the positive kind. I did model the profanities after eldritch invocations since I really like how well it works for the warlock. I'm also going to expand the list of profanities based off what I hear feedback wise and what else I can come up with.

Do you feel on a pale horse (that specific ability) is too strong for that level or too strong to have in general? My reasoning for having it be like it is was to both make a strong case for the knight to be mounted, as well as be a feared melee combatant that is best off being nuked from afar.

I don't see how it can be abused with sentinel, as for sentinel you need another creature to be attacked, and on a pale horse only activates when you yourself are attacked. Am I missing something?

Could you say which ones in particular look to be a problem balance wise?

Heart strike is indeed pretty strong, though I feel a guaranteed hit wouldn't be worth the rune compared to it's cousin, rune strike. It was also meant to work in conjunction with one of the profanity options called killing machine, which comes at level 14

I have blood boil already as an aoe ability, and I wasn't sure about adding another one for balance reasons. Though the DK is rather lacking in utility spells to I could also make death and decay one of those, it'd also be pretty cool as a showoff move if you just wilt the life out of everything in range.

Also thank you, I'm rather fond of brewing.

Cleric, mystic, and paladin all work with a little refluffing. Probably favored soul too.

That was a design decision on my part, I think it's better if a class has something to look forward to at every level, even if it's just shiny bits n gubbins, which is why I have stuff like dread plate and phantasmic weapon.

Does it seem like a balance issue?

It's highly WIP so that's subject to change, and thank you, I consider it not being bad a good start.

There's options for evil paladins already, and there's a marked difference between them and death knights. Also the fact that not all death knights were paladins or even knights in their prior life.

Noted, until I figure out how to make a god damn new column in the class table I'm going to have profanity score and runes share one. It's not ideal as I'm probably going to make them not equal, but it works for now.

Played DQIV a little while ago and the Fire Dragon Sorcerer is spot on for Maaya. Just add the Entertainer background and Inspiring Leader, refluffing speeches for hustle dancing.

The only thing is is that, unlike Maya, Dragon Sorcerers can't actually turn into a a Dragon...

Anyways, Sorcerers are one of the best buffers in the game. Wild Sorcerer even comes with the stage performer theme in the bag.

meant for

So what's the best way to use the spell Awaken once I'm level 9 on my Druid? Other then a tree army of course.

>Shape a tree into an airship
>Awaken
>It will either turn into a flying ship ala Animate Objects or sprout giant legs
>Regardless your Party just got a walking house/stronghold

Wherever you go, if it's an appropriate location, awaken some local animal or plant to act as a mini-guardian.

>there are already options for evil paladins...not all death knights were paladins or knights
Then why not use those options with some refluffing? Also, that's only after WoW and Metzen came in and shat all over Warcraft's lore's corpse while wearing its skin.

Like this user says
>These soldiers of darkness were created by Gul’dan to replace the slaughtered Warlock clans. Assembled from the corpses of the Knights of Azeroth slain in the last battles of the First War, these abominations were then instilled with the ethereal essence of the Shadow Council.

Explicitly knights.

It would be easier to do what you say however, which is to just use existing evil paladin options with some light refluffing. However, it didn't seem to me like the existing options wouldn't do justice to what I had in mind.

I also enjoy homebrewing despite not being so practiced at it, so it's also for fun.

>Also, that's only after WoW and Metzen came in and shat all over Warcraft's lore's corpse while wearing its skin.

I believe it.

Sounds about right, though there's a rather distinct difference between the old and new death knights, and I'm using the latter as the base for a good amount of the class. While it does make sense for death knights to all be former knights, I don't think those in the business of raising them would pass up skilled martial combatants just because they aren't knights.

Also, this isn't a question for you two specifically but I wanted to ask, how do you all feel about undead summons for the class, be they a single creature permanent pet (ghoul/skeleton warrior/kustom undead), a time limited summon (gargoyle), or an army of the dead type deal (swarm of low cr undead)?

I feel as though the class is already quite a strong fighter without the addition of a permanent pet, and feels like giving it too much. But at the same time, having an undead host is part of the death knight fantasy.

Time limited summons could be pretty beneficial to flavor though, as could army of the dead, but I don't know if it would be balanced.

Question for you guys. Playing a campaign it some friends. It's a second game for a few of us so it was always designed to be sort of causal, some guys aren't there one week, etc..

We all made our characters and it was all good for the first few sessions. No, the fighter and barbarian have bailed and our party is now a Rogue, Ranger, Warlock, Wizard and Bard. I am playing the rogue and I am now the guy getting melee weapons out.

I want to talk to the DM about switching characters because an All-Ranged party isn't really working in.the small areas we end up in.

That's rough.

My party almost got wiped against the bugbear and his dog in the cave after that because he got the drop on us and happens to do ridiculous damage on sneak attacks, downing our meat shield pretty quickly.

My GOO warlock was the only one left standing at the end, rolled max damage against the dog and the bugbear just left, mourning his fallen friend. At first I thought the DM was just feeling sorry for us but this was actually in the book.

Needless to say my warlock now thoroughly believes she's protected by a higher power until she achieves her destiny.

Re: OP profanity score-
Adding proficiency/profanity to AC seems like it'd be strong enough, but throwing in plate armor at the higher levels is probably too much.

Adding your proficiency to the entire group's attack or damage rolls will start strong and turn crazy.

The Death Armor aura is also pretty strong, at any amount reflected. Against a single target making a single attack, no big deal. Big bad with multiattacks and legendary actions, two or three mooks? Lots of damage.

The auras have the flavor, but they feel like they're entirely too strong, and I don't think lowering the numbers will change that. Even if profanity was tied to ASI, starting at 1, increasing at 4, 8, 12, and 19, adding 5 to your AC or 5 to your party's offensive rolls is huge.

I hate to suggest scrapping the auras, but I want to suggest scrapping the auras. You can still do some party buffing - remember the unholy frenzy deal where a deathknight could buff a friendly? Two runes, target can make an one extra attack per attack action for a minute. Can't target yourself, can only use once per long rest.

I'd like to see the finished version. If not for the WoW stigma among my group, I'd present this for their consideration.

That wasnt a question

Multiclass into barbarian or fighter, or roll a new character

Making a bunch of towns and trying to make them each a bit unique, but ran into a bump with this one.

>Frontier town that acts as a trade hub between distant regions
>Town/City is on an island in a shallow, warm lake
>Locals warn that the lake is deadly and to keep you distance- not because of monsters or gators, but because of Quippers
>The lake is fucking full of them, to the point where there's next to no point in it you can go without there being a school (Or several) visible
>Rather than being concerned or wanting the PCs to remove them, it's the opposite- the Quippers form a natural barrier against wild animals such as Owlbears and dumb monsters like Hill Giants, which there's a lot of in the region. In addition, Quippers make up for nearly half of the town's food supply, as they're easy enough to fish up that even a child can do it- just net off an area, throw in some meat, then close the net when they swarm the bait.

Here's the catch though- what's feeding the Quippers? The occasional Elk running from Wolves into the water or Hill Giant deciding he wants to eat some fish and ending up dinner himself wouldn't be a consistent enough food supply for a lake that's teeming with predators.

Maybe some kind of migratory animals come through the area twice a year and whip them into a feeding frenzy? Or there's a shitload of Trolls in the area who get half eaten and walk it off because "lmao troll regen"?

The party almost got wiped because the wizard got mad and took the frenzied berserker's headband of calm emotions for a plan involving the guards.

It was not 5e but it was still pretty good. Only the paladin and barbarian were still conscious and the cleric was dead. Druid reincarnated her as a kobold

You forgot the question.

It's cool that there's enough customization that you don't even need to make subclass archetypes, like when deathknights were new and you could sort of tank or damage with any of the specs.

First, did your group have counters for its abilities? Second, did you use all its abilities? Vamps are kinda weird. Third, three rounds and party victory is the normal result. It seems like bad luck or bad tactics that they got away unhurt.

Can a Wizard write spells in their spellbook from spells they know via multiclassing?

So when did you realise Druids are super cool?

still hasn't happened

When I looked at the class instead of basing my opinion off the retard in my party who seems to think the only thing it can do is turn into a bear.
>Tank
>AND decent damage dealer
>AND lots of good utility spells (Plus Full Caster progression)

Just after checking their high level spells.

Anyone have a cool idea for a Druid from a Druidic order? My DM actually has all the circles and stuff in his setting but I'm having trouble thinking of an interesting way to rp him.

I've always known this.
Recently started playing a surfer druid of the coast.
Conjuring radical waves is the best way to use my spell slots.

When I wanted to play a sneaky character and realized that turning into a flea is vastly more effective than any number of bonuses to a stealth check, and even effects like Invisibility and Silence.

Oh wait, no, that's when I realized Druids were fucking retarded design-wise and break the lower-levels of the game even harder than a well-built wizard.

>There are people who don't realise Paladins, Bards and Druids are the three strongest classes

I honestly feel bad for them.

I still make players roll stealth if they want to be a bug sneaking around. It also takes them much longer to go from point A to point B.

If they fail their bug based stealth roll then we have a fun game of fly swatting, spider stamping, etc.
The benefit of being a bug though is that you can crawl into really small spaces and don't need to break into windows/doors like a larger creature might.

Honestly, I kinda like playing druids like traditional witches. They live on the fringes of society, study things like herbalism and nature magic (Wicca IRL is more about the forces of nature than demon-worship) and can shapeshift into forms convenient for hiding from society (like the whole black cat thing).

Only Lore Bards. Every other bard archetype in the game is a straight downgrade from Lore Bard, unfortunately. Paladins and Druids (with UA) at least give you some choices.

What's the smallest creature in the MM anyways? Spider?

>As a DM, I make my NPCs so paranoid and suspicious that they will attack even minor insects with extreme prejudice, even when they've probably got no reason to do so other than my meta-knowledge that the players are using such a trick to move stealthily.

OK.

No.

>as a DM I like to introduce lighthearted bits of fun and tension instead of letting players cheese and trivialize any encounter.
Are you telling me if a spider or bug walks across your wall or floor you won't want to squish it?
Usually NPCs have really low passive perception so nothing happens. But on the off chance they roll low, I enjoy the player having a one-off encounter with a big bad that's just them as a literal insect while the bad guy is saying "I WILL CRUSH YOU"

And if this isn't the final confrontation it is fun to then reuse such lines at a later point. As if the bad guy practices his banter while hunting bugs that dare intrude upon his floor.

Also, don't mistake me for being an antagonistic DM. I'm not. It's all done to enhance the fun of the group. If it wasn't fun, I wouldn't bother with it.

>(Wicca IRL is more about the forces of nature than demon-worship)

You make a very good point and I can find no real argument against it. I'd hate to see the auras go as well, so I'll see about adding utility focused ones instead of combat ones.

In the meantime I'll remove them, and consider rune spells that might have similar effects. I'll also repost it for final inspection when I feel it's ready to launch, which will probably be sometime before saturday. You also have the link so you can view it whenever you want as well.

Glad you like it, there's more customization to coming as well. Also you've reminded me of the good old days when you could dps as blood and tank as frost in naxxramas.

if a small spider runs along my ceiling, I don't chase it down and say bad guy lines, no. I typically assume I'll kill it another time or just not care. also it's the fantasy middle ages and they would probably care even less than me. or be above such things, being a warlord who's poring over a political and military conquest at his desk.

Well that's because you're not a bad guy in a make believe fantasy game.
>not making your low-tier villains incredibly petty and needing to assert their power even over insects
It's a classic trope, user. Kid with a magnifying glass and an anthill? Similar principle.

Again, it's all for the sake of fun. Being a good DM means understanding your group and shaping the game to maximize the good times being had by all. If you were a really stingy DM you could just tell them they have to stick to MM/PHB and such. But why not let them have their bug's life adventure?

Every time you cast a spell you should roll. At lvl 3 with 6 spell slots, you should have 6 rolls on the table per long rest.

>trying to focus on your work
>a motherfucking bug creeping across your ceiling
>walks up to it slowly
>roll initiative
>bad guy rolls to attack bug with a broom handle "fucking pest!"
>it's improvised weapon so it's not a big to-hit
>bug tries to dash away, gets two feet
>next broom hits
>hippie falls off the ceiling
>"well this is awkward"
>"YOU"

Tell me that doesn't sound like fun?

>from that moment on bad guy is immediately suspicious of all bugs and small beasts because there's a druid that opposes him
>it's a paranoia and an obsession
>he becomes known as the exterminator

For the spell Command, if you tell a creature that is flying (like an Aarakocra ) to Grovel would that be considered harmful and cause the spell to fail? The Grovel command makes the creature go prone, but if it does that immediately on their turn while flying they would just drop out of the sky.