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>Previous thread:
The dracolich. What are your thoughts on this monster?

Other urls found in this thread:

media.wizards.com/2017/downloads/magic/plane-shift_amonkhet.pdf
darkencomic.com/
twitter.com/AnonBabble

I always thought dracoliches were stupid.

Same here. You're already an immortal dragon with a shit ton of magic. Why do you need to go Lich?

I've never been under the impression dracoliches are usually for the dragon's benefit.

So they were forced into Lichdom by an outside party? For what purpose?

Is playing a mounted character in Adventurers League a good idea at all? Is anything mounted even remotely viable in combat?

To have a really big monster they can give orders to presumably

Any time there's a hard transition (getting captured, collapsing into the Underdark, etc.), your mount is going to get the axe.

The problem with using a mount is when you have to go into a dungeon or really any place you shouldn't take a horse. Otherwise I don't think there's really anything wrong with mounted combat, but you're investing into something that your character probably wont always be able to use

That's....pants on head retarded. Who, short of a divine power, would even be powerful enough to issue orders to a Lich?

Anyone here ever played or run an urban campaign? What did you like/dislike about it?

On a related note, I'm thinking about using Ptolus as the setting for my urban campaign. I seem to recall Monte Cook is generally hated around here, but the setting seems cool.

>Ancient White Dracolich
>Intelligence: 10
>Commandundead.exe

Taken from the monster manual
>Creating a dracolich requires the cooperation of the dragon and a group of mages or cultists that can perform the proper ritual.
A dracolich isn't the same thing as a lich. They basically have to trust a bunch of necromancers to not fuck them over at some point

Who doesn't want to be extra immortal with even more magic?

Is the Fanged Maw from the Lizardfolk from VGtM considered a weapon that you're wielding?

Since unarmed strikes are not considered light, and two-weapon fighting requires you to use a light weapon, but does not if you have the dual wielder feat, could I take that feat and then Fanged Maw + Other weapon (probably on a Barbarian) for an attack that adds STR mod?

I don't, if it means having to trust a bunch of skullfuckers to hold up their end of a bargain and refrain from altering the ritual to make me their immortal bitch.

my warlock player wants to focus his spells on fire and hellfire. i read somewhere that hellfire warlocks where a prestige class in a previous edition, apparently it harmed the caster. what benefits did it grant?

im thinking of keeping it simple and letting him deal out extra damage on his fire spells in exchange for losing that same amount of HP

It gave bonus fire damage at a faster rate than normal eldritch blast progression in exchange for ability score damage. It was popular-ish because there was some magic item that could basically nullify the downsides. It sounds like you have the right idea though

Why does everyone dislike Wu Jen? Nomad's "swap out proficiencies every long rest" shenanigans I can understand, but I don't get why Wu Jen is also singled out.

Because wuxia garbage doesn't belong in a western RPG.

Same reason why monks are shit.

Does anyone use D20 Plus on roll20 for their games? It's like an app thing that adds a bunch of probably useless features. I remember someone bringing it up here like a month or so ago.
Anyway, the import monsters feature isn't working. Did something change with it?

cool, maybe take away eldritch blast and add fire bolt with possible upgrades?

Or you could just let him say his Eldritch Blast is stylized to look like fire.

I wouldn't go that far. First of all I'm pretty sure they can get fire bolt already, but between fire being significantly worse than force and having multiple attacks that apply cha bonus damage it would never really be worth it.
A better route would be a fire version of hex that does slightly more damage

I agree. While skeletal dragons are cool, that should just be a matter of a necromancer finding the bones of some dead ancient dragon and animating it, rather than turning a living one into something even stronger through rituals.

If you want an actual dragon that uses dark magic, just have the thing itself be a necromancer or be corrupted by dark energies. No need to make things convoluted with Liches.

For your spooky corrupted dragon needs there's already shadow dragons. Dracoliches have always basically been the ones that became chumps for someone else.

>Do you have a webcam, user? We want to broadcast our play! It'll be so much fun!
Are all r20 groups like this or did I just got unlucky for my first time?

Definitely just unlucky

Fires of Mephistopheles, off of the warlock UA. Give it a read.

Search for voice only, it's in the search options

Personally I would make Eldritch Blast do fire damage, and let all the invocations that work with it do what they always do.

That's a strict downgrade though

Yeah. But if the player wants to downgrade themselves for cool factor, who am I to say no?

I might give them the "Flames of Phlegethos" feat from the "Feats for Races" UA for free and regardless of race. At least the "reroll 1s on fire damage" part.

Ugh. I tried a Skype role play once because a partner of mine wanted to start up a game, and fuck was it painful.

I am sure not every game has kids running around screaming in the background and side chatter and people munching away but fuuuuuuck ever doing that again.

Does anyone have any advice about playing the Zealot Barbarian? Never played a Barb before, so I was wondering if there were certain good feats to take, or thematically cool feats for a religious barbarian

Yeah, thats the same as a game at a table though

My tabletop experience has been limited but I've yet to experience that so far.

I wouldn't tabletop if that was the standard.

Yeah, Shadow Dragons Iike a lot if you just want a double-evil dragon suffuse with necrotic power. Otherwise, a Dracolich just seems like a needlessly complicated version of a skeletal dragon.

What if a metallic dragon becomes a shadow dragon? Are they still good or do they become evil? And if they stay good, how would they act?

Personally I've had a desire to have an acolyte zealot barbarian running around in light armor (rely on barbarian ac) and brain the shit out of people via a giant iron bound religious tome (refluffed mace, or maul, or if your dm is being strict, improvised weapon wth tavern brawler feat).

Not necessarily the most optimal build though, as barbarian ac requires high stats - but it seems like a really fun thematic choice.

Other suggestions have been to have, essentially, an ancient warrior that is resurected periodically to fight battles for his people. But if you're level 1 .. wow the ancient dude sure is weak. So it becomes "why the fuck were your bones there instead of the ancient dude" ( since zealot barbs are so easy to true resurrect).

Outside of that: there's barbarian guides out there. The rule of thumb is great weapon master is fucking absurd. That will break power levels and damage levels quick. Polearm master is also absurd - and sentinel is amazing if you want to lean tankier

not using push-to-talk is at best inconsiderate and at worst actively rude. friends don't let friends use voice activation, and only the truly lost use always-on.

General consensus seems to be that the ritual to ascend to lichdom requires a host that is pure evil of heart.

A metallic dragon could probably be resurrected as a skeletal or zombie dragon, but only a chromatic dragon (Or fallen/evil metallic dragon) could become a Dracolich

Slightly urelated; I'll be playing in a campaign loosely based off of the American West with traditional fantasy elements as background. Is a Skeleton Gunslinger a cool character concept?

The monster manual doesn't really touch on it, but I'd imagine they'd try and stay in the Shadowfell regardless. At best, they might retain enough of their good nature to try purging evil in the Shadowfell, but more likely it would corrupt them and cause them to slide down towards neutral or evil.

Shadow Chromatics are a distinct possibility, but are a weird idea that's tough to handle. I think it depends how corrupting you want the Shadowfell's influence to be, but I'd say it's pretty drastic given that the dragons seem to accept it quite easily.

How would you buff two weapon fighting?

TWF
Both Attacks are made as part of your Attack Action (freeing up your bonus action)
Add Modifiers to both attacks

>When you make an attack while dual wielding two weapons, you may take a -5 penalty to the attack roll. If the attack hits it deals an additional 10 damage of the weapon's damage type to the target.

There fixed

Hey 5e general, I was hoping you can help me with a noob question.

I'm playing an arcane trickster. In a recent session my character got cursed equipping a magical bracelet that makes your stats flip negative. So if you got a +2 stat it becomes a -2 in that stat.

Anyway. Now that my intelligence is 6 so -2 does that mean I can't cast my spells anymore until I get the bracelet removed like in earlier editions, or am I still able to cast my spells?

>just make it GWF
Clever clever user

This is better

Make it work with Hand Crossbows/Firearms, and let you add your Modifier to all of the attacks.

Any spell scrolls I should outright remove from a magic shop?

wouldn't this mean you'd get to attack twice per attack instead of one extra time per turn

wouldn't that make it incredibly good compared to the other fighting styles

All of them.

>Magic shop

Don't do it user.

Hey hey is there a 5E supplement with a lot of Egypt-y shit in it? I want to run Notegypt and was looking for any new monsters or encounters to add.

I was asking about Shadow Dragons, not Dracoliches

You're right. But if you restrict it to (Light) weapons the damage increase shouldn't be too dramatic.

There's no minimum ability score requirement to cast spells. You can still cast, but they're just going to be a lot shittier.

Make it give a second attack with the bonus action somewhere around level 8

media.wizards.com/2017/downloads/magic/plane-shift_amonkhet.pdf

When I play video games with my buddies there are two of them that always have voice-activation on. One of them always has a fucking fan and a TV running in the background and he's constantly eating. No matter how much I ask them to use god damn PTT, they always switch back to voice activation and say "oh yeah I don't like having to push a button to talk it's too hard and I keep forgetting"
NIGGA BIND THAT SHIT TO MOUSE 4/5 IT'S NOT HARD, DO IT FOR 2 HOURS AND YOU'LL FIND YOURSELF PUSHING THE BUTTON EVEN TO TALK TO SOMEONE IN THE SAME ROOM AS YOU HOLY FUCK

There was the Chosen (?) of Mephistopheles prestige class in the 3e Book of Vile Darkness. I mostly remember it because it appeared in one of those webcomics that was almost certainly the artist drawing their DnD campaign. If I were betting, I'd say she was the Half-Dragon Cleric. She's moved on to Widdershins, now.

darkencomic.com/

Regardless, the big thing that PrC had was the ability to ignore fire resistance and immunity, which you absolutely NEED to give a player in order to allow them to play a fire mage. Fire Dragonborn are fine, because fire is both the most common damage type and the most common damage resistance, meaning that if you're not getting your mileage out of your breath weapon you're getting it out of the resistance. But if you let a player in your campaign play a mage with Burning Hands, Scorching Ray and Fireball then you're setting them up for disappointment if you play the monsters as written.

Awesome. I was worried I couldn't cast any spells or cantrips. Thanks for clearing that up.

Consider a Sorceor multiclass into Pheonix Sorcerer.

No problem, but I'd also recommend reading the book

Wouldn't the best form a dracolich be like, a wizard who uses the skeletal remains of a dragon to turn into a dracolich? That's what I was brewing as a villian

You mean just a regular wizard who says
>fuck this, if i'm gonna be undead, i might as well be an undead DRAGON!
?
I'd play it.

That makes a bit more sense, particularly if it was a draconic sorcerer lich seeking to 'upgrade'.

Reading the dracolich entry just makes the normal motives they give weird though. Only really narcissistic dragons do it, but also the only way to do it is to entrust your soul to a bunch of puny human mages? That doesn't really add up.

Personally, I'd still rather have skeletal dragons simply by animated bones of particularly dangerous size/strength, and use Shadow dragons if I need a dragon obsessed with dark powers.

Right? I see the dragon form as a mech upgrade to his body. Or even a normal lich building a newer, better body to transition into.

Honestly I don't think there's anything that confrims dragons are immortal, so it isn't that strange to me that a dragon, being long lived and powerful, would be all that abject to becoming a dracolich anyway. I'd just change that they're doing it not some humons

I think part of the issue is that spellcasting dragons are a variant, so having the default method of dracolichdom be done by the dragons causes some fluff issues.

Well, maybe you tinker with it and have it be not magic casted, but perhaps a ritual of some sort, requiring materials to be gathered by a dragon. I think a dracolich or at least a dragon that wants such a thing would need followers searching for items. I think of all the strange things, a dracolich isn't that strange.

I'm just trying to think of why they needed that specific caveat/explanation, and that's what made the most sense to me.

Hell, MOST dragons in my games are spell casters, and the ones that aren't are either young, surround themselves with minions, or get some other buffs.

Yeah it does seem like a colossal amount of faith to place in one a group of mortals not even one
Two mortals who are more then likely strong enough to kill you
And you dont really gain anything from it
Dracoliches seem very weird if you ever think about how one could be made with permission
I forgot that it needed cooperation i assumed a bunch of necromancers dicked on a dragon and raised it up as a powerful pawn

Religious Barbarian user here, anyone got good art for one?

Eh, I guess it's part of my preference, since the only dragons that would be concerned about dying from age would be super ancient, and a setting shouldn't have that many super ancient dragons anyway. Even if dragons only live 10,000 years, there shouldn't be a ton of 9000 year old dragons lying around.

Plus, it feels like an ancient dragon would have more success trying to True Polymorph itself into a young or adult dragon and then simply lying low.

Im forced to side with you (not the guy from before)
Only because i assume the levels of commitment a monk undergoes is as extensive if not slightly less or more as a cleric goes through when convincing a god he is worthy of power
So how the fuck do monks happen?
people who would rather pray to the much more distant and less involved elemental's then nature? or even just any god in existence?
Feels like monks come out of a respect of elemental's over gods
How in the fuck does somebody uncover that shit far before they uncover d&d religion with gods granting blessings and miracles to their clerics

Clerics, typically, are lifelong priests that espouse their gods will and are granted powers for their faith.

Monks are masters of their own mind and body, allowing them to push beyond normal limits and unlock secrets of the self.

im like half sure their is a dragon god of the undead or some shit that was a dracolich it self in a previous edition
Dont quote me on it though

because they are raised that way.
they have a buddhist zen type master or some shit.
why do monks exist in our world?

Crusader types really fit the bill on a lot of levels thematically, but I doubt you'll find much of that featuring an unarmored dude
I'm pretty sure the only things that can make a character younger RAW aside from magic items are just the reincarnate spell and clone (but as far as I know neither really are meant to be used by dragons in the first place, so it's not impossible to say that they just outright wouldn't work outright).

Can the Mystic's Brute Strike discipline crit?

Does it roll against armor class to hit?

It's an addition to the weapon attack.
"As a bonus action, you gain a bonus to your next damage roll against a target you hit with a melee attack during the current turn. The bonus equals +1d6 per psi point spent, and the bonus damage is the same type as the attack. If the attack has more than one damage type, you choose which one to use for the bonus damage."

Yes, if the attack that gets the extra damage crits, the bonus damage is multiplied.

Yes just as lethal strike and hunter's mark can.

Delicious. Lovely to know I can just fucking vaporize someone if I were to grab Hex from Magic Initiate or something and crit on an attack.

I don't know if I should even be taking the discipline on my support slut Avatar admittedly, but I've gotten all the Avatar disciplines I want, and I can't think of anything else.

What's a reasonable damage amount in a turn expected from a level 5 character in order to break out of a swallow effect?
Right now i have it at 20, but i think that might be too high.

A 5th-level character could definitely pull off 20 damage in a turn without any resources, but if you're blinded/restrained inside it'll be hard.

It IS supposed to be a boss monster, but i'm worried that specific classes simply couldn't deal that much damage. Luckily i don't have to worry about a bard, since they'd be the worst off, but maybe i should drop it to 15, or even 10.

Fuck it, here is the monster where i have it right now.

Maybe it's just an alternative punishment to straight up slaying that bitch. He'll say yes or he'll be dead.

Still dont dragons have like a dragon heaven?
Sell your soul to necromancers to live eternally as pawns
Doesnt sound right

Tiamat is stuck in the abyss, so i can't imagine her afterlife being a paradise.

I guess then the idea "kinda" makes sense
Good dragons would just say fuck it if they are dying its time to go with bahamut into dragon heaven
the evil dragons however would sell their life in hopes one day their necromantic master dies and they can be free agian

Yes. But you also need two turns to pull it off, since both of those features require a bonus action.

Well if he's relying on a crit to pull this off then I think it's safe to assume more than one turn

>The dracolich. What are your thoughts on this monster?
I like, but not necessarily exactly as writen in MM. For me they are the end-tier of evil, magically inclined dragons, and most importantly they do the lichdom ritual on their own.

I don't think I'll actually bother doing something like that, I'll be happy with my booming blade+brute strike+weapon damage.

Just something silly to think of.

I really do have to ask if there are any other methods of getting the secrets to lichdom
There is vecna's book which is basically just vecnas floating hand of influence that he guides where ever the fuck he wants after the person he sent it to has "learned enough"
Vecna himself has the secrets and would share them i assume in return for a binding contract of servitude
and orcus but that seems akin to attempting to talk a insane person into giving you their bank account number, Would probably result in more servitude
And then what else?
Other liches i guess but they most likely would burn all the books they keep on the secrets of it because if they write it down it can be stolen or divined, and their are few if any reasons for a lich to sell his trade secret to a mortal
All of those seem as impossible (if not more in some cases) to pull off as a dragon

I've heard of dragons native to outer planes (like rust dragons on Acheron), but off the top of my head I can't think of many examples of dragons in any of the various afterlife locations that got there by dying. That's probably more a matter of my own ignorance than anything though

Yeah but dragons do have souls so were the fuck do they go?
Does bahamut or tiamat reabsorb them or something?