/5eg/ - D&D Fifth Edition General

What weird shit would I have to learn other than the racials/stats of the offbase race?

Since we just ran a 5e tropey campaign, I want to keep their interest with something new, what are some things I would need to keep track of because of the unorthodox races?

Magic Initiate choosing Bard. Scaling doesn't matter much as I will only be able to cast it at lowest level.

Golly that seems silly.

It's up to you but I almost always start players at level 2. Level one in 5e is almost completely determined by luck. A lucky crit from an enemy has autokilled a player before in a game I was playing. Level 2, they still feel weak and new, but it's a bit more stable.

Also like someone else said, don't feel bad starting with super simple shit and working your way up.

Most important thing I can stress to a new DM is that you can't plan everything, it will just take too much time. Have a good outline of the session to come, but planning every minute detail is suicide. Also remember to talk to your players, get a sense of what they're enjoying and what they aren't.

You sound really eager so you'll probably be fine. Good luck user.

Concentration spells competing with hex will usually be a worse option. Silent Image isn't terrible, but is, generally, redundant with Minor Image, a cantrip. Personally, i'd go with Healing Word, using it as an emergency option.

Here's my homebrew spell lists for warhammer fantasy setting:
docs.google.com/document/d/1HSe3I_7ueoAFopOkEplcwyX-9rtWeDkbqlPAIBWxm8M/edit?usp=sharing

I made it for an evil campaign I'm running in the setting, so it has some lore in it for my players who are unfamiliar
Includes many of the lores of magic with re-flavored 5e spells and homebrew spells, some races, and feats for users of different lores of magic.

Would be the most terrible thing if I replaced the 5th ed skills with the 4th's? I'd also change dungeoneering to engineering.

youtube.com/watch?v=3v2_JDz2Di0

LE is what you want or LN where others look at you as LE from another side.

I'd say what type of mechanic you are and then say go to Veeky Forums.

But by how much, do you think? I don't think I'll get to throw a dracolich at my players for at least a year, but as a climax against an evil necromancer? Might be dope.

All sorts of cool shit. Crocodiles, kobolds, a swarm of pirahnas in the enclosed river, and a pissed-off Merrow for good measure. Also, it's chock full of traps. See that ladder? Top rung is balsa wood, enjoy a ten foot fall. Those pillars you have to jump on in the first section? Make too much noise or alert the kobolds and they pour sand on them. My players best be using their ten-foot pole.

>real D&D players don't care about the quality of the rules!

Remember that being evil doesn't mean killing everyone you meet. We've had a few evil characters in my group over the years that emphasise callous selfishness rather than outright cruelty:

>A spoiled but cowardly halfling warlock
Always looking to cut corners and take the easy way out to achieve what he wants, regardless of consequences. Easily shouted down by the rest of the group and sees himself as above petty quarrels but is really just too afraid to disagree with the barbarian.

>A con-man Valor Bard
Living his whole life as a lie, pretending to be a legendary knight and reaping all the benefits. Continually mocks the stupidity of townsfolk for believing his facade and giving him free board, but by all outward appearances upholds and respects the law he claims to represent

>A Mercenary Dwarf Fighter
Personal morals aside, he'd been paid to do the same job as the party and wanted see it through, even if his allies slowed things down with their moral qualms.

This is just the stuff I was looking for. I was finding it really hard to understand what is evil, as opposed to someone thinking they're doing good.

Thanks user

What's the party level? I think if you turn something into a zombie first you apply a general template:
>lower int to 3 and cha to 5
>lower dex and wis to 8, maybe 6 (lower AC accordingly)
>immunity to poison and the poisoned condition
>Undead Fortitude
>maybe lower its con and HP as well (and if you do, then the breath weapon save DC as well)

Should've been a reply to Also give it proficiency in Wisdom saves if it doesn't have it

What's the sweet spot of a party in terms of numbers?

5

Prob 4

4 or 5 good players

Honestly if they have any experience with RPGs I'd just jump right to level 3. never made sense to me to play through a couple sessions before choosing your major class features, especially when it's things like "the oath you swear as a true paladin of paladinning" or "which school you went to as a wizard".

Is Matt Mercer's Gunslinger balanced compared to a Fighter with a bow?

I'm a bit new to DnD.
So a snake oil salesman type would be considered evil even if he's not out killing people.

Depends. A person who genuinely believed in their miracle cures could be good, a salesmen just dealing goods of a dubious nature is often neutral, and a person who knows that their actions could cause harm but choose to do it anyway for personal benefit is acting evilly.

4-5 is great, 3 or 6 is okay. 2 or 7 is actively unpleasant but doable. 1 or 8+ is going to require heavily, heavily modified rules to not be actively miserable for all involved.

>1
You just don't know how to do 1 on 1 campaigns

You start small, super basic ideas like "I'm a fighter who wants to make a living providing "protection" to tavern owners and shopkeepers. Things like that. It relies heavily on players/DM's to be able to RP very well

It's basically a Ranger with some home brew features. It's fine.

My character won't be trying to cause harm to people, just scam them of their gold a bit. Almost literally an old timey snake oil salesman.

How do I roll dice so I can hit the number I want more often? Is there any good techniques for this?

Buy crooked dice or consider why you want to cheat at tabletop RPGs and evaluate your priorities

I don't wanna cheat, I just wanna roll better slightly more often

That's probably evil, illegall and dangerous, but not Evil and self-destructively vicious just enough to be really Evil, if you catch my drift.

>wanting to influence the outcome of a dice roll
>an object literally created to be as unbiased as possible
>not cheating

I'm not sure you really understand what cheating means.

It really depends on intent. Build some scenarios and answer them
>If someone was extremely poor, and couldn't feed their children if they buy it, do you do anything? Do you care?
>If someone offers you a months worth of gold to slip some poison into a known customers product, do you do it? Are you offended, or interested?
>If an old rival comes into town, and you have weight with the locals, do you get them chased out of town? Have them dispatched?

It's pretty clear you aren't good, but are you evil at heart, or simply a neutral character that does vaguely evil things.

If a creature is concentrating on a spell, and then is turned or frightened, does it break concentration?

Yes

I can't seem to find any rule that would confirm that, neither being frightened nor turned incapacitates you.

Source?

I would actually argue that Frightened doesn't automatically break concentration, but it would certaintly trigger a roll.

The rules say this:
> The DM might also decide that certain environmental phenomena, such as a wave crashing over you while you’re on a storm-tossed ship, require you to succeed on a DC 10 Constitution saving throw to maintain concentration on a spell.

And as a DM I would definitely include being Frightened as worthy of a concentration save.

Turned enemies flee in abject terror, doing absolutely nothing except run away from you as fast as possible. I would definitely count that as breaking concentration.

Constant +5 to skills you're proficient with, instead of your proficiency bonus?
Are you OK with rogues having +13 to skill at 1st level? If so, go for it, i guess.

Only thing that might be an issue is grappling, shoving and similar - relatively big starting bonus means specialists can succeed more often against unfocused characters. Bounded accuracy was in the game for reason - so that every roll is "exciting", for it has significant chance for both success and failure.

What do you hope to accomplish by this ruling?

On the other hand, engineering instead of dungeoneering sounds like good idea.

3

Fuck you, user.

So I'm running a campaign based on Aztec/Mayan mythology and I am trying to work on some sacrificial stuff for it. One case i was thinking that making a sacrifice to a specific god could get you a bonus of some sort.

Pic related is my blood magic. Any opinions?

I like the idea of blood magic as metamagic in combat but otherwise I think it'd mostly be ritual stuff. Not a fan of giving out free spell slots though. You could rig up a simpler formula for like N*HitDie per Sorc Point plus the CON save.

It would probly fuck sorcerers though.

What can I use as an elevator pitch to sell my co-workers on trying D&D?

They're women, but already play lots of board games and video games. They're really into Bethesda games.

So on empowering it'd be like pop 3 sorc points and do 3*d6 plus con save?

A human moderated Co-op sandbox world that is written as you go powered by IMAGINATION and tropes.

That's the idea, not sure how that scales throughout the game, you could run some numbers at various levels and see how punishing that would be and maybe mod it. HitDie*.5 or something instead if that fits better. There'd probly have to be some introductory cost too. Some feats or a custom class feature. Ritual stuff would be nicer though, not a lot to balance in that shit.

I enjoyed 1 on 1 campaigns

Oh maybe have those hit dice used for blood magic consume the hitdice heal per short rests just in case it gets too cheesy. Also one unified way to keep track of uses per day other than 'how beat to shit am I?'

Fair point. I'll have to do some calculations. And how do you mean ritual stuff. L ike one of the blood magic spells is a ritual? Or they can like pick a ritual spell to add to their spell list?

So instead of damage during the battle empowering a spell the hit dice would be just expended and unavailable to use for healing during a short rest?

Bloody versions of ritual spells seem like they would be much easier to fluff through without massive balance issues.
>X HP damage replaces Y costs of materials for spell
>Doesn't have to be your own blood in this case so barbarian bloodbag powered spells could work maybe

For the hit dice I was thinking both, temporary HP could breeze past damage restrictions so making them 'consumed' would just make them slightly more limited and make players think more carefully about it per-day.

Honestly, just a half thought out description of this sounds better to me than the sorcerer class already.

>I enjoyed ERPing with random dudes on the internet

its not gay if their character is an elf

I'm not judging his want to suck elven dick, I'm judging his need to like about it on a slovakian wine tasting registry

>by all outward appearances upholds and respects the law he claims to represent
>but he's only faking it
>Haha stupid peasants thinking just because I saved the village Im some kind of hero!

Is he tsundere to the concept of being a hero?

Okay cool! I hadn't thought of ritual spells while working on this so I'm gonna have to go through again ha.

I've also been thinking about giving small mechanical buffs based on sacrifices to specific gods. For example if a player cuts a heart out with a sacrificial knife in the name of Huitzilopochtli then he would get like 1 bonus damage on all damage rolls for like a week or something.

I mean...Dragonheart.

Ritual spells could be the coolest, it would explain/enable giant mass sacrifices and shit for high level spells. I dunno about fightan/enchanting mechanics as much as the spell side though.

That sounds interesting. Like a group of lower level spell casters could cast a higher level ritual spell if they had enough sacrifices?

No idea. Sounds like a good campaign hook.

Reminds me of Circle Magic, but with more dying.

Thoughts on this house rule to help combat not feel so static?

>when you roll a melee weapon attack, if the attack roll is within 3+/- the AC, both characters involved move 5ft.

The movement can be either stuck together and moving, or rotating / pivoting around each other, or whatever. Still fleshing out details. Also, I'm applying common sense so moving over / into hazards like traps or sheer drops isn't an automatic fuck you, or probably not even possible unless an action / grapple is used to do so.

I'm pretty sure that would invalidate some stuff. Like on-hit-shove-as-bonus-action sounds like it's in there somewhere. I know open hand monks would get fucked.

Thinking of playing a Theurge Wizard. Regarding their selection of Cleric spells:

>Beginning when you select this tradition at 2nd level, whenever you gain a wizard level, you can replace one of the wizard spells you add to your spellbook with a cleric domain spell for your chosen domain. The spell must be of a level for which you have spell slots.
>If you add all of your domain spells to your spellbook, you can subsequently add any spell from the cleric spell list instead. The spell must still be of a level for which you have spell slots.

So does this mean you need to be level 10 to even start collecting non-domain Cleric spells? Or, for example, at level 3 T. Wizard take your two 1st and 2nd domain Cleric spells, which allows you to then take non-domain 1st and 2nd level Cleric spells?

Also, what's a good domain to go?
Thanks

Whoa, monk looks really fun this edition.

Both player and monster would stay engaged as in within 5 ft of each other.

Would you allow two players who can cast the same ritual spell to be able to cast it together as group casting and bump up the spell level?

It's just very toe-steppy. there's loads of other mechanics which do that and relegating it to a simple attack is not going to mix well. If you have nobody else who has any means of grappling, 1 melee guy in your group and he's not built for control maybe you could give him that.

...

No but I'd maybe allow to half the casting time on succesful Arcana check.

So dead threads is the new meta?

Anyway, catching up on some autism I'd missed and I wanted to share this.
>but they should at least remove the superfluous "in addition" and maybe just rephrase the whole section.
They actually did change that section in future printings, and you can see it in the SRD version of the text.

"If the d20 roll for an attack is a 20, the attack hits regardless of any modifiers or the target’s AC. This is called a critical hit."

If that makes you feel better.

Oh damn, I missed a chance to include one of these in my reply.
>That post is like 4 hours old.
>2 days and 9 hours ago.
I do this because I have a lot of dead time at work and ya'll don't post enough during these hours.

What if I treated it like a lair action, or combat complication, where it randomly effects combatants within 5ft of each other. Each round the back and forth nature of melee combat muddles the battlefield and simulates the chaos of a real melee.

Could be interesting, I definitely see the reasoning for it, just a lot of homebrew does not interact well with the base game rules. Not like they're sacred but there's PROBABLY something like that somewhere in the rules that could be repurposed or used as a guideline.

Maybe something like shifting terrain rules around mid fight (which already have checks associated with them) and forcing a move on the same space they occupy.

1 on 1 sounds too intimate. Some stuff requires a group of people to not be awkward

How am I Veeky Forums?

How would a monk vs a paladin fight stack up?

>Dawnforge shit
No.

What is dawn forge?

>smite
>monk dies

Or

>monk runs away

Alright 5eg, I need help building a vampire killer sorcerer. I generally choose my spells based on what life events happen with my sorcerer, like at lower levels he got his ass handed to him by lots of undead things, so by the time he got 4th level he chose chill touch and shield. At fifth level he chose haste so that he not only could get away from the baddies, but also to give the martials more confidence so hopefully they just rush in and take the damage instead. Now strahd has been really pissing him off lately so he has fireball, and I'm pretty sure we are close to level 7, and I'm not sure what would fit well. Wild magic sorcerer and my spells so far are 1st: mage armor, chaos bolt, magic missile, shield. 2nd:scorching ray 3rd:fireball, haste

Dawnforge is a piece of shit Youtuber who started a harassment campaign against other RPG Youtubers using fake accounts, drove some of these RPG Youtubers from Youtube, got caught and got called out on it, and then blamed it on his brother.
He comes across as creepy and overbearing in his videos because only his way of doing things is the right way.
He made fun of Critical Role and Dice Camera Action and told them off because the DMs running the games weren't him and he'd do a better job.
He interviewed Matt Mercer, only it was a one sided interview because he only used video grabs and sound bites of Matt Mercer. That was fucking creepy.

Monk goes in and flurry of blows with the open hand monk.

Monk would Stunning Strike Paladin until he won. Paladin wins if he's still alive after monk exhausts his ki.

I've played evil characters before. He was charming and friendly to most people, but only because he always chose the path of least resistance.

Randomly killing children? Likely to bring the guards and cause trouble.

Being polite and likeable? People help you in your goals.

Travelling gnome merchant vastly overcharging you for the item you need and he's got no guards? Kill him, take everything.

Evil just means you don't worry about the morals of a choice.

Once in a blue moon the Monk will get off a few stunning strikes (DC: 12 vs Paladin's +5 CON+CHA) which will let him win, but otherwise the Paladin is tankier, does more damage with smites, and can heal himself to full at least once with Lay on Hands

My players are joining the local actor's guild

What are some ideas for plays that I can write that are going on?

Lawful Evil can have morals too. It just means you place your moral code over that of everyone else, by force if need be.

You can be an evil bastard without being an outright monster.

Should I trade my cloak of protection for a whistle that can cast animate dead? I will only have 11 AC without it.

What's your character class and playstyle?