Unearthed Arcana: Fiendish Options

>Just the basics of how spell attacks and saves work should do a lot
Got it
>Concentration too, if it'll likely come up.
Oh shit, good point.

Because that's more fun in a system made to handle modern/future settings.

NIBIRU IS COMING

>implying you need cars and guns to thwart the fourth dimensional reptilian scourge
We've got Mystics and the Far Realm, all the pieces are already here.

My players are going to be meeting a hag grandmother that has been causing a city-wide depression. When they meet her, I want to offer them bargains that would make this encounter a legitimate moral conundrum for everyone in the party. What are some things that she would offer to:
>lawful neutral vengeance paladin that grew up in an arcane city, constantly being mocked for being a stupid zealot
>a Triton Druid that's fascinated with the surface world and spends his spare time wandering for fun
>a bugbear eldritch knight who seeks to end the discrimination against monsters that are good

Tips on running White Plume Mountain for the first time? All my players started with 5e, and I started with AD&D but as a child and never got a chance to play or run any of the classics.

How long does it run and how lethal can it be?

>Play a cleric
>Have to save all my slots to cast healing because I know the group will run into stupid shit and get knocked out
Can't wait till I get more slots

Just play a Paladin. Lay on hands for 1 point is all you need

Take the Spare the Dying cantrip for when your friends are being stupid, and then blast things. Take short rests for the dice healing.

When in doubt, memories. Happy memories.

If they get really deep in the roleplay, it'll hit hard.

I can't speak for the new version, but the old WPM was Tomb of Horrors done right. There are almost no "gotchas". If the party is smart and doesn't do obviously stupid shit, they won't die (at least from the environmental hazards / traps). And even then, they're not instant, obliterating death.

One example is the fight against a creature while everyone is inside of a bubble floating over a pool of boiling mud. If the party is smart, they put away the fucking bows.

idk maybe if they release Spelljammer. I just think it'd be neat to fly a spaceship/F-16 into a Nephilim's face as a final act of martyrdom.

Speaking of Spelljammer, I'm kinda bridging into that in my homebrew campaign.

What's a good ship for a Githyanki modeled after David Bowie / Ghostbusters Gozer to be piloting and showing up in?

new FR lore
>The planet Maldek is the counterpart of the bodily remnants of Tiamat in the 3D Universe of which the asteroid belt exists between Mars and Jupiter. This means that the Asteroid Belt we see in the 3D Universe is Maldek's exploded planet, and the asteroid belt in the 5D Universe is Tiamat's exploded planetary body. Maldek was a planet that had seeded hybridized Dragon races, such as the Anu, that were inhabiting the planet before it exploded. The Christos Sirian Blues, or Blue Dragons incarnated into this Harmonic Universe to help heal the DNA template of these fallen Dragon races. They came to work with bringing the Aurora Body to help repair the genetic mutations and to be the evolution safety net during the Ascension hosting cycle. The complex networks of the Aurora Portal Systems and Aurora hubs are the safety zone platforms brought to the earth in 3D as a part of Ascension Plan B.

>Root Races 3-5 attempted to seed onto the Earth. Melchizedek Race Families came in to help to repair genetic digression around this time approximately 35,000 years ago. Violations by the Incarnated Melchizedek’s using Earth portals incorrectly around the Egyptian Dynastic timeline unleashed a lot of Dark energies onto the Earth surface. This was not purposed by the Melchizedek’s as it was a part of their intended plan to integrate the Annu template from the damaged planetary fields that had resulted from the Atlantian explosions of the grids during the previous Root race seeding. Unfortunately there were some miscalculations and other genetic issues that raised a serious breach of planetary templar security. (The Templar is the Stargate Portal System of the Earth that opens into the 12 Dimensional Levels of the Universal Time Matrix.) For this violation seals were placed on the 6th and 7th dimensional access in our DNA coding preventing physical ascension out of this realm. This became a curse on Humans as it was genetically inbred through the generations.

...

blog.beamdog.com/2017/10/fall-durs-gate-sale.html

That's gay. Why would they give a shit about happy memories? Did they lose them?

>city-wide depression
>vengeance paladin, mocked for being a stupid zealot
Do you know what depression is? It's low energy and loss of interest in activity. When people are depressed, they don't value themselves enough to put their needs first.

Depression is peace. It may not be bright and shiny and happy, but a city-wide depression means that people aren't committing crimes of passion. They aren't letting their needs drive them to extremes. They aren't hurting each other.

>Fight the Greater Evil. Faced with a choice of fighting my sworn foes or combating a lesser evil, I choose the greater evil.
Can inaction truly be said to be the greater evil, when compared to all the indignities that men heap upon each other on a daily basis? Can you truly claim that a persistent low mood isn't worth the eradication of crime?

>By Any Means Necessary. My qualms can't get in the way of exterminating my foes.
Is not this depression a means to an end? Is justice not served by the eradication of crime? True, they may not be happy, but is happiness worth the pain of others? What of the man who gains a thrill from killing others? You must agree that his happiness is not relevant to your cause, so why is theirs?

So, to the paladin, she offers peace. A city that follows the law because its inhabitants are too mired in their daily misery to hurt one another. They commit no evil, because they don't have it in themselves to commit anything.

How do I play as a Kenku and have fun? The character I had in mind is a Kenku Warlock of the Undying. His ultimate goal is to attain immortality, siphon the powers of powerful undead characters, and then find a way to reverse the curse put on himself and his people. Ironically, he's doing all of this using borrowed power in the first place and my ultimate plan is to have him fail in some way. The problem I'm running into is that I usually play leader types and my group has come to rely on that. I'm easily the most outspoken even among my friends and Kenku aren't known for their large vocabularies or leadership roles. I'm also concerned that playing a character that can only parrot phrases would get old several sessions in.

I could really use some help with RP'ing. I'm sort of new to actual D&D and I'm having a hard time being imaginative in combat. Is there any sort of tactic I can employ with my Fighter to sort of force myself to make interesting attacks in combat?

I was thinking of maybe trying to set traps and grapple people into them or something, but most of the time I just say "I attack" and roll my dice.

Simple: the kenku isn't stupid. He knows he can only mimic, but he's also running a long con. That means prep time.

He previously spent years traveling with a theatre troupe, and has memorized the equivalent of the entire collected works of Shakespeare, but can't detach the individual words from the larger lines. And it wasn't necessarily a GOOD theatre troupe. So, everything he says is overdramatic and overacted, way too wordy, and somewhere between 50%-90% actually applicable to the situation at hand.

He also never refers to anyone by their actual name, and possibly not even the correct gender.

Whenever I think about Kenku and their mimicry, it just makes me think of that one episode of South Park where the actor for Chef quit because they made fun of Scientology so they re-used a bunch of his old voice clips really poorly to make him a pedophile.

This is the same problem I've had. That sounds like an interesting character, but the mimicry is a gimick that will annoy the party quickly.
This is your best bet

what your thoughts on female tiefling tail going down their butt and wrapping around their thigh.

I think you should quit asking.

I have no thoughts, but I now think you're weird.

>Using inferior noises to convey dialogue.
>Not favoring talking like a bunch stitched-together voice clips.

I DM'd for a Gnome Ranger who was played by the most unranger-y man possible.

Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra.

>He also never refers to anyone by their actual name, and possibly not even the correct gender.
I kinda like this part because you can just say some random phrase based on how that person is making you feel as their "name."

Wouldn't it be easier to wrap around your waist?

Shaka, when the walls fell!

>Want to play a Duergar Fighter
>Last character was a Drow Druid
>Don't want party to think I'm an underdark fetishist
>Even though I am
What should I do? I want to be a Duergar mostly for their amazing racial abilities that are actually fun to use, unlike Humans who are boring as shit for features.

>Don't want party to think I'm an underdark fetishist
just admit you are and play what you want to play.

I have a constant need for validation about my choices though.

Which reminds me, if you had a Fighter in your party what subclass would you be most thankful to see him playing guys?

>I have a constant need for validation about my choices though.
have you considered NOT being a gigantic faggot?

>Picks Angst Dwarves to avoid Humie stat increases.
Not the most valid excuse, what with the vast amount of races to choose from besides Human.

this isn't the game for you

>I have a constant need for validation about my choices though.
Why don't you just play a Paladin then dummy

>DM doesn't think Loremaster Wizard is broken
>sees nothing wrong with doing shit like Hold Person with STR saves (which was my exact example for how it could be abused)
Well, time to roll up a Lore Wizard.

>be in underwater cavern with 24h potion of water breathing
>druid uses Control Water to clear the cave and cause the fish we're fighting to be 'stranded' on land for easy picking
>create vacuum
>deep-sea fish explode due to not being used to the difference
>area on the side of the water walls gets boiled in a steam explosion
>instantly clear the entire layer of the cave by killing a whole nest of sea creatures and either making them explode or choke to death by the time the spell ends
This guy keeps not doing anything at all almost always but manages to somehow unintentionally destroy whatever our DM had intended for us to do in a dungeon all the time. It's fucking hilarious.

Familiarize yourself with the mundane items and try to use them in creative ways.
Encourage your DM to include environmental hazards or other things that you can grapple/shove enemies into.
Play Battlemaster so that when you eventually have to just "attack" you can add some interesting side-effects to your strikes.

That would be harder. Unless their tail start at a off shot near their waist. That or it curl around one of their buttocks or wrap in a weird 90° angle at the root.

Why did their deity hate them so much anyway? It's such a huge curse it's like, why not just kill them all instead?

>It's such a huge curse it's like, why not just kill them all instead?
because they don't suffer that way.

Because he wanted them to suffer for their arrogance.

because the designers were thinking in reverse.

>look like crows/ravens
>make them mimic speech like those birds
>why tho
>pissed off they god idk lmao

My players are fucking idiots....great.

Well..he also took away their wings, and their creativity which is why they basically can't plan for the long-term, as well as their speech so that they wouldn't be able to fuck around saying whatever.

#
What does magical realms mean in this discussion

It means lurk more

>The battle is over, blood has been shed, the day won.
the party -frozen in melancholic awe of the rainy battlefield- is silent, un-moving for what actually was 5 seconds, but what left like hours.
>Slowly, a divine glow appears before them, their patron; a god.
>For their deeds they are each handed divine gifts befitting of their characters.
>Until the god reaches the last party member, instead it gives him these words.
"your gift will not be obvious at first, but when the time comes, the truth shall be revealed, now, brave young hero, kneel and be rewarded".
>The party member kneels before the heavenly form, looking down into the ground.
>He notices the glow slowly fade, quickly looking up, it has disappeared.
>He remains in this position for what feels like an eternity in the rainfall.
>The most observant of the group notices what first appear to be a shooting star.
>In a decisive impact, it hits the ground in front of the kneeling hero.
>The silhouette of the item is revealed in the midst of the settling dust and steam, a sword-shape, glowing white-hot and spewing forth the heat of an astral forge.
>Petrified in the warm brilliance the party watches it quickly cools down, from white to yellow, to orange, to red, to a dark gray.
>The rain drops stops sizzling when they hit it.
>The form revealed is that is that of a crude, old, rusty and seemingly useless sword, like that of one you would happen upon in the ground somewhere where a battle had taken place, long ago.
>The hero rises and pulls the blade out of the ground. looks at it and swings it. heavy, clumsy, unbalanced, unfit for battle.
>He wraps it in cloth and straps it to his backpack, and begins the long journey home.

what does the sword do? what is "the truth" and when is it revealed?

This is the sword of a gwyn/vendrick esque figure from a long forgotten kingdom that seeks vengeance on an ancient evil that bested its former master

it is sentient and will only serve the most noble of heroes

If you're still here from the last thread.

>>It's like when retards try telling me owls are birds.
>I have never heard of any other classification for them. What do you think owls are?

That poster is obviously being sarcastic. The guy he's replying to said that dragons aren't reptiles. He's saying that's equivalent to thinking owls aren't birds.

>Do you think they'll make Bard of Whispers actually good?

Whispers should have been a Rogue subclass. Stealing shadows and fears should have been a mythical thief schtick rather than something redundant with the mindfuckery that Bards can already do.

Whisper Bard -> Twilight faggot Setite ripoff
Whisper Rogue -> American McGee's Peter Pan

Does anyone have any ideas on how I would go about making a character like Alexander Anderson from Hellsing. I'm thinking a lawful neutral oath of vengeance paladin.

A zoo, full of rare and unique land creatures, platypus giraffe pangolin etc, for the druid to experience learn about and from

>Implying owls are birds

Hello newfriend, this is the origin of that particular meme.

Go home Spirit Science, you're drunk.

for the record, he was fired because he refused to make fun of Scientology. Matt and Trey firmly believe you need to be willing to make fun of anything, to do otherwise is bigotry

Spirit Science is a legit good setting background.
That fucking "human history" movie holy SHIT

Saying dragons are obviously reptiles is like saying bats are obviously birds. Dragons are dragons. Duh.

That's what the lizard people want you to believe.

>tfw dragons are alternately from SPACE or genetically engineered sea wurms

That's clever and all, but it sounds pretty railroady.
>either side with the big bad or break your oath
Am I wrong?

Dragons appear reptilian, but they certainly aren't cold blooded. Dinosaurs weren't either, really. Actual genealogies are setting specific of course.

>sudden urge to play a Lizardfolk character caught up in WE WUZ DRAGEENS bullshit

How does he feel about dragonborn?

loves them Uncle Ruckus/Macedonia style.

Lizardpeople lived on Faerun before dragons.

I have a setting that I've been running a game in for a while where there is a society of Lizardfolk being ruled over by an ancient gold dragon. There is a noble caste of Dragonborn that are descended from the dragon mating with Lizardfolk but the Lizards are basically chattel.

Also there are underground Yuan-ti cults trying to take back the country and drive out the draconic invaders.

>DRAGONS ARE SHIT
>WE WUZ REPTILES N SHIET
>REEEEEEEE

As if this character would know that or listen to some warm-blooded fool babble about which race showed up in which age.

Thatsss jussst mammalian propaganda!

Best alternative Wild Magic table?

And not that fucking 10,000 one.

I dunno, if that was the popular take they might come in with the idea that dragons are ascended lizardfolk, their perfect selves.

Okay, now I'm curious. Explain.

this just happened tonight

I'm sorry, are owls not birds?

Just responding to post from yesterday, don't mind me
First of all, the AD&D statblock is mostly fluff. Mechanically, it's still the simplest by far, it's just formatted archaically. That's not getting into the SYSTEMS as a whole, because while AD&D was messy it was still much simpler than 5e

Second, the OSR mostly uses B/X, not AD&D

No, they're not.

One Folk! One Tribe! One Chief!

Why not? Is there something I can read?

They are, he's fucking with you.

youtube.com/watch?v=U8NNHmV3QPw#t=3m18
cliff's notes: humans used to be extradimensional giants who lived forever but we passed through an electromagnetic null zone without our protective mental shield and it stripped us of our higher consciousness. some shit blew up and we had to move from lemuria, which sank. the planet (which is alive) set up some mystical energy vortexes to lead us to atlantis, but there weren't enough people for all the vortexes and it attracted the jews (who failed to ascend on their own planet) and martians (who just blew up their planet after disconnecting themselves from the christ-love network of the universe). the martians scammed us all and took over, but Thoth and some other smart guys escaped control by hiding out in their spaceship (which landed on the pyramids) and periodically went around to primitive human civilizations and dumped knowledge about irrigation and engineering and writing onto us to help us get back to our ascended forms. all the ancient architectural wonders of the world were actually constructed at the same time in the fourth dimension and only percolated out of that dimension at different times, and they also happen to be built on nodal points of the planet-spanning christ consciousness grid that is supposed to lead to our enlightenment. also Thoth's spaceship keeps evil aliens at bay and a peruvian woman used it to scare the Grays from the Reticulan cluster away during the Cold War (which they were the cause of).

duh.

Just reached level 11 with my Necromancer, need 1 more spell to learn, toss me some good suggestions for shit a Wizard often forced into supporting from the very, very, very, as far as physicslly possible very far away backline should get at that point (other than obviously Create Undead (That spell is good, right? Ghould look alright.)). Sitting on a staggering 50 HP with +1 CON, so keep that in mind. Also got disadvantage against spell saves due to an item.

also the illuminati and the free masons are the good guys but the church is demonizing them because they're actually evil. jesus is a higher dimensional soul that was incarnated into a body after mary and joseph spirit-banged interdimensionally on a higher plane of existence. jesus got all his savior mojo by meditating in tibet during his teenage years because that's where hte planet's kundalini (sexual power source) was. also some shit about the creation music of the universe being the source for all our godly names.

Depends on the patron/god and its main purpose. Make it change and develop as the character does some RP stuff and maybe make it do something like one of these items?

I always thought Magic Circe was a good one? Apart from that

> actually looks at the rulebook

Dude, fucking Disintegrate.

counterspell? blink? its other spellcasters that are going to fuck you up the hardest

...

What offensive spell has THE biggest fucking AOE? Is there anything with a larger blast radius that Freezing Sphere's 60 feet?