/5eg/ - Fifth Edition General

I'm partial to the background skills variant from the DMG, but I'm of the opinion that adventurer's should be well-rounded in terms of abilities and I feel distinct skills detract from that.

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So the new book coming in November will give us 6 million subclasses?

It was that really shitty type of gum that loses its flavor in like 10 seconds.

While you're not wrong Mastermind+Historian exists for party support as a meme build.

In my opinion Inquisitive and Mastermind should really be rolled into one, make the ranged Help part of Inquisitive Foightan' or whatever it's called.

Well get steed. Summon it, then try and look everywhere for scrolls to get the other spell into the book. Granted why do you need it?

Not that user, but bards lack good damaging spells in general, making fireball a popular choice. Counterspell is almost always a better reaction than cutting words when it can be used, although its overrated in my experience. Too many enemies, at least in my groups, tend to not be humanoids or spellcasters for it to be worth the resource.

Nigga you can use cutting words AND counterspell at the same time.

>Cutting words
>you can use your reaction
>Counterspell
>Casting Time: 1 reaction

Never actually looked into it, this is just a meme im repeating I see posted here.

And what have we learned today?

Does an extradimensional space, such as a Magnificient Mansion, count as a different plane of existence?

sure why not

>im just blindly accepting what other people say

Yes

IMO
Swashbuckler/Arcane Trickster > Inquisitive > Thief >Scout > Mastermind > Assassin

>Orcpub is down

I really hate figuring out point-buy in my head.

How do I reconcile my Monk's despite to be a dazzling dancer with that constant call to heroism by fate

use a piece of paper

The dance of life and death is the greatest dance of all.

>Wasting paper on things that are easy to do in your head

way to hate the environment asshole

astranauta.github.io/statgen.html#pointbuy

Down or dead? Last I heard they had an extended time frame up towards the 22 of October.

are there any druid circles i should avoid? im doing my first game soon and dont want to mess up

where's the discord link?

wildshape does not scale well

>I'm doing my first game and don't want to mess up

Pick what looks groovy to you, user; don't let power gaming get you down.

>started with 1e and picked up 5e to try to learn/dm
>nearing end of a long campaign, shy of a year irl
>lost mines and storm kings thunder same table
>erryone having fun but so many things bugging me about 5e i'm compelled to want to change a ton of shit
>figure by the time i'm done i may as well fucking learn an older edition, or risk pissing off players and never finding new blood as old blood leave because lol houserules
>and yet... knowing all this i have players asking, two begging, me to continue

cool blog or what. just wanted to get that out. just had a game tonight and next weeks is probly the end of the line. been a long crazy game.

Human Subraces.

Good Idea?

Bad Idea?

NO YOU STUPID LADY THAT'S NOT SAFE

Baaaaad idea.

We (thankfully) don't fucking even have gender mechanics, let alone races.
No one wants the shitstorm

What problems have you had with 5e?

well you asked...

advantage/disadvantage feel silly, they are faster than modifiers let's say you have advantage for flanking, you have the exact same 'advantage' in combat over your target with 2 guys around him than you'd have with 8 guys around him- with him prone and grappled- on the low ground, stacking advantage would be even sillier it'd turn the game into a contest of who can stack the most advantage

i am ok with wizards preparing spells instead of dedicated slotting them, and most cantrips. but some feel too beefy for my tastes: free damage spells that scale? a free 1d12 (poison spray) at level 1? it's cool giving casters more options and it comes down to taste: and mine is in the 'do i save the precious casts or use it now' and the party protecting the arcane artillery/buff machines they were born to be.

and scrambling to bs a skill/prof check for things players want to do that there are no longer skills for: one good one came up in tonight's game. the rogue wanted to check the door for traps: straight perception check. a trained rogue has absolutely NO advantage over any average fucking joe on finding traps- same perception roll for anyone. so we houseruled it into rogues getting to add their prof. bonus to checking for traps.
i don't mind flying by the seat of my pants on ruling things that need new ones but there are a lot that feel like they should be established a bit better that arn't.

5e cut a ton of fat in the name of streamlining and it's still fun, but it feels like they cut a bit of muscle out with it.

also not super great at introducing players to concepts. every single example of a class i can remember from the PHB is a reference to a dnd character from a setting or book: which make the huge leap in assuming that everyone who touches 5e knows a ton about dnd or even fantasy in general.

this is just the stuff that comes to mind. it's nearly 5 AM here and i haven't slept

pic related. tonight's game.

>new to running a campaign
>party levels up to level 2
>woohoo more interesting encounters now
>flip through MM for CR 2 monsters
>Ogre is CR 2, yet has like 60 hp and can deal like 13 dmg a turn
Huh?? Am I missing something here??? That health seems fuckhuge at their level and he can nearly oneshot any poor bastard he gets his hands on

i always forget.
>0 casting penalties for armor

only a fool wouldn't take at least one level in fighter even if they plan to go full caster, so they can march around fireballing from their full plate.

cr =/= level, there's some calculating to do but if you don't want to bother, look up encounter generators, a few good ones let you pick level/party size/threat and setting. eventually you'll have the experience to eyeball it once you've done it enough either way.

No, I get that, it's supposed approximate the difficulty for a whole party of 4 or 5. Based on xp one ogre should be a relatively manageable encounter, but I'm pretty sure even one of these might fuck shit up too hard

Holy fuck clerics are amazing. I'm playing a 9th level tempest cleric now and I think they're quickly becoming my new favorite class. People complain about being the healbot but the class is amazingly versatile!

And once you begin to gain access to spells of level 5th, 6th, etc... holy shit. So many amazing and cool spells, it's so hard to choose what to prepare!

Tempest Clerics are p nasty, probably the only one beefier is Arcana with Heavy Armor proficiency via dip or feat.

when it's 1 v 4 or 1v5 barring magic and terrain tomfoolery, the party shouldn't have a problem but some reminders assuming you're new. if you arn't please tell me to kindly fuck off.

-ogres are very stupid, not going to pick the best targets or best calls
-maybe it's a young or injured one. it was run out of town and party kills it- when they get back to town drop some rumors they overhear of hoping that 'thing they wounded a few days back' staying away, they'll feel good and might go bragging for loot
-they don't have to kill it for an exp/encounter reward. there are other ways to deal with things. i had a player get to a kobold chief back to the city: and shove a broom and maid uniform in his hands and point to some dusty floor in a church. one intimidation check later the church had a new janitor, none of his underlings wanted to fight after that.

Just do you. If optimizing were that big of a deal, nobody would ever play gnomes.

>and scrambling to bs a skill/prof check for things players want to do that there are no longer skills for: one good one came up in tonight's game. the rogue wanted to check the door for traps:
That's what investigation is for, you silly goose. Passive perception maybe, if you think they should've noticed it but don't want to ask them to roll.

>every single example of a class i can remember from the PHB is a reference to a dnd character from a setting or book
Well, make up your own examples. Barabarians are like Conan and wizards are like Dumbledore, it's not that hard for most classes.

If only I could learn Booming Blade somehow, I'd be pretty fulfilled.

Yeah I know, Magic Initiate. But the next ASI is only at level 12 and I also really wanted to get Resilient: Con or War Caster.

Well, CR is as close as they can get to a good guideline, but it's far from perfect. If you really feel like your players might get fucked up, you can either pull your punches, or give your party the advantageous position. Perhaps they come across the ogre while he's asleep, or perhaps he doesn't have his weapon on him, doing d4+str punches instead of clubbing the players..

Clerics are awesome. They can also just change their spells on the fly after each long rest, making them very versatile.

It's kind of annoying to have spells like control water prepared just in case you need it, it leads to tough choices.

>That's what investigation is for, you silly goos
>investigation for checking for traps/a lock
ok i'll bite. in what world? 5e goes out of its way to say it's perception. investigation is more.. investigations involving events and people, perception is more often for actually spotting/finding things. even said as much in the post you're replying to so i think i know where you stopped reading

i DO like the idea of passive perceptions though, it's a good excuse to throw them stuff you think they'd notice when they need help.

>Well, make up your own examples
easily done for barbarians and wizard: but is it so far-fetched that someone has no idea what a paladin is? a class a lot of experienced player still don't really 'get', we shouldn't have to come up with our own, there are a ton of nice, old, free-domain things they could have cited but opted not to so they could make their book characters/oc's look fancier: at the expense of the less-informed readers.

Gods. My party reached level 11 and now the druid has Transport via Plants. With that and the wizard's Teleportation Circle, I assume things will have to start moving pretty fast, since we won't use as much time travelling all over the place.

But what really worries me and somehow it seems like the druid hasn't realized it yet is Wind Walk. My campaign has a relatively small area, it only covers the Sword Coast, which is about 1.300 miles across. Wind Walk allows a party to cover 545 miles in a day!

if they are on actual quests and characters with investments/obligations they won't stray far enough for longer than you can handle

now if they're murderhobos well....

I made some minor magical items for lvl 1 to 4 players. They're underwhelming, but they are fun ribbon rewards for the players. What do you think?

>It's kind of annoying to have spells like control water prepared just in case you need it, it leads to tough choices.
I'm beginning to understand that all too much. I'll probably never cast stuff like Thunderwave or Shatter, but I'm stuck with them instead of being able to prepare more interesting spells. I guess that's one of the best things about the Life Domain, all of its spells are stuff you'd prepare anyway.

Oh, see my issue isn't them straying away or derailing the plot, it's how everything will have to rush ahead of schedule since what would take them a 10-days trip now takes one day and one spell. I guess I really gotta up my villains' game, they need to be more liberal with high level spells too.

10/10

not giving the hammer a stored damage cap? bold

my players want to be your players: their npc friend is slowly dying until they find the macguffin to save them

I use passive perception when, for example, they're supposed to hear muffled screams from a closet. It also works for noticing trap wires and ambushes if you think your players should notice them.

Investigation is for deducing that there might be a trap. It's also for looking for stuff.

Perception -> seeing, noticing
Investigation -> looking for, deducing

> is it so far-fetched that someone has no idea what a paladin is?
Not really. Paladins and bards are quite difficult to explain to new players, and the difference between sorcerers and wizards can be tough to explain as well.

The book is indeed self-referential and not that useful when it comes to that, so we have to take out the extra effort and come up with examples ourselves.

One of our players is a beserker, I hope he'll get his hands on the weapon, because he can wreck up 12 extra damage in 4 turns or so. I enjoy items that seduce players to make risky decisions.

To be honest, I often cast a spell or two I haven't prepared. I play a knowledge cleric, and I have three prepared spell lists: an offensive one, a support one, and a mixed one. I cast augury at the beginning of each day so the DM can give me a hint which one to prepare.

>Investigation is for deducing that there might be a trap. It's also for looking for stuff.
top of page 121 dmg brother under detecting and disabling a trap: "a character actively looking for a trap can attempt a Wisdom (Perception) check against the trap's DC.You can
also compare the DC to detect the trap with each
character's passive Wisdom (Perception) score to determine whether anyone in the party notices the trap in passing."

it notes there in the section about detecting traps in a broad sense that it's perception- then it goes on to use example traps where it's way more investigation... but just as many require perception, (my favorite being the special pits in the 5e tomb of horror). the lack of consistency makes sense in some ways, different ways to detect different traps but it can throw players off: and specialists (rogues) still arn't any better or worse off at it than the average joe.

none of these alone are super game breaking, and easy to fix up but it all adds up and it leaves a bad taste in my mouth that so much feels like it needs reworking in my opinion. if you dig it all then you do you but it adds up and the pile of little bugs and quirks bugs me.

wow my post looks like shit. it's time for me to stop posting and go to bed.

Just to be that guy, Rogues do have an advantage over average Joe assuming that you take expertise in Perception.

Rogues were shifted in 5th from being "Trap and sneaking specialists" to being "Specialists" in general, they can just choose what they want to specialize in. There's not really anything preventing you from making a Rogue that wins gold every year at finding traps.

good point, not even being that guy. why arn't I in bed yet. tell me to fuck off.

sidenote- the lack of skills and the way proficiency is handled by class/background makes everyone feel so much more cookie cutter by default with is an easy trap for new players to fall into. when you have a broader list of things you can be good at (or no list and it's all flavor, conversely) then it can open some eyes to possibilities. why does EVERY wizard need to be proficient in arcana? maybe he slept through that bit of lecture or is shoddily self taught or maybe he's just a shitty wizard (rincewind?). i encourage my players to break the mold with proficiency on character creation.

Do devas constantly cast detect alignment? Would they kill the shit out if one dude if he was NE.

Would they kill anyone protecting the NE dude?

Asking because my DM just insta gives me.

This is Curse of Strad at the Abby.

I do kind of agree with you that it can be difficult in 5th to make a character that's better at X than everyone else unless you make a Rogue or Bard, since otherwise if someone takes the same proficiency as you they're just as good as you at X (Skill Feats do open this up to other classes to an extent though).

Sleep well user.

Is there a monk weapon that does more damage than a d8? My fists already do d8 damage at lvl 15

>monk-specific weapons are no longer a thing out of the books as far as i've found, so ask your dm about them, or for gloves that beef up the punches maybe

That's actually my biggest complaint with 5e. Granted I'm not super experienced when it comes to tabletops, I've played MM 2e and 3e, some homebrew settings, and DnD 5e. The thing that I love about MM is that you can specialize your character to be unique and exactly what you want. You don't feel generic at all. In 5e I feel very cookie cutter when it comes to skills and even classes.

I remedy the skill thing by getting rid of skill proficiency and giving out skill points, and I actively encourage my players to specialize in a few skills and embrace being bad at others. This works for the most part and my players have those highs when they are the character that gets to shine in a particular situation.

I still haven't come up with a solution for the generic feeling classes. It's a systemic problem the solution for which is probably much too complex for me to fix at my table so I just bare with it, but man, sometimes it bums me out.

have you even read the PBH

Did some research. Detect Evil and Good doesn't tell you alignment. Just if things are aligned with fey, undead, celestial, the sort.

What does this mean for my DM. Do I confront him, or take the dark power. As a result two people died (me and my wife's character). I took the dark power but the one she took proved to much so she is sitting out the rest of the session.

generic classes comes down to player flavor: gotta encourage imagination- a boring monk and an honorable masked luchador can be the same thing on paper but we know what we'd rather have along, right?

as for skills what do you use? 3/3.5 dnd skillpoints?

page 78 "monk weapons, which are shortswords and any simple
melee weapons that don't have the two-handed or heavy property."

monk weapons used to be a bit more involved/exotic: and I assumed that's what he meant.

tell the dm it's likely an honest mistake, if he's changed how the spell works he needs to let you know up-front, or put in "detect alignment"

He said he knew detect alignment. But it's not apart of the devas list.

If he gave him detect alignment, it was just to kill me.

But fireball is garbage. Get spirit guardians instead.

If a 20th level fighter, rogue and wizard came to blows, which would survive?

dick move. is he a new dm/to tabletop or does he have a history of adding spells from older editions/homebrew without telling anyone as it suits him? as for being on its' list- is it just another deva or is it some plot important character- giving those extra bells n whistles isn't so strange. still a dick move with this context.

Mins you he said he knew detect alignment after he had killed me.

It's the Abbot from CoS. But he never told anyone at the start. I'm new to DnD. I was a NE kenku warlock who was instantly killed when I entered the Abby.

Rogue wins Initiative, insta-gibs the wizard with a sneak attack.

Next up is Fighter since Wizard died, he burns his action surge for 8 attacks, insta-gibbing the Rogue.

>instantly killed when I entered the Abby.
That's all kinds of fucked, and he should be called out on it. Killing PCs without appropriate warning simply isn't enjoyable for anyone at the table

I'd bet all the tea in china he fucked up with how detect good and evil works and shoved in know alignment to save face or not have to retcon his plot.

being this hard on new players is pretty dick. you arn't entitled to an easy fight/game but that sounds like a deal where you had no chance and no say and just 'you're dead now because fuck you that's why'. don't let his shit dm stuff spook you from the game or hobby- i swear we arn't all this shit. some of us are actually good sometimes. normally i'd say you don't really need to know ic or ooc what all a creature can do, but shoving in things that arn't in any official content with absolutely no forewarning for the exclusive use against the players is a bad time.

Fluffing does go a long way and admittedly my table isn't the best at it (myself included), but my main problem is how samey classes feel by default. A barbarian feels identical to a fighter unless he's raging, but he can't rage all that often so most of the time he feels generic. A sorcerer feels like a wizard unless he's using metamagic, but again, it's such a gated resource that it comes up too rarely to feel distinct.

I'm not even necessarily looking for a power buff or class bloat, more so just persistent differentiation. Paladin for instance feels nice and distinct from other martials. You have a similar paradigm to a fighter, but you're often taking actions unique to your class so you always feel like a paladin.

>as for skills what do you use? 3/3.5 dnd skillpoints?
I've never played 3/3.5 so I don't know that system, but what I basically did was take a mutants and masterminds approach. I calculated about how many skillpoints a player gets from proficiency at the start and the levels at which proficiency grows, then handed out a certain amount of skill points at level up. When they reached 5th level for example, they'd still have roughly equal skill points as proficiency would provide, just concentrated in less skills that had higher bonuses as a result. It wasn't perfect and I had to adjust my DCs, but everyone at the table enjoyed it much more than vanilla.

I think this is a dick move. Yes, devas know detect good and evil, and while yes, it doesn't actually work this way, here's the thing - he would never even consider using this spell without express intent of using it as an excuse to kill you.

So here are three possibilities.
1) DM is a dick and wanted an excuse to kill off your character
2) You are That Guy, and DM has been looking for an excuse to kill your character
3) DM thought that you and the party will be able to handle and defend yourself from the Abbot

>>as for skills what do you use? 3/3.5 dnd skillpoints?
>I've never played 3/3.5 so I don't know that system, but what I basically did was take a mutants and masterminds approach. I calculated about how many skillpoints a player gets from proficiency at the start and the levels at which proficiency grows, then handed out a certain amount of skill points at level up. When they reached 5th level for example, they'd still have roughly equal skill points as proficiency would provide, just concentrated in less skills that had higher bonuses as a result. It wasn't perfect and I had to adjust my DCs, but everyone at the table enjoyed it much more than vanilla.

if that works for you and your players, kickass solution friend. but if it doesn't quite fit maybe poke at the skill rules for 3/3.5: from what you're saying it's prettymuch the same deal- points on level, some classes get way more than others (skill jockies like bards), and there's a cap to how much you can have in any one skill related to your level. some skills you can make checks for with a +0 (no points/untrained) and others are strictly 'you have to have at least SOME skillpoints in it to even try'

someone posted a table further up that converts 3.5 skills to 5e profs, for a quick referance

The Abbot literally works with Strahd who's evil as fuck.
Your GM is a mongoloid.

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There are official subraces.

Thanks for the advice I'll take a look. In my experience allowing players to specialize their skills goes a long way toward making them feel like their character is unique and important to the party. Anything that might further enhance that is certainly worth looking into.

Unsheathing is not an action (except if you've already sheathed/unsheathed something that turn)

The weapon that damages yourself is fucking stupid, no one will ever use it.

The warlord sword is fucking cool.

Ancient red dragon parts are too epic for low levels. And the ability is just true strike.

So, the party I am DMing in Curse of Strahd are level 5 and managed to pass by most shit and tried focusing exclusively on their card reading artifacts. This has, unfortunately, led them directly to the Amber Temple.

The cold is already biting their asses off but they plan on entering. Should I just prepare for the TPK now? Should I tone it down a bit and let them at least get to the sarcophagi and let them kill themselves?

>In my experience allowing players to specialize their skills goes a long way toward making them feel like their character is unique and important to the party.

i had a player who had a lot of trouble getting into making an original character, or roleplaying as anyone other than his normal monotone in game (if ever), and a great little book helped me break him out a good bit. look for "Central casting: heroes of legend" a "character creation system" for all fantasy systems. walked him through dice rolls with an old edition of that i have laying around and he got a human, born to a barbarian tribe, cousin the head of his household (where are his parents?) boring childhood, when he was older he befriended a tribe of orcs, learning their language. early adulthood he got a job making dresses and other womens clothing, until he got sold into slavery for four years and bodly... was set loose once he had done enough good dressmaking.

he fucking loved it and it's opened him up more than his past two (only other two) characters have ever been. it feels unique and it's all just flavor.

I'm a level 5 kenku warlock who's new to the game. I chose kenku because it's fun. I'm also a spell caster. Very far from "That Guy"

Don't tone it down, but give them an opportunity to escape. When they realize that they're way in over their head, they'll run.
How did they even FIND the Amber Temple? The only people who know the way are Strahd's servants, Kasimir and people at Argynvostholt. You're telling me Kasimir shown them the way, but didn't warn them how dangerous the road will be, or to pack warm clothes?