/5eg/ - Fifth Edition General

I'm not going for a Warlord, shouldn't have said that. I like the idea of playing a Fighter but do like to have a small theme of support, rather then a supporter that can act like a Fighter. I mean Battlemaster can use Commander's Strike but it would literally be the only thing I'd ever use from Battlemaster.

I thought about that. Another option I thought would be to instead give them a pool of resources like other fighters.

Something like a ranged Lay on Hands, except it's a bonus action, recharges on a short rest and is 2xFighter Level? Then at level 10 they can use 10 points of it to let an ally make an attack as a reaction.

>they just need an interesting level 3 ability
It needs to have a fucking level 18 ability like all the other Fighter archetypes

On a semi-related note, DMing has substantially increased my ability to asspull just about anything at any time

>Playing to level 18

Does anyone actually do this? I always plan to have my campaigns wrap up around level 12 and almost never go beyond level 14 max. Magic starts getting to ridiculous power levels at this point, and I find it nearly impossible to run games without them feeling like a garbage-tier anime.

>I find it nearly impossible to run games without them feeling like a garbage-tier anime.
Shit-tier DM tbqh

Short of running a low/no-magic campaign, how are you supposed to run a game for characters that can pretty much re-write the rules of reality on a whim as long as they have time to get rests in (which they can further cheese by fucking off into pocket dimensions to do this).

I'm legitimately curiously, how do you run engaging games at these types of power levels without it just being a game of "HERE'S MY NEW ASS-PULLED POWER THAT SPECIFICALLY COUNTERS YOUR POWER!"
How do you keep players engaged other than threatening the entire world (which only works because of the whole "I keep my stuff there!" factor.).

Bringing up the question again does Metamagic affect the ring of spell storing?

No

Okay.

What spells are you even referring to? The only one that could conceivably do what you're ranting about is Wish, and if you feel that the players are getting too crazy with it then you need to be twisting the shit out of them.
Also, there are plenty of non-world-threatening creatures that can keep a high-level party engaged; Ancient Dragons, a Kraken, or a Lich right off the top of my head can all be challenging even with 9th level spells.

>how are you supposed to run a game for characters that can pretty much re-write the rules of reality on a whim
How exactly?
And desu even 20 lvl character is nowhere near the top of magical foodchain.

The Endless Universe addresses this by having Magic fueled by Dust, a substance so powerful that empires go to war over it and you paint a target on your back just by having some on your person.

High level Magic users might possess the knowledge to do all this crazy world-bending shit, but magic on that level requires such massive volumes of dust that they'd have to broker some kind of agreement with a rich empire to get their hands on enough to cast it. And no one will part with that much dust without expecting a big fucking favor in return.

I agree that magic users get pretty ridiculous at higher levels, but ultimately you are only limited by your own ability to imagine ways to limit magic use.

>a Lich right off the top
>party kill him
>Lich resurrects
>now he specifically tailors his next encounter with PCs to counter their strengths

Not the guy you're replying to, but this brings up a bigger issue. 5E in and of itself doesn't really give any guides on good ways to limit magic, and doesn't really come with much of anything built-in to do it. I can very much sympathize with the problem of wizards being able to solve or completely bypass every problem in a campaign by mid level.

Don't even get me started on how Wizards learn to fucking FLY at level 5 while all the fighter gets is the ability to swing his sword a little faster.

>the problem of wizards being able to solve or completely bypass every problem in a campaign by mid level.
Nice memes.
I think D&D and fantasy settings aren't for you.

Maybe if the book weren't as poorly organized as a house from hoarders, people wouldn't need to ask those questions.
For example
>Spells not organized by level, school, list, or any other reasonable way, but 82 fucking page of ALPHABETIZED spells... what the everloving fuck?

>Even then it's kind of hard to think of class features that would actually compliment it that have anything to do with spellcasting
I can think of some. Obviously, expertise with Int skills fits, and I guess Int-based initiative does too.

How about these:
>Rituals take only 1 (or 5?) extra minutes instead of 10.
>When you roll initiative, you can choose one of the enemy creatures and make a DC 15 Intelligence check. On a success you recall which is its lower saving throw bonus. You cannot target a unique creature or NPC with this ability.
>By level 6, you learn to compartmentalize your mind. You can concentrate on two spells simultaneously, as long as at least one of these spells is of 1st level or lower. By 11th level, at least one must be of 2nd level or lower. By 17th level at least one must be of 3rd level or lower.

>You can concentrate on two spells simultaneously
No

4e was technically DnD and solved most of the issues the guy was complaining about. Too bad it was marketed horribly and *actually* killed by memes.

>solved most of the issues
By being absolutely horrible and bland, yes.

How is martials having things to do besides mash the attack button and occasionally spend a superiority dice bland? Don't tell me you bought into the memes about it being World of Warcraft combat.

I agree with you but there are basically only two courses of action:
>Make a point of your frustrations to WotC and hope for some kind of alternate magic UA
or
>Make up your own alternate magic system and run it yourself

There's no requirement for you to run everything by-the-book. If you can get your players/DM on board then you're golden.

>Alternate Magic UA

Oh man, keep Mearls away from this and it would make me excited about DnD in a way I haven't felt in years.

>If a caster can't negate any and every challenge by mid-tier it's not a "fantasy setting."

Let me guess, you started with 3e didn't you? Try a little AD&D, and you'll learn that most of your sacred cows weren't even newborn calfs before 2000. Hell, a little of the ACTUAL classics might make the experience at the 5e table for both you and the rest of your group.

>How is martials having things to do besides mash the attack button and occasionally spend a superiority dice bland?
It was poorly handled, that's how.

Play online

The issue was all these options were attack with a bonus, attack and inflict a condition that does nothing and attack and punish them if they then attack you allies. It wasn't interesting in the slightest, hell it was exactly the same blandness for martials and made spellcasters about the same. So it was worse.

On top of this a lot of the races and classes had a really forced design and only existed to justify printing a new book. What was so different about an Invoker that a Cleric couldn't have the same fluff? What makes an Avenger different to a DEX Paladin? Why do we need a Race, Class and a Feat for playing a fucking Vampire?

Lastly the math in the game was terrible and there was plenty of trap options. People talk about it's balance when in reality that just meant "Out of all 100 fighter options, one is really good". Don't even get me started on the fact they fucked up monster stats that bad they had to completely redo them eventually.

>I haven't actually tried 4e and I have no idea what I'm talking about aside from parroting butthurt 3.furries memes about it.

>If a caster can't negate any and every challenge by mid-tier
I never said that. Nice strawman.
Now try to actually tell us how in 5e wizards can
>negate any and every challenge by mid-tier
Or are your 'challenges' just hordes of kobolods?

Aaand now you're just throwing a fit. Okay then.

>I can't come up with an actual counter argument to support my parroting, so I'm just gonna pretend you're mad say I won.

Okay then.

Isn't that literally what did?

Glad you two could hug it out and agree, now drop it because nobody else here gives the slightest shit. It's a 5e thread, not a place for edition wars.

what's the best way to get reaction attacks? Sentinel and a spear weapon?

Stop baiting, FFS. Don't be That Guy.
>B-but he's bait
THEN DON'T TAKE THE FUCKING BAIT.

Fuckdamn.

PAM

Isn't that literally what did?

...oh wow I thought that thing about getting an OA when the opponent enters your reach was a sentinel feature. But what if you enter their reach?

If you're entering their reach, then it's during your turn so you won't be taking an OA anyway.

Agreeing with these two, stop being a jackass. The argument is over. Nobody cares anymore.

>DON'T TAKE THE FUCKING BAIT
Why not?

Isn't that literally what did?

Because nobody wants to see you act like a twat throwing a temper tantrum over an internet argument that's not even about what the thread is supposed to be about. The other dropped it, now man up and stop being a petulant child. Or start using a trip so your shitposting becomes easier to hide and ignore.

Well, okay.

I'm a lazy DM. Recently I got really sick of rolling and keeping track of initiative and my players seemed to be bored of just constantly just waiting for their turn and being kind of disengaged.

So without regard for balance I started using the savage worlds form of initiative, in which every player draws a card from a deck, the order being from ace to deuce.

This works really well. It can be tense when the fighter is low on health and ends the round right in front of an owlbear. If the owlbear goes next the fighter dies, but then the healer draws an ace and gets to do her turn and heal the fighter before he is killed by the owlbear.

It also seems to make my players stay engaged throughout the whole round of combat. I think this might be the case because every new round has a new order and that simple change keeps things interesting.

So my question is: should I keep this up? How could I balance this properly? This hasn't come up yet, but how could I preemptively stop the following situation?

A player is last in the round. They cast a spell that will last until their next turn. They draw and their next turn is at the start of a new round. Obviously their spell shouldn't last for less than one turn, right?

Sadly, you fundamentally can't. The reason you can't is because the entire system relies on the current method of initiative. There are feats and abilities that manipulate this.

Deviating from the system invalidates all of those feats.

Read the alternate initiative rules from one of the latest UAs.

It has similar problems/solutions as yours.

I don't like it, I'd rather just port the SotDL initiative

Honestly I just use Passive Initiative Scores, sure it's kinda boring and predictable but I'd rather that the players don't get fucked by sheer chance anyway. If they die it was on their heads for bad choices.

anyone else feel like making a map of the area your players will be adventuring in really helps the creative process?

So why isn't the Pyromancer in 5etools when other Planeshift content is? I was thinking of playing one but noticed it's not there.

I'm converting some monsters from Pathfinder and was wondering what to do with save DC's. The numbers in pf are a lot more bloated than 5e so I was thinking of just taking 5 off of each one. Any experience or suggestions on the topic?

Man you're good with Inkarnate. Do you mind if I use that map for part of my Roll20 game? Up until now I haven't been able to find a small area map that looked nice and I'm shit at making them.

I don't know why but I could never get decent looking maps out of inkarnate

It just feels so weird to use a mouse to draw anything and it doesn't work with a drawing tablet

feel free man

Me and my player's thank you.

could you link me?

>media.wizards.com/2017/dnd/downloads/UAGreyhawkInitiative.pdf

It's in OP post.

For an Abyssal Tiefling do you roll 1 dice for both trait cantrips and spells or do you roll them individually?

Does a high passive perception score eliminate the need for active perception check DCs of that score or lower for the individual?

My group's monks don't know I'm doing this, but I'm planning on having dojos dedicated to different fighting styles which they can challenge. I don't know yet whether beating the master of the dojo or besting him in a challenge would work best.

The idea is that upon beating each dojo, they are awarded a headband which, while worn, allows them to spend Ki on a style-specific ability.
I'm thinking of throwing the Viper Dojo at them in the next session and was wondering what you think of the viper headband.

Spend 1 Ki to negate the target's Dex bonus to AC for one of your unarmed strikes.

The fluff of this is that the monk fakes an attack with one hand, catching the enemy off balance for the true strike.

This is how good I wish I were. Here's my map, which is super ugly in comparison.

How do you do all the coastal edges so nicely?

I really want to DM for the soul purpose of world building but my it's impossible to ever organize a time with my friends and I don't want to commit myself to a lucky draw of people online.

I'm lazy and just let 4x games make my maps for me. It helps speed up the process when I don't have to think for myself about where to put caves, villages, major cities, mountain ranges, coastlines and rivers.

I let Dorf Fortress make my maps for me.

You're better off writing a book DESU. Wanting to be a be a super committed world-builder is one of the worst things for a DM to be, because the players WILL shit all over your setting and not care, assuming they even bother to read or learn any of your lore in the first place.

Key to getting the coast looking good is zooming in and using the remove land tool at size 3 and just tideously edging out the entire coast.

That is on the bucket list, but not until I'm much older

I like the idea of traveling monks dojo-breaking, but I can maybe see two problems with this:
1.) What is the rest of the party doing while all the MMA nerds are wuxia-ing each other to death? Hangin' out?
2.) The headband idea is kinda neat, but it kinda precludes changing headbands in battle, so either they get lucky and fight high-dex dudes while wearing the viper hat, or they back off and change headgear for a round, which is kind of a lame round. I'd just give them "Secret Ancient Fist of the Venerated Viper" as a 1/day add-on to a monk power for 1 Ki. If they really like a particular school and get more training there, they can do it more times a day.

25 miles weekly for games isn't that bad. It gets you out of the house.

>tideously

Idk wtf I typed but it got auto corrected

>I really want to DM for the soul purpose of world building
>You're better off writing a book
9/10 times when someone says this, you're probably right. Deep worldbuilding does not lead to good DMing. However, I've found that if you DO NOT pre-plan the world for the game, but use an Improv-style GMing, DMing can be a tool that leads to good worldbuilding.

Worldbuilding doesn't make good games, but good games can make for excellent worldbuilding.

so, arguably
>I really want to DM for the soul purpose of world building
COULD mean doing it in the PROPER order.

1)The rest of the party are following their own plot threads. The barbarian and cleric are researching a dead holy order which they maybe unwillingly revived when they swore the oath as part of a puzzle to gain loot. The druid is being CN and kind of entertains himself.
2) I was thinking about just teaching the monks the style, but if they both end up wander around as masters of all 10 styles it might turn into a martial arts movie with a hint of D&D. I also thought of the headbands as tokens so once they collect all headbands, they take them all to some grandmaster and get the Drunken Monkey headband.

Would you allow a life cleric 1 / lore bars x? Yes, this is because of the sage advice goodberry interaction.

Player is trying at convincing me it wouldn't be a big deal as healing is "underpowered", but crunching the numbers it outheals every healing spell at every level, in terms of total recovery. Should I let him try it?

Well, they get the opportunity to compete for the Drunken Monkey band.

Anyone have any good GM cheatsheets? A condensed version of some rules?

How would am exiled Drow ranger name his mercenary company made of outlaws, disgraced nobles, half-orcs, dwarves, drow, tieflings and other outcasts and monsters?

Newbie DM. I'm having issues conceptualizing the start of my campaign. I'm not talking about figuring out where the PCs start, but I'm worried about taking away their agency. I'm going to be doing a one on one session 0 with each of them to build some backstory, where they'll eventually end up in the town the campaign starts. How much railroading/nudging is acceptable when getting the party together for the start?

Say I don't do a session 0 and they all just start in town. Do I ask them what their characters purpose is to be in town?

Veeky Forums

>company made of outlaws, disgraced nobles, half-orcs, dwarves, drow, tieflings and other outcasts and monsters
basically
>company made of selfish assholes, failures as human beings, ugly, neckbearded, self-entitled, smelly outcasts
Thats Veeky Forums right here.

Is he trying to hide his identity? Go with something inconspicuous. Is he trying to play up the monstrous rep? Go with something conspicuous.

The Wretched Company. Alternatively, Monstrous Regiment.

Let him. It takes an action to resolve the effects of each individual berry. So it's either heal up, or attack.

Terry, please.

Something narcissistic. The chosen of [Drow's name].

My shadow monk just reached 6th level in barohvia, how not personnel will this be, kid

Honestly it's not a bad system

Long post, but I need some advice.

I'm running the LMoP module. My party will be escorting the cart along the road, but I feel that just saying "you guys have all been hired to do this task, now...roleplay" is kind of railroady(?). I understand it's the main hook that jumpstarts the campaign, but how do you guys usually handle opening a campaign? Do you run a one on one session zero to help the players roleplay and flesh their characters out a bit? Do you jump right into it and go "alright, you're all in a tavern..."?

I'm a bit lost and could use some guidance. I don't want to jump RIGHT into the main hook, so to speak, but I don't want my players to circumvent it. It's hard to explain.

I'm playing that right now for Adventurers League. Starting on the road is absolutely fine, it'd FEEL a lot more railroad-y to start the group in town and then try and lead them by the nose to take the damn job to begin with.

Use the DMG monster creation rules. Saving throws are 8 + prof. bonus + ability score modifier.