/5eg/ - Fifth Edition General

>Have you tried an appeal process?
Lawful paladin detected

What is the most viable way to make a frontline dex Valor Bard that can stealth. I wanted to do a STR one with heavy armor but the DM wants every character to be able to stealth cuz it's a commando style party

Well, the wizard with one level of cleric uses portants quite often to save the party

Mithril plate will fix that right up

Why valor?
If you go lore you can steal shield with secrets earlier. Rely on something like booming blade for your attacks instead of attacking twice.

Alternatively, see if someone in your party would go trickery cleric. Then you can be str valor like you want, and negate the disadv on stealth rolls with blessing of the trickster.

Or if anyone has access to pass without a trace (something you could just steal) too.

Just be a regular frontline dex valor bard? You should stealth fine like that.

If you want to go strength just have a backup set of slightly lighter armor that you can use to for the sneaking parts of the adventures until you can get . Your ac will suffer a little (so don't dump Dex, I guess), but you'll be fighting less hopefully (if the sneaking works) so it might work out.

Level 5 fighter. To keep it short, I accidently got my druid to heat metal a massive chain that was used to open and close the cities big stone door. It toppled the gate house and destroyed the city gate lmao

Why isn't the druid in jail than?

It starts low level. What would the gold cost of a mithril item be?

Valor for flavor. My bard uses his inspiring speeches and battle cries to castagic. I would run a bb/gfb type (which is better with valor) but he is restricting those storywise (one player has gfb, two npcs have two of the other swag cantrips). I might convince him I can grab it as a magical secret at 10 when it'd be useful.

Regular dex fighter has lower ac than STR. I do like the light armor idea. Thx

Mithril armor is only uncommon

Damn; sounds like you belong in jail or offer your adventuring services to the city until the destroyed property is paid for.

Seems like it's just 500gp extra to purchase. Not bad

How viable is Paladin2/Valor18?

maybe they jailed him too but he wildshaped into a fly while the guard's back was turned or something

Alright, one more try. Rate these items, anything too strong? Too weak? These are effectively artifacts in my game. I was told to add to the Azathoth weapon.

>not having anti-magic handcuffs

maybe he wildshaped into a fly before the guards showed up and was never caught

How on earth do you topple an entire gate house by heating a chain?

Who gives a fuck? When the party drops pass without trace you're going to be autosucceeding all the reasonable stealth checks anyway.

Yeah yeah we get it, magic users can do things

But how much damage does the Druid do in combat?
Checkmate, magic users.

So many magic items are swords. Make some of those weirder weapons like Maces or Axes. We desperately need more people 'not' wielding swords.

I never mentioned going Fighter, I said just go a typical dex valor bard with stealth proficiency checked. If you go dex that seems like all you really need.

You should probably grab it anyways, and not totally dump Dex for the times you need to be in Medium armor and so your stealth skills are decent. Having initiative is always nice too.

why do people have such a blinding hatred for 5e?
admittedly it's the RPG system ive had experience with but it seems user friendly and not hard to learn, why does that make people in here hate it so much?

do you always ask leading questions or is this a special occasion?

I Uh.... I put flamable liquidsand explosives on the chain... The chain basically exploded

im not leading

You deserve to rot in prison for the rest of your natural life, roll up a new character

Personally one of my biggest gripes is that the bonuses are small and the most commonly used die is large.

Imagine the real life scenario of a pasty middle aged guy who never works out compared a 240 pound slab of muscle. It's easy to imagine that there are things easy for the muscular guy to lift, but nigh impossible for the pasty guy to lift

In 5e, a barbarian can have 13 athletics and roll shitty and fail to lift something and a wizard with 0 can roll well and succeed.

Most people think it's fine, actively enjoy it , or aren't bothered. The internet just exacerbates the voices of loud people who like to hate things because nobody is going to make a post to say 'x thing is okay' and likewise we live in too cynical an age where saying you enjoy something is seen as un-cool but mindlessy hating things is trendy.

Anyone else feel weird about playing Half-Orcs? I love everything about the race the flavor, the look, Relentless Endurance, Savage Attacks, etc.

But as a Half-Orc, it's likely you're going to be slaying orcs at one point or another. Most of the mentions I see of Half-Orcs in PHB has them living with orcs, either as regular tribe members or as leaders. Obviously, they can be raised among humans but the PHB seems to paint living among orcs as the more "natural" environment for them.

The Half-Orc basically exists so you can play a "good orc" anyways. The NPC racism/prejudice doesn't bother me so much as the fact that you will be forced to essentially kill your own people most of the time. Not only that, but killing your own people is an undeniably "good" act for a Half-Orc because orcs are objectively always evil. It's kind of the main reason I'm not too enthusiastic about actually playing one.

Thoughts?

Have you tried "take 10"? It might solve your problem in exchange for killing randomness

You could play Eberron, orcs aren't evil in the setting.

Otherwise it's like being a tiefling, if you're a good half-orc you probably reject your orcish side and maybe even actively hate orcs to compensate for your insecurity about being a tainted monster baby.

Isn't take 10 specifically for when you have a minute to try something and failure carries no cost? The scenario I provided is general enough that it might work, but there ends up being a bunch of specific instances where it doesn't

So, thought experiment

If you remove the cap on ability scores, and set the level cap at 35, what's the most broken character combination you can put together

As a human you'll end up killing a lot of other humans. Soldiers, bandits, pirates, etc. Same as a half elf. You'll be killing humans. Plus you can always try to talk the orcs down or just do non-lethal damage.

Humans end up killing a lot of humans.

DMs of /5eg/, how would you enact a siege battle with the PCs on the defending side?

Specifically, something similar to the Battle of Helm's Deep (or Hornburg, for any purists) from Jackson's movies.

There are bad humans but lots of Objectively Good humans, not to mention that humans are often either super villains or super heroes.

Orcs are never good and they are always mooks to be mowed down en masse by the next band of five murderhobos.

personally

>PC side starts out losing
>PCs have certain time critical objectives they can complete to turn the tide
>possibly locate and kill an enemy commander to break the other side's morale

We'd have to wait till I got Pass without a Trace as a secret
I was saying a dex build valor has lower ac than a str build valor

No, there's no take ten rule in 5E so no guidelines for it. The closest is passive perception which is basically the assumption that PC's are always doing a take 10 on perception so they don't have to roll for it endlessly.

In 3.5 this is how it works and how I use it still in 5E. Basically if the players aren't in combat they can take ten to bypass something. Combat is more random due to the stress of it.

>Taking 10
When your character is not being threatened or distracted, you may choose to take 10. Instead of rolling 1d20 for the skill check, calculate your result as if you had rolled a 10. For many routine tasks, taking 10 makes them automatically successful. Distractions or threats (such as combat) make it impossible for a character to take 10.

>using Barber of Silverymoon as a launching point for a campaign
>people averted to getting a haircut

Despite being good Jooge in broad daylight, how can players be so jumpy when it comes to that sort of thing. Free rooms? We'll camp outside. Free food? No thanks, rations for me.

>Stealth game
>Nobody with pass without trace
???

It's a druid/ranger spell. We have a Kensai, Warlock, EK, then if the 5th plays he's a Bard and I'll be a Ranger/Swashbuckler. If he flakes I'll go Bard or Paladin/Bard.

Depends on the setting. As was said earlier, all orcs being evil isn't a thing in Eberron, and I'd imagine many homebrews don't make orcs auto-evil either.

Why is there no quick draw feat or its equivalent?

Gotta question. I'm bit annoyed that blades can go through armor in d&d 5e. Then i remembered that there was a chart in AD&D 2e about what strengths and weaknesses different armor's had, like padded armor had -1 to piercing. Would it break the game if i brought that into d&d 5e or modified it like. Padded armor and the like get advantages and disadventages to different damage types? Bludgeoning for example could have advantage for hit against plate armor.

What are some things I can do make my group of new players better at D&D and tabletop games in general? I'm trying to sprinkle in a few learning experiences into the Phandelver module I'm running for them.

a u t i s m

Because drawing a weapon can be part of an attack.

Because drawing one object during combat is a free action

Because throwing weapons are apparently badwrong to specialize in.

Leave and never come back.

Why tho? Don't you like AD&D?

you can draw a weapon as part of an attack, but you can't put one away

beyond this means that you can't put away a weapon, pull out a different one and attack with it in the same turn

If you're useing a one-handed weapon you could draw a throwing knife with the other hand and throw. Depends on the DM tho, cause he might give you disadvantage for that.

I'm talking stuff like "oh shit a skeleton jumped out of this closet, I better put away the sword and get a mace"

He's fucking you over for no reason if he does.
RAW you take no penalties for attacking with a one-handed weapon no matter what the fuck your other hand is holding.

You could drop the sword and pull the mace out, that's fine.

Just drop the sword and pull the mace.

Sure, but maybe for whatever practical or personal reason I don't feel like doing this, and so I'm willing to lose a feat to do so

Why doesn't it exist? Don't say it's not strong enough because there's a lot of really useless shit in 5E feats

Because nobody at WotC thought it was necessary.
They're right.

Then talk with your DM, see if he's willing to make a quick draw type feat.

Maybe take it from 4e's quick draw, draw weapon with attack action and a small bonus to initiative? I don't know

Life Cleric. I'm a sucker for huge healing in and out of combat.

My last cleric ended up saving one of my party members from an unfortunate end after they got trapped in a force cage with a vampire. They were a sorcerer who thought it would be a good idea to have the Bard Force Cage the vampire, and then teleport inside the force cage to try and telekinesis them. Afterwards, she proceeded to resuscitate our fallen NPC friends that were killed by said vampire. It was a good day.

Okay, I may add some Maces and Axes to the list.

>Actually considering using forgotten realms but there's so much material to digest
How do you handle running a game in a pre-established setting? Especially the setup. For example, do you just ignore what isn't of use to you?

>What's your favorite type of Cleric? Why?
Light, the answer for everything is fireball, always fireball

>do you just ignore what isn't of use to you?
Typically, yeah. As DM, I don't really need to know everything, just what is relevant to my players and the plot.

how does abyssal arcana for abyssal tieflings work?
i dont understand if you just roll for a new spell you get to use after spending the last one or if its something else?

What's the most mindfucky thing you've done to your party?

I've got an island where nothing is quite real or fixed so weird stuff happens, but I like to mess with the players as well as the characters so there's a greater sense of immersion.

>added a town next to their base that wasn't there before, updated the map they used, made reference to it, didn't point it out, so they were like "was that always there"
>had a dungeon filled with illusions and morality tests that had no effect on success as long as they were solved
>had a doppelganger replace a party member a week when he was away, played by one person in the group as a second character, then when the person came back, got them to play the doppelganger so really no one knew which was real (also helped me catch out metagamers who assumed the normal one was real)

user from last night or so here, I asked about muh forge cleric with martial proficiency before and you guys convinced me to dip Fighter.

How does Champion 5/Forge X work? As a VHuman I'll take Fell-Handed to start with, but I don't think my character's one for fancy stuff like maneuvers.
For fighting style my original idea was Defense with a shield and warhammer, but someone's poking me to want to use a maul and GWF.

You reroll every Long Rest.

>had a doppelganger replace a party member a week when he was away, played by one person in the group as a second character, then when the person came back, got them to play the doppelganger so really no one knew which was real (also helped me catch out metagamers who assumed the normal one was real)
That is delightful.

Are you insane? Since 5e's advent, people have been making fun of any martials using something else other than polearms.

God forbid if you play a Paladin wielding a longsword, which, y'know, used to be their most iconic weapon in previous editions.

At any rate, we need way the fuck less people using polearms because they're good, and more people using whatever it is that THEY find cool.

Polearm Master + Sentinel is perfectly balanced.

I put one Glaive in .

homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/S1m7nEU8eZ

I don't mind making a Mace , Handaxe, and Hand Crossbow though. Any ideas for a starting point?

This. It only gets screwy if you throw Tunnel Fighter into the mix because Tunnel Fighter is busted as fuck.

Champ prefers the Maul due to the crit range bonus. You're not screwed if you decide on the hammer though since you can still double the dice from your Divine Strike.

Battlemaster would let you abuse Fell-handed more often with things like Trip Attack. It's a strong defensive option that plays into your utility role as a Cleric.

is barbarian a good class for a first timer who's mildly to extremely awkward and autistic?
i figure something not too complex and not too talky while i get settled in would be a good idea

Barbarian is a good class to start off learning the game as so go for it. As the game progresses and you start seeing all the things other people can do you'll probably start getting bored but 'being big man with big weapon' always has a place in a party comp

>tfw in my current game i play a mountain dwarf oath of vengeance paladin with a maul
>have GWM

Just seeing how much hate GWM gets, I feel like a munchkin. But I objectively love 2h weapons like mauls and greataxes. Whenever I play a martial, that's what I naturally gravitate towards. Polearms are cool but a dwarf paladin with a glaive isn't a cool image in my head.

I mean GWM on its own isn't incredibly op, but when combined with shit like PAM it is

It's not gamebreaking or anything, my problem with it lies in how overused it is. I'd be incredibly surprised no GM with more than a few games under their belt has ever gotten a ''look at this sick feat synergy I found online, bro'' at their table.
That, and shitty munchkins trying to win a roleplaying games because ''biggerer numbers must mean I'm playing betterer!''.

I feel bad for the people that actually like polearms this edition. Hell, it's not like you can blame the players either, since it's not their fault they fucked up weapon balance like that.

I don't know if you intend on other people to use these, but have you considered describing the weapons themselves at length? How they came to be, what they represent: we're talking about artifacts, after all.

Great weapons are fucking awesome, I've always thought GWM's ''cleave-lite'' extra attack as a bonus action was neat.
Yeah, it's strong if you play around it, but from what I've seen around it gets much less use (and way more hate) than PAM.

Do female yuan-ti abominations still have tits in 5e?

Spending a bonus action to get free AoOs against people who enter your reach, disengage from your reach, or attack an ally seems a bit silly.

I can't stand playing with GWM or SS. Even if it works out mathematically to be more damage overall, that -5 to hit is unacceptable.

I've been burned too many times where I missed a fuck ton attacks in a row, and one time our barbarian who was +7 to hit missed 9 attacks in a row on an enemy with 16 AC, while he got slowly whittled to death by chip damage. no fucking way I'm ever making that more likely.

>Describing them at length.
I'm working on adding more detail to them. I can place how to upgrade them in there and I trying to add some deeper lore and history for them.

I'm currently worried about the stats at the moment.

In my magical realm, yes.

What type magic items and how many of the would you give to players starting at level 5? I can't seem to find the chart, but they would have prior experience adventuring and it would fit if they had something.

It definitely seems like something to break out when you can guarantee advantage.

no question about it