/5eg/ - Fifth Edition General

Yeah, would be nice just once to have a veteran GM and involved players, even if that mean't I'd be the one dragging the group down

On it. Anything else?

If you decide to reckless all your attacks are reckless/advantage until the start of your next turn I think

homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/ryejTJ2Ox

Well... Kefnet's Knowledge domain is entirely identical to the PHB version, so it's completely redundant.

>3 full classes
>53 page
>full of non-5e wording
>"grapple check"
>"shield bonus to AC"
>"This maneuver is a supernatural ability"

He's trying to port Tome of Battle (from 3.5) to 5e.

That's obvious, but this implementation is poor and there's so much unneeded wordiness all over the place. Plus the amount of content here is impossible to balance. Dude needs to learn how to use paragraphs.

>PC: don't you want to know our backstory beforehand DM?
>DM: Nah not necessary

Is this a red flag?

It's either going to be a boring hack-and-slash campaign or one where you're living out your DM's fantasy novel. Either way yes, red flag.

more or less what Have a chat, see if the DM will incorporate it later and just doesn't want the players to info dump, or if they just don't give a shit about roleplay and want a bunch of murderhobos.

Well as a GM myself having had all my instance of "bring a background turn into no show or "we're brothers on adventure"...
Expectations can wither and die.

twitter.com/mikemearls/status/883555367279443969

Well, maybe August will have a worthwhile UA.

Did you bring a 3 inch ringbinder labelled backstory to the table?

I'm looking for character concepts. Please tell me:

>1. The class/class combo you think is most OP
>2. The worst race for that class/class combo

>way of the 4 elements monk
>pureblood yuan-ti

Reckless only works for you on your turn.

It sucks because we are new and are a bunch of murderhobos but I actually want to try to roleplay for once and I have been thinking about my backstory for a while

Nah its not that crazy. We will probably have to dump our backstory in an inn or something

If he revises it a little it could be decent. Won't lie that I'd prefer something real but his Initiative system reminds me of a simpler speed factor which I like.

>Twilight Druid/Arcana Cleric
>Fullblooded Orc

Ah, yeah I see what you mean now.

I might try and test it out and refine it.

bullywug wizard?

Somehow mysterious snake man works well for monk thematically
>Studios Orc that smashes people who interrupts his search for knowledge
I like it. Would make a great librarian.
>Frog wizard that likes to turn frogs into princes

True, I wasn't sure how to handle that. Each of their domain intros has a flavorful quote and how it shapes the domain, so it felt wrong to skip Kefnet's. I'll roll it into the default knowledge domain.

inb4 domain spells are missing from the spells page (soon™)

Would you let the Spear Master feat work with Javelins just without the Two-Handed d10 damage?

I want to play a Zeal Cleric who throws a Javelin, pulls out another and then charges into battle.

I know the feeling, after being the only D&D GM able to run a game for more than 3 session for... nearly a decade, I finally get to be player.

And i get to team with...
A Ranger that's totally not just trying to play Barbarian (oh it's my turn again? I attack whatever is nearest)
A Feral druid (spells look hard to remember, imma just wildshape all day)
Hopefully I'll see some acting out of he sneaky snek Yuan-ti bard

You can always just add in his name in brackets and put his flavour blurb at the end for completions sake

Is the eldritch knight good? I want to play one (Hobgoblin if the DM'll allow it) but it seems underwhelming at a glance.

>throws a Javelin, pulls out another and then charges into battle.
I want 4e Marauder as a combat style, and I want it now

It's a fighter that gets to use Wizard buffs and sword cantrips.
Better than a un-optimised Multiclass, worse than a CharOP'd one.

I want 4e Warlord.

Me too, favourite D&D class of all time.
Or.. I think it is, never got to play it.

It's pretty good. I dare say it's far and away the best offical Fighter.

At level 3 the Battlemaster basically dominates but it never really gets any new good features. Meanwhile Champion at levels over 15 or 18 becomes a monster.

Eldritch Knight comes on a little bit worse then Battlemaster at 3, becomes better at 4 and then completely overtakes them at level 7. It's pretty good.

Thanks, apart from the blade cantrips, are there any noteworthy spells?

Wellp, can't go wrong with Abjuration spells, I like the idea of fire shield as well,

>TFW it took you until now to realize than Thunder damage actually meant Sonic

>Level 1 character
>Backstory

Players are such funny creatures.

Sorry but in my group we don't have Adventurer trees dropping fully formed pods of heroes, they have to come from somewhere, spend 15-20% ofhtier lives being useless level 0's, and even then they need a motivation to leave the city walls and become ogre-bait.

Are bows bad in 5e? I've never seen anyone talk about them

Heya guys, it's that sperging first time DM user from what feels like a month or two ago.

Our session zero/session one is coming up any week now. I've gotten everyone's character sheets all sorted out and we've got some... Interesting characters among us, and some decent encounters and halfassed lore shoehorned in to appeal a bit more to the group of early-to-mid high school dorks that I'll be running for.

Just judging by names and characters, this probably won't end up being too serious. Still, I want to make a good first impression for the majority of the people present, so I was wondering if you guys had any good general DMing tips?

Don't make any plans.

Make characters, locations and plots, but don't hard-link any of them, keep it modular so you can still use them if the players decide the king is a fag, the foreboding tower stinks and they'd rather prance around the forest.

If they were bad people would be complaining, they are just boring.

>Party dorf barbarian get the Axe of Dwarvish Lords
>One random good property is bonus cantrip
>DM chooses True Strike

Crossbows are usually better because of the feat, but bows are good. Not much to talk about really.

No UA this month?

Wait until Monday. Hiatus because of the 4th this week.

Fuckin' America day.

5E seems to be more about flavor then function.

Bows work good.

>level 8
>+3 weapons

DM should have somebody steal the weapons in the night. Players have to go on a quest to get them back. Or the enemy holds the weapons hostage in exchange for doing X tasks.

I am fully aware that it is against the norm.

They need the weapons against the final encounter of this current plot arc and then will probably lose them.

>thieves' face when all the martials are eldritch knights and warlocks who just call their weapons back

Bag of holding

Possibly. If it's "nah not necessary" as in "LOL who gives a shit" *huge* red flag. If it's "nah, not necessary" as in "don't show me now, show me in play" that's super encouraging.

>as in "don't tell me, show me"

>as three of them have +3 weapons with some effects
>(I am often in favor of giving the PCs a lot of power around levels 8-10).

I am sorry you feel that way, anonymoose.

>Tfw I'm having the first session in like an hour
>One of the players still haven't sent his character bio
What makes it worse is that I'm planing to have a who thing where everyone get's secret letters relating to their character. I just did a super general letter for him and hope it works.

I like giving my players quite powerful weapons and trinkets so I can trow stronger and more interesting enemies at them. They also level faster that way which is more fun for them.

Without a Bio he has't been born yet.

Fuck this reminded me of a similar situation.

>Write pretty intensive back story for a new character
>tl;dr Parents were part of a Savage Clan, clan was invaded, everyone killed except for the children and surviving members, character decides to run away from the savage clan and live a life as a self taught monk
>Is about 12 dot points, only super relevant stuff stated
>Few sessions in, one player character is basically the center piece of the campaign.
>Ask the DM why he's focusing so much on one character (The overpowered rogue that rolled broken stats)
>"His arc."
>"Oh, cool, so will we get any other arcs?"
>"Sure."
>Another guy chimes in "Got any ideas for my character yet?"
>"I haven't read through it yet."
>Realise that we're playing this one dudes entire arc which will probably last until level 8 or so and the DM probably hasn't read anyone else's backstory.
>Quit the group because the DM started saying "You coming over for [Rogue]'s campaign?"

Never. Again.

Here's what you should do

>When your DM is the one levelling your character by throwing bullshit magical item powers instead of letting you level your own character up with exp which makes them better at the things they want to be good at

So next Friday I'm running a game for three total newbies over roll20.My plan is the leader of the first dungeon to drop this letter. do you guys see any problems with it?

>Unironically using EXP
Fucking end your LIFE.

Milestone EXP is the superior system. It lets the DM have direct control of what the players get EXP from to stop Murderhobo's, while also letting players know how far away they are from leveling up.

>Milestone EXP
>Not milestone levels

Name one advantage of Milestone Levels compared to Milestone EXP. EXP favors the players having a rough idea of how they're going to prevent it getting too stale and other then that is literally the same as Milestone Levels.

>GM wants to translate from Other game/Previous edition/Non D&D setting from books or comics/ etc to 5e

I personally dont see anything wrong with using popular fantasy settings in 5e. elder scrolls, warcraft, GoT, ect...

...

>become ogre-bait.
Folk hero goblin/tabaxi

Tell him to look up the definition of "good"

Here are some of my experiences with 5e games
>Guys, how about we translate our 3.5 characters to 5e
NO!
>Guys, how about we play a Naruto campaign
DOUBLE NO!
>Guys, how about we play Anima/Exalted with 5e
FUCKING DIE ALREADY!

In 2 different groups
Why is people so hellbent in using a system than only works for its own setting to play different settings that have nothing to do with that system?

It's going to be variant initiative

A mixture of the laziness of not wanting to learn a new system and the gullibility of buying hook, line, and sinker into "system doesn't matter."

>a system than only works for its own setting
now we're trolling

Huh, weird, my group is the opposite. They're around level 7 and only a couple of them even have +1 weapons. I've always been a fan of playing conservative with magical items as to try keeping them special. Goes to show how wildly different campaign styles can be.

Are Bullywugs even statted in 5e yet?

In as much that it will work for any setting where phase 1 is doing mercenary/treasure hunting shit for funds so that during phase 2 they can kick the main villain's ass up between their shoulder blades, sure. If you honestly think it works for any setting, you're part of the problem.

I tend to give some strong stuff out around levels 7-10, then be conservative with items for a while.

Of course, I'm also a faggot who loves homebrew, so ymmv.

working for "any" setting =/= working only for its own setting

i don't know if there's even a problem with that outside of your skull

I'm bored and working on fixing my sleep schedule, so who wants to hear the turning point for how I felt about playing 5E via Adventurer's League at the local game shop?

If by turning point you mean that you ended up liking it, it could be interesting.
If it's the opposite, everyone knows that AL is garbage. So not really interested.

Exp works well for some sorts of games.
Milestones works well for most sorts of games.

If the campaign has a very clearly defined and quantifiable goal, then exp works. In these cases, it's better than milestones because it feels less arbitrary.

Kinda interested even if it's about AL being garbage.

i'd love to hear it. only organized play i ever did was one session of pathfinder society and it was shit.

The point where I stopped liking it. I could deal with lack of freedom and variety if I could get my DnD fix and get out of the house for a bit, in all honesty. But a sudden influx of events really soured my opinion on the shop itself, and that made putting up with the bullshit of AL just a bit too intolerable

Shitty first time Greentexting to come

Depends on how you want to define settings. Claiming something as specific as Forgotten Realms is self-contradicting since their have been several setting "glosses" over the core game already published.

That said, if you define setting to mean some mixture of artificers, barbarians, bards, clerics, druids, fighters, monks, mystics, paladins, rangers, rogues, sorcerers, warlocks, and wizards go into some type of "dungeon" to slay some type of "dragon" for some type of "treasure" DnD is absolutely useless outside that and everyone knows it.

If you want to run a dungeon crawl on Almas to steal a holocron from a deep subterranean vault guarded by a k'kayeh, DnD works great. If you think it's worth a shit in a bucket if you plan to send them to re-negotiate trade agreements in front of the Imperial Senate you deserve everything your about to get.

A paragraph with about 3 lines should be enough for any lvl1 character.
I hate when that guy shows up with (not even joking) a 5 page story of his level 1 character.

>Be me
>18 y/o Sack of Shit loner, long time fan of TTGs, from DnD to Paranoia.
>Haven't really had much reason to leave the house because I'm catching up on school credits online.
>Miss having people to hang out with, already lost touch with highschool friends.
>Find out that some 20-somethings opened up a gaming shop a town over
>Find out they have weekly AL nights.
>whynot.jpg
>Show up one week, stat out a long running joke character, an orc who only punched stuff named "Fist", and genuinely have a good time.

>Fast forward a few months
>Fist is 3rd tier, and there are no tables for 3rd tier adventures yet.
>Don't mind, the big boy's been through a lot.
>Decide to make a side character character
>Make a Chaotic Neutral Devil's Tongue Tiefling Bard named "Barrai"
>Generic backstory. Mom's a Succubus, Dad's a drunk, yadda yadda.
>Don't really care, just wanna play
>Don't make him an edgelord, because literally why
>Joke around and ad-lib jokey insults at enemies whenever I use Cutting Word or Vicious Mockery
>Most of them are shit, but it's more effort than what most people are putting in.
>Things go well for a few weeks, nothing great happens but nothing horrible happens either.
>And then I settled in for a rather shit session without really knowing it.