/5eg/ - Fifth Edition General

>Unearthed Arcana: Greyhawk Initiative:
media.wizards.com/2017/dnd/downloads/UAGreyhawkInitiative.pdf

>5etools:
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>/5eg/ Alternate Trove:
dnd.rem.uz/5e D&D Books/

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>Previous thread:
Were Barbarians a mistake?

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The most forgettable class in D&D is ranger
I go long periods just completely forgetting it exists or mixing its traits up with rogue

Barbs are one of the best though

Barbarians could have just been fighter archetypes.

>Rangers: Rogues That Aren't Quite
Barbs are awrite in 5e. They used to be fighters with one ability instead of none.
That's actually a perfectly good idea. Gosh.

Most def. Battleragers in a rage can do damage on a par with Polearm Master builds while retaining the AC of a shield

>Battleragers in a rage can do damage on a par with Polearm Master builds

How?

Reposting on the new thread for hopefully some more advice.

I wrote down a quick draft of the contract an archfey would present to my party:

>I, King Witchthorn, ruler of the Shadow Glade, will grant the piece of the [legendary item] in my possession to the signer and companions. I will also disclose any information that I am able to share about the dragon Chuth, the Emerald Assassin. Lastly, I will grant the signer a boon.

>In return, the signer of this contract and chosen companions will slay or drive off the aforementioned dragon. The signer must also make a pledge to King Witchthorn. They will be oath bound, that King Witchthorn may call upon them at a later time of my choosing.

Does this look like something an archfey would write? Should he use more flowery language? English is not my native language, so I always have a hard time making more eloquent stuff.

I have a player who's rolled up a Card Player character, low combat power directly, but decent utility with Fate Dice and can fill in the roll for a thief somewhat better than a Bard can.
They've hinted at a few junctures they want to open some kind of thieving...thing? I dunno what to call it, but her character definitely wants to do some fencing and pickpocketing on an organized scale.

So the thing is I dunno how to do this angle. Never really done anything like that, and given how her character only has mentioned it in an obtuse ways to NPCs unaffiliated with the "good guys" I of course don't see a decent way to do this in a normal gaming session anyways.
Should I perhaps set up a solo session for her character to do some thievery and general skulduggery and try to let her set up some crappy thieving guild she could build up on later?

What would people's thoughts be on changing the Wizard class out to be a Psion instead? Restrict them to the more fitting spells on the list, basically the things that fit well as telepathy or telekinesis, and have them use Spell points to make up for some of that lost versatility and set them apart as a casting class?

If only they had already made a class for this

>changing the Wizard class out to be a Psion instead
Why the fuck would you do that when there's a Psion class in the UA that you can use instead?
What the fuck is wrong with wizards that would cause you to want to delete them from the game and fill in their spot with some half-assed limited spell pseudo-wizard?

No good ever comes of psionics. Thighonics on the other hand...unf.

Sorcerer would probably be a closer fit, but obviously there's already the Mystic (though I can understand holding off on using it for now)

Agreed. Warlocks should have also just been a Sorcerer Archtype.

Although Sorcerers should have warlocks short-rest style casting so there is a discernable difference between a Wizard and a Sorcerer other than one sucks dick.

I always feel a bit weird about barbarians; I've seen talk here about how 'there's no real front line, and if you run out to the front line you're opening yourself up to get killed' but .. That's basically what Barbarian's do. They are melee focused combatants with a special ability that falls off if they don't attack during a round. It lends them to a very one dimensional gameplay.

UA Downtime -> Crime

Or build a thieves' guild, idk.

As you say, Mystic is unfinished and everything I've heard of it sounds like a mess. Wizards themselves still aren't really having any problems in terms of power level, especially compared to Sorcerers.

Why not kill two birds with one stone, nerf the class into a still functional one, and get something more distinct?

Just stripping the spooky parts of the warlock base class and having warlocks be the spammy mage with a "mysterious bloodline" archetype would make more sense than starting with the sorcerer

No non-UA class really needs to be nerfed

>Wizards themselves still aren't really having any problems in terms of power level, especially compared to Sorcerers.

Wait? Sorcerers are GOOD now? When did this happen? Everything I've heard about them is that they're just inferior wizards with less spells known, a worse spell list, and meta-magic that doesn't really compare to a wizard's specialty school.

Why do Wizards use Firebolt when Chill Touch and Ray of Frost are so much more useful?

A homebrew design is generally worse than an UA design.

Wizards don't really need changing except for some of their high level spells (and nerf stuff like polymorph) and perhaps the DM has to think about making sure there are enough encounters per long rest. Also prevent them from doing shit like a level dip into cleric. Also require the martial players to stop sucking and admit they need feats / fix feats, then suddenly the wizard's in line (unless you have no non-combat stuff / your wizard sucks, in case the wizard is actually underpowered)

The wizard is a lot more fun in concept than a psion with their utility powers, I'd say, and much more generally applicable to campaigns flavour-wise than a psion.

>Why do wizards use attack cantrips?
FTFY

Wizards should do other things with their action such as dodge, create illusionary walls/boxes, pull that lever, make a knowledge check, whatever the fuck unless they've decided to cast a proper spell.

Or grapple

My point exactly. That isn't technically a problem...for the Wizard.

A more thematic spell list is hardly a huge sweeping nerf. It's not like I'm going to just cut them down to two schools or anything.

Also
>The wizard is a lot more fun in concept than a psion with their utility powers
>so you should use the less fun class instead of calling the more fun class by the less fun class's name

Fake news

Are you retarded, high, or baiting? I really can't tell.

So thematically what's the difference between a college of lore bard and a college of glamour bard? One is smarter but one is more mystical?

I'm working on building my campaign out to some form of Spelljammery using a conversion I found, but I don't know anything about the SJ mythology.

I've been reading up, but I'm still trying to work a couple of things out -

>Faerûn in on Toril, which is a planet, within Realmspace, which is the Toril system.
>Realmspace is within the Prime Material Plane - which, in Spelljammer, is essentially everything, including phlogiston and crystal spheres.

This is all right, yes? Prime Material Plane seems to be used for a couple of things interchangeably depending on the setting.

Something I'm trying to work out is what's involved in each crystal sphere (and I can't find Realmspace/Toril on this map I found - nerik.orpheusweb.co.uk/files/Spelljammer/Flow_map_01-07-12.svg).

Considering it's hard enough trying to remember what's in each city on a continent (or fluffing it as you go), how do you keep track of cities on worlds in spheres across the entire phlogiston?

I'm excited but also daunted. Going to be giving the party a damaged smalljammer at some point to allow me to ease myself into things by giving them problems along the way, but not for a while yet.

Anyone wanna help me flesh out my character's back story? She's a yuan-ti mystic. In her youth she suffered a particularly crushing rejection from snake Chad and turned to a life of collecting snakes. She now works as a librarian, as a 37 year old virgin crazy snake lady.

What other flavor can I give her around this theme? What's a good snake theme Chad name?

Derping a bit. Finished Death House, got to level 3rd. Made a melee Valor Bard dragonborn. For no particular reason I decided to make him a grappler, expertise in Athletics, Enhance Ability spell, the whole schtick. Will I be okay in CoS?

For the record, our party is an Eldritch Knight human. a Battlemaster half-orc, a wood elf Ranger and a wood elf War Cleric.

What's your DM/campaign view for Yuan-ti? Determining how evil (or at the very least petty) they are will go far for your character's need to get over/back at snake Chad.

It's an evil campaign, all scaled folk (lizard, kobold, dragon born, yuan-ti pureblood. Also scaled tieflings)

That map's not exactly canon. Realmspace is right in the middle, part of the radiant triangle. You can find reasonably accurate right ups of the canon spheres on spelljammer.org, or check the OSR thread to try and get the actual spelljammer books.

Prime material is all the crystal spheres and the phlogiston, yes.

There's no need to start off with a giant fucking map like that. Just start off with Toril and the tears of selune, maybe find a copy of The Rock of Bral and stick that in the tears somewhere.

SSssssimon is a good snake chad name.

A reminder that a Death Saving throw is a saving throw and thus is affected by Bless, Magic items, and Diamond Body.

You're a star user, many thanks.

I'm also planning to incorporate Sigil into all this, because apparently I have no sense of proportion for how much I can cram into one campaign. But I'm playing Planescape Torment for an idea on that.

Why 5eg hates Bane? It's a decent spell.

For you

>What's a good snake theme Chad name

Chadder

If the enemy makes their saving throws, would you die?

It would be extremely baneful

A lot of spells require a saving throw. It's a big list.

Also Aura of Protection. Funny enough, the only ones who wouldn't get the bonus to death saving throws are the paladins themselves.

It's very good when you have several other casters throwing saving throws at the baned creature. The cleric in my party used to combo it with blindness/deafness and other spells from the bard. But most people seem to agree Bless is generally more useful and more guaranteed to work.

Anybody?

What kind of device or creature would a hag use to pluck someone's fingernails? Like for example, she could use stirges to drain some of their blood.

What kind of hag? Where does the hag live?

Green hag, lives in a misty forest.

Spiked armor raging allows battleragers to do a bonus action attack at d4. That's equal to the other end attack of PAM..

If you want to get sadistic, have her utilize some seed that, when planted, causes a violent growth that wilts not long after; but, the growth is enough to essentially pop off the nail.

Bamboo/reed wedges were commonly used in Asia to rip off people's nails.

Ok, two more questions: how much blood volume could a stirge hold? They're tiny (cat-sized?) and can drain up to 10 HP worth of blood.

And can you think of hag coven name (or hag surname) that rhymes with "water"?

I like that!

What do you think of player-crafted DC mechanics, in which they can pick certain aspects of how difficult the task is going to be?

Bane is a concentration spell that makes up to 3 targets have to make a charisma roll. Targets that fail the roll have to take a 1d4 penalty on attack or saving throw.

Assuming no/equal modifiers, it makes your party 12.5% more durable vs attacks and 12.5% more likely to be effective with cc (1d4 is ~2.5, or 0.125 of 1d20) against the three targets for up to one minute.

My problems with the spell, personally (having never taken it, admittedly):

1) short ranged for a concentration spell. If you get hit, there's a chance it stops working. You have to avoid getting hit for a while.

2) only works on three targets, additional spell levels have diminishing returns. Not great if you are getting swarmed, and some of the power budget is wasted vs 1-2 enemies only.

3) Does not work vs long range enemies, does not work vs spellcasters.

4) Because there's a saving throw right off the bat, there's a strong chance it only affects 1-2 enemies, and a slim chance of wasting a turn.

5) Worse against stronger/higher attack mod enemies, much better against weaker enemies. Good in early levels, worse as time goes on. Also, the priority targets are probably the targets that it protects against/weakens less effectively.

Enough blood to kill two commoners, evidently.

Daughter would probably be a good point to start from if you're looking for a hag coven name that rhymes with water. This is where setting kind of comes into play though with shit like "Orcus' Daughters" or whatever

Do commoners have less blood than adventurers?

They have 4 hp

The answer: Do not use HP as any measurement of 'how much blood' someone has.

>implying high-level adventurers aren't engorged to bursting with blood

The damage from the bite alone is enough to kill a commoner 100% of the time

Right! Daughter and grandmother would fit perfectly. This is for a riddle/nursery rhyme explaining how one would find the coven if one wanted a favor. I think I'll go with

"Find a still body of water
Any ol' pond will do
At night, look at yourself and call
Grandmother, grandmother, grandmother
And the passage will open for you"

Doesn't the game already do that?
>"Hey, the guard is really prejudiced against your kind. Your Persuasion DC is 17."
>"I cast Charm Person."

Isn't that always already a thing?

'I want to intimidate the king into giving me the throne'
'Okay DC 35 and even then he'll kick your ass again later'
'I want to intimidate the king into giving me a better reward'
'He's surrounded by guards you know well okay DC 25'

You don't need to tell them the extra DCs but considering it goes up in steps of 5 they should be able to guess by how you describe it.

What will next week's UA be, I wonder?

then they become hostile anyway

Fingers crossed for revised artificer as a half-caster with mechanical servant moved to a subclass

Food and Provisions

Is there any way a deep stalker ranger could benefit from a dip into warlock?

this bugs me but I don't wanna be anal about it

I figure you'd use a disguise first, considering they won't be able to recognize you afterwards.

"Greyhawk Initiative: Revised"

We're about to dive into 5e's combat, anything we should be aware of?

Hey, as long as it's criticism I can use to improve the rhyme, I'd be ok. English is not my native language anyway.

Stab them with the pointy end.

please no

fuck you user

Thank you Captain Obvious.

Thoughts?

I'm elaborating on herbalism by adding optional and situational difficulty, like search speed, lighting, terrain and rarity, along with some variables like freshness, amount, dozens of properties, buffs, debuffs and types, and price modifiers, since there are three PCs with herbalim proficiency but they don't seem to pick any interest in it. I figured adding some optional difficult stuff that gives fair rewards in a crafting system could make them use this mechanic more often. They often run into situations that could often be resolved with a little spice in an already existing part of the rules.

And I just realized I used "often" like 10 times.

Well. It's pretty shit. How many situations have you not been able to jump 5 fucking feet? Seriously that's completely useless, plus it requires a DC10 Check with no Proficiency and is only once per short rest.

I'd remove the check and make it stretch into a bridge that can be 15ft. long and 5ft. wide once per short rest.

When would you ever use this? What kind of place has gaps 5 feet wide that aren't trivial to walk across?

renders the whole thing rather pointless in most cases

I think it's worded a bit strangely. Here's what I'd write:

When you use an action to drape this handsome, black cape across a crevasse or gap that is no wider than 5 feet, make a DC 10 Charisma check. On a success, creatures other than the owner may walk across it as if it is solid ground. You can not use this ability again until you complete a short or long rest.

That aside, it's complete garbage. It doesn't solve any real problems, it's unnecessarily restrictive in its use, and why the fuck does it require attunement? I'd pay money to get rid of it if I came across it in my game.

...

What do you guys think of the subclasses from the Tal'dorei Campaign Guide? Would you use any of them in your game?

Wow, moron much? Sending off a guard on a task or getting them to simply get out of the way for 5 minutes is hardly pointless.

5e wasn't meant for that level of minutiae. Besides, DCs are set with that stuff in mind already.

Rate my GOO warlock, mates.

A charm person spell probably isn't going to do that anyway.

Regal Emo/10.

After the initial cast of Find Familiar, does dismissing and summoning the familiar require any verbal or somatic components?

Alright, so the BIGGEST problem isn't actually rhyming. The rhyme scheme (abcab) is unusual, but not bad. The problem is the rhythm is really off. The first two lines set up a particular rhythm of stressed and unstressed syllables.

"FIND a still BOdy of WATer / ANy ol' POND (.) will DO..."

The stressed syllables are in all caps, the (.) is a "silent" unstressed syllable. Which is basically Stressed-unstressed-unstressed, repeated. Sort of a dactyl.

Then the next line's stresses just collapse the rhythm. "At NIGHT, LOOK at your SELF and CALL..."
There isn't really a rhythm anymore. This is difficult for a non-native english speaker, since english rules for stresses in sentences are weird. The last two lines both follow the rhythm of the first two, for the most part, so it's really just that rhythm-killing middle line.

If you want to keep it five lines, here's a suggestion. Replace the third line with "At night, your reflection must answer" or something along those lines. It's more ambiguous, since one's reflection answering could mean a bunch of stuff, not just "say it while looking at your reflection".

I'd also replace grandmother with granddaughter, since water rhymes with daughter MUCH more than it does with mother, but it's not awful. Do and you still rhyme.

You could make it a quattrain, by cutting out the third line entirely and rephrasing the last line, but you'd probably lose some of the information.

Sorry for being nitpicky.

I'd say no within the telepathy/spell sharing range but otherwise probly. Books seem unclear.

Is Eldritch Blast+Agonizing Blast still the "right" way to play Warlocks in combat or is a melee build finally on par with it?

Hex Warrior only restricts weapons that have the two-handed property, so I was thinking of using a long sword with two hands and going with GFB or something at the early levels.

Situational difficulty like terrain, pace and lighting sure, but I'd like to let my players exchange rarity, properties and types of herbs for increased DC on their own accord. Examples: they can go for a common berry that feeds one person with 10 DC, or that exotic and weird looking edible mushroom that was laying behind a big rock in a difficult to reach spot in a terribly lit cavern and will grant 30 ft. Darkvision for one hour with a DC of 30,.

Oh, you could also make some kinda fancy abccab rhyme scheme, splitting the middle line into two shorter lines that have their own rhythm. Like, "At night, look inside/ and give out this cry" or something. Doesn't quite rhyme, but you get the idea. The stress pattern there is "unstressed STRESSED unstressed unstressed STRESSED", which is different from the others but since it's a couplet of it's own it just changes the rhythm for a bit instead of confusing it.

Then you don't need a load of preset difficulties

Just,
'I want to look for food'
'Okay roll it'
or
'I want to look for really exotic fancy stuff that we couold also eat'
'Okay roll it'

And putting a big table down when there's not any time pressure will mean players can easily stockpile a load of shit unless you keep them on plot hooks all day long.