/5eg/ - Fifth Edition General

That girl looks like she's used to blazing it and chasing the dragon.

Yes, as well as a bunch of content on the second page.

Oh, I see; it's a preview. I thought this was a UA for some reason.

How do I make this in 5e?

I just read through the shaman homebrew in the last topic. Is bladelock even more gimped than melee shaman? Cause if so I suddenly understand the complaints. Best I could tell, melee shaman capped out at 3 attacks per round (including a bonus action attack) and 5th level spirit guardians for 8d8 per round. That seems very middling to me for a melee caster hybrid.

$0.00.

Amazon was running a promo with audible for 1 free physical book under $50 and 2 free audio books for signing up for a 30 day audible trial. Tons of people gamed it by grabbing high value physical books, like d&d handbooks, and canceling immediately after, so they appended the promo to a smaller selection of books and required you to have bought two books off amazon in the past 6 months

Kirby would be like CR40 by 5e standards

>1 free physical book under $50
Good fucking lord, who the hell at Amazon thought that was a good idea?

Thoughts on this background for a Hexblade?

>Noble who received a strange gift one day. A shard of a broken blade.
>The shard starts talking to him. At first it feels a bit like a voice of reason giving him advice, but he later learns the fragment is actually talking to him.
>It urges him to leave his boring life, and go on an adventure. That by going out, and finding certain rare materials, he could maybe reforge the fragment into a full sword again.
>It promises fame he so long has wanted, and calls itself a legendary blade once wielded by a legendary hero whose name is lost to time.
>It will berate him whenever he does something bad or evil, or too good if it requires sacrifices of any kind from him, staying True Neutral, trying to pull him towards that as well
>It has a problem with both fanatically "good" people, as well as evil people. But it has no problem with petty thiefs, con artists, or ordinarily friendly people.
>Noble is a very selfcentered asshole (CN) who just wants fame and fortune of his own, and his failing household isnt something he is looking forward to taking over right now.
>How much it listens to the sword, and which direction he goes, will be decided primarily by the party's actions.

Will probably be a Human, I dont know the rest of the party yet (hence the open alignment right now), but he will quickly be pulled along with the flow of the party, and try to match them. I imagine a Noble type who is very much about aligning his pace with those around him, to "fit in", so it doesn't matter if the party is full of murderhobos or Super Good Clerics and Paladins, he'll manage to not ruffle any feathers either way.

I plan on talking to the GM about the shard and the potential reforge at some point late on the campaign. I know we will go to 20 (Last 3 campaigns did, not seeing this one stop before that), and I dont mind a long term goal.

>wanting to be a passive character who is simply acted on by the party instead of imposing your will on them
>choosing a CHA class to act this out

Barbarian Magic item recommendations?
I can outfit most of my players. but the barbarian always gives me issues

awww come on dude why didnt anybody mention this

Belts of Giant Strength are easy bake items for strength characters.

The only thing I'd be less certain on with that backstory is the noble being a selfcentered Chaotic-neutral asshole. Even with the sword prodding him to go out and do great things, it feels like he won't be as eager to tag along.

If anything, I would say to have him be an honorable sort who dreamed of being a knight, but got stuck with bureaucracy and management in his relatively poor household. Have him be more of a lawful type compared to the blade's chaotic, it prompting him to fight a bit more dirty or forgive those petty thieves, but him still having something more firm that he believes in and a dream that this gift will let him pursue.

Someone did. I wanna say it was in one of the threads between friday and saturday?

i guess i need to spend more time sitting on Veeky Forums...

Something that gives more damage or more armor without being armor, like a magical ring or something.

Alternatively, give them a magical item that fills their character's interest over something that helps them do their role better.

That's a pretty good idea. I wanted the "resentful of the current state of his life", so he has plenty of reasons to go out. I was imagining him being a snobbish idiot, but I like the lawful take as well. I think I'll go in that direction instead.

Nah, not passive. It is just the "I want to fit in" mentality, so if people act good, he will try to approach his actions from that angle as well, and go full hypocrite when talking on behalf of the party, if he has to.

What's his current loadout, level, and race? Some obvious one-size-fits-all magic items for a barbarian are Belt of Giant Strength and Ring of Protection, but other stuff requires a bit more information.

What's the best background for a character who was a slave?

I realize we are missing information on the final iteration of the Hexblade, but what should a Hexblade build look like in general?

Full Cha, obviously, but I am not so sure about the rest. I know a lot of people say to ignore the weapon feature, which is fair until you get your sentient artifact weapon at least, but then what? Normal Warlock until then, just full EB invocations and the usual utility like Eldritch Sight?

LvL 6 Barbarian, Berzerk. Currently has gauntlets of ogre, a magic custom Axe that does cold damage, and lightbringer from mines of pendle (mace that summons light and I think does small radiant damage).
They are basically the tank of the group. Hanging with Rogue, Sorc, and Ranger/Cleric.
The item can be a little OP, this is supposed to be their reward for a massive quest and they might not get it for a few levels, but I want to dangle it in front of them to make them want it.
The player is also a super munchkin and loves to collect stuff.

Make your own, or figure out why he is no longer a slave. Maybe he is now a Folk Hero because he freed himself and a lot of other slaves when he got out. Maybe soldier if he was a more combat oriented slave.

Entertainer ( gladiator)
Urchin

Bracers of Defense?

Haunted One or Urchin, but neither fits exactly.

I think a Draconic Bloodline Sorcerer works well as a multiclass (Stone Sorcerer would have been better), get more spell slots to cast and you can run around with longswords and the such.

Also, odds are you are not getting the Sentient Legendary artifact for the longest time also they don't work as Pact weapons. I like grabbing some of the invocations such as Eldritch Smite and Improved Pact weapon.

You aren't actually limited to the listed backgrounds, remember. Customizing it is standard, not a variant rule.

This is Aerisi Kalinoth. Say something nice about her.

Have a character idea but don't feel like gimping my group. How should i make this work?

>Sixth son of a paladin family
>All brothers died for JUSTICE. Eldest now
>Bloodline had deal with patron saint, gets shiny powers
>Old man, idled years away
>Order sends him off on quests in hopes he will die so some younger (and more useful) relative inherits it
>Holy raiment follows him everywhere, regardless of his opinion

I was thinking of a celestial patron warlock with blade pact and armor of shadows to start, but as I don't see myself doing darkness+devil sight or the more "evil looking" utility invocations like mask of many faces, I feel like I'd be too much of a burden.
What other options do I have?

He'd be CR 40 by the standards of a lot of of editions.

not him, but perhaps one might need to work out something like a "domestic servant" background.

Biggest challenge: what the fuck kind of benefit could you get out of that?

My current character's a slave, I picked folk hero for him it seemed the most apt.

>Sentient Legendary artifact for the longest time also they don't work as Pact weapons.
Not him, but a GM is fucking retarded if he doesn't allow a Hexblade Warlock to make his actual Hexblade Patron his Pact weapon on retrieving it.

Entertainer (sexual)

>what the fuck kind of benefit could you get out of that?
The Hospitality feat that Folk heroes get seems fitting.

Devil's sight without darkness is still good and works fluffwise. Think being able to seek out the evil, even in pure darkness.

Fiendish Vigor can be fluffed as a divine shield that temporarily protects you from damage. Eldritch Sight can be useful, so can Beguiling Influence.

I hope they add that in for the Hex Warrior as it seems silly that they can't. At the same time, I will pose the statement that of the weapon itself is a patron and therefore would have other individuals that it would be granting its power to then maybe it would not make sense for it to just go to one of them.

>Made a NPC intended solely as a waifu for PCs
>All players love her and declare her a party mascot
>"I bet you didn't think we're gonna take her with us!"
Actually, Alex, that was the reaction I intended to get.

>Now that the dust has settled a bit, thoughts on Tomb on Annihilation?
I fucking love it so far.

I know it's probably par the course with other book adventures as far as level range but seems like you could easily stretch a full campaign up to level 20 with all the shit there is to do.
Also the setting (not chult specifically, but jungles and shit) is one of the most fun in my opinion. I guess because as a child Indiana Jones and Jurassic Park were my favorite films.

Personally, I am more fond of giving the weapon to the Hexblade at level 1. The Hexblade then evolves during the campaign along with the character, going from a mundane sword, to being magical foe the purposes of overcoming resistances, to bonuses of all kinds.

But I like that kind of flavour, so that's probably just me.

Several of the mentioned swords suggested as patrons, can be obtained by player characters.

Would it be possible to make a character based around Two-weapon fighting in regards to using Handaxes and throwing them? Or are thrown weapons just doomed to failure no matter what?

Guys I just want drunken monk to be fun.
Please don't fuck this up mearls. The UA was pretty bad.

Hand axes are monk weapons

That is true... hopefully, they place this in the Hex Warrior feature in the end.

I did this with the first Hexblade Warlock my party had.

It was a shortsword, and constantly gained more and more power. But it only worked with him. If anyone else picked it up, the blade was awkward and strangely heavy (had to use two hands to fight properly), and had 0 of the benefits it usually had, outside of the resist negating magic property. Same happened if the Warlock tried to dual wield another weapon.

That was pretty fun.

Actually might be on to something, maybe ask DM if you can swap your bonus action unarmed attack for dual-weapon fighting style.

Why not warlock-paladin multiclass?
3 levels of warlock for shillelagh rest of levels into paladin

Yeah, do it. Why not?
It would be cool and it's not "unviable" no matter what autists will have you believe.
In fact, thrown weapons help you overcome lots of situations.

I want to attack this guy but dont want to move because...
>attack of opportunity
>he's too far away
>I don't want to get into melee with them
>they're flying
and a lot more possible scenarios

Personally, I would be a battemaster. Flavoring it as being such a fucking badass with your mastery over handaxes.

youtube.com/watch?v=_kZ4SHVKlRA

It would be okay on barbarian and it'd definitely work and potentially be fun, though a dual shortsword barbarogue or a GWM barbarian are both superior.

EK with thrown weapons
Bond with a throwing axe then immediately summon it back after throwing it

Hmm, that might work out then, since I could use the handaxes more as a way to use my monk damage at range, and supplement it with martial arts for being up close.

Not sure if he would spring for that, but even without it it means I could still lead off a fight by throwing an axe, throwing the other axe as a bonus action, and running up to punch someone. Two-weapon fighting would help in that regard, if only for the extra AC and to get axes back quickly.

I am liking the sound of Monk more, though I may dip into battlemaster for the fighting style and maneuvers. Being able to trip at range would be helpful, and I think it wouldn't suffer the common issue of throwing multiple weapons and then being unarmed.

Give him something that removes exhaustion.

Drill Sargeant's Headband
While attuned to this item a creature may use its bonus action to deal 1d10 psychic damage to itself (as encouraging expletives ring loudly in his head). The creature then enters an exceptionally vigorous rage, at the end of which the creature does not receive a level of exhaustion. Once per day, charge gained at dawn.

You could probably even buff it. Berserker barbs kinda suck, I wouldn't be afraid to give them something stronger honestly.

This could be fun as well.
I've always thought a spear wielding EK would be the best though instead of axes.

youtube.com/watch?v=zngr2IA4R4o

>I am liking the sound of Monk more, though I may dip into battlemaster for the fighting style and maneuvers. Being able to trip at range would be helpful, and I think it wouldn't suffer the common issue of throwing multiple weapons and then being unarmed.
Yeah after throwing your weapons away it would be nice to be able to fall back on your fists.

>wood elf axe throwing monk
Gives me a Toa Lewa vibe and I might just have this as my back up character for ToA
Would maybe take up elements monk just because.

Now that it's mentioned, monk could definitely work.

I wouldn't dip into battlemaster at all with monk. Monk isn't very multiclass friendly, but you 'could' go 1 level of fighter for plate armour and then use hand axes with monk if you really insisted on going strength. Hardly optimal, but it works. I just wouldn't go 3 entire levels out of monk just for some manoeuvres

Elements monk doesn't seem like a good combination, since you'd already get some of the ranged ability thanks to the axes. Wood elf with some axe style does seem interesting though. I'd probably go shadow myself to add in some stealth aspects

Yeah, that's fair. I don't think I'd actually gain that much from the fighting style either. Probably better off with Open Hand in that regard. Not much need to use strength either, since Handaxes are monk weapons. I just never put the pieces together on it being a good option for them before.

I'm looking at building a Rock Gnome bard for my next character, and I'm looking at the tinker ability, which lets you build little toys. Has anyone had a really clever use for these?

How are you running the hexcrawling exploration in ToA?

What do you guys think about this Eldritch Invocation?

Anyone have the Critical Role comics in pdf form?

Meh.

Make an invocation that lets you cast EB through a weapon, doing (weapon damage + EB)* beams instead.

>Level 17
>Cast eldritch blast
>Make four fucking attacks which deal normal weapon damage, +CHA mod from the level 12 invocation, +1d10 from eldritch blast, +CHA mod again from eldritch blast, and this all works with one of those +X pact weapon invocations too
This is insane if you get the bow pact weapon. Otherwise you need a way to negate disadvantage at 5ft such as a fighter level dip with the UA fighting style or crossbow expert and then it's not as great because you need to be in melee but still ridiculous.

How many spells does that even apply to as you have it phrased?

If you're just trying to fix up Blade Pact, I think you mainly need an early invocation that grants you survivability as a reward for attacking in melee, and then another around level 10 that works to keep your damage on-par with EB spam, because the current ones don't cut it.

Make it only work with a melee weapon.

Done. Squishy Warlock in melee without GWM or similar bullshit, or with Strength AND Cha, which will leave you with basically no con.

Super glass cannon.

Shit, just realized it was a 1st level of higher
suddenly it's shit

This is as far as I would ever take this feature, even then I don't want it working with cantrips as they scale too well. Eldritch Blast spam and Chill Touch would be way too good with this.

Witch Bolt, Vampiric Touch, Scorching Ray, Plane Shift.

Actually no wait I rushed this post >Scorching ray as a level 5 spell
>6 rays
>you attack 6 times on top of the 6 rays
The invocation basically becomes a 'use scorching ray' gimmick ability.

I can vaguely understand vampiric touch, but scorching ray easily dominates the scene here.

This version is odd because with EB you'd make an attack and cause EB damage but then return to using EB as normal which flavour-wise seems really odd. And honestly the only reason for all this bladelock stuff is flavour.

I could make it so the spell attack must only be able to target one creature that way the Fiendlock Bladelocks could not get so much mileage out of this.

I'm running Curse of Strahd next week, any advice before I start? My players and I are really looking forward to the darker tone, since I usually do more light hearted adventures.

Agreed
How about now?

I suppose it works out.

Might be interesting to extend it to other (full action) spells as well such as save ones but I still don't really like that it's taking pact of the blade down the 'this pact gives you a load of combat-only benefits whereas the other pacts expand your utility'

>Instead make 1 attack
Why? Warlocks can make 2 attacks, and 2 warlock melee attacks + spell is not at all overpowered.

Plan it out. It’s a sandbox. It can lead to “wtf do we do now?”s if there’s no direction.

You’re supposed to do the card reading beforehand to set up the game. Read the options and pick the cool ones. If PCs do it in game their reading overrides yours.

Practice Strahd. Try to get in the mindset. Think of several encounters before the final battle.

Slightly urge the players to have some heals in the party, shit’s deadly.

Don’t know if you play online or tabletop but look into some dark grim music.

Is it more sandboxy than Lost Mines of Phadelver? We just got through that and it didn't seem too hard to course correct on the fly

So, I am curious here, because I see this "Gish" feature too often. The wording "You make a melee attack" clearly means using Str/Dex (Or cha for hexblades/Shillelag I guess), and on hit, it deals "normal damage".

This is fine for regular attack spells, but what about save spells? What happens then? What happens if you miss with the weapon attack?

From my understanding, a miss means no damage, and a hit means bypassing the save, which seems counterintuitive. But if you allow a save, you are halving your chance of the spell being worthwhile, because you both need to hit AND have them fail their save.

It is such a jumbled mess, honestly.

Yes, I wouldn’t even consider LMoP sandbox. Maybe some hub area based game.

CoS is, hey you’re in this strange land, what do you do? Hey you helped transport this person, WHAT DO YOU DO?

You should up the dangers of the wilderness (not mechanically but descriptions) if you want to have some resemblance of “control”.

warosu.org/tg/thread/52258310#p52262949
Read this.

It's the same sort of feature that other guy pitched for his Revised Stone Sorcerer. I think the idea is to immitate a Duskblade or the Pathfinder Magus or something and trying to cram the effect of 'hit guy with sword, deal sword damage, also hit them with spell' into a single ability, which is something 5e really struggles to handle in a balanced way.

I think it would only work if you restricted it to cantrips or a rather short and specific list of spells, but at that point you might as well just make some higher level spells that function the same way as the SCAG cantrips.

In that version, you could cast Scorching ray as a fiendlock which would allow you to instead make a number of attacks equal to the number of spell attack rolls, which would basically scale to about 6 hits each adding an extra 2d6 fire damage as this () user has shown us.

The best part about this feature is that it does not require warlock spell slots to be used so you could use other slots from other classes if you multiclassed to increase damage output. Vampiric Touch would work pretty well with this for example.

Sorry I could not really think of any utility with the feature as I did not want it working with saving throw based spells.

This feature does not work with saving throw spells, it states clearly "Whenever you would make a melee or ranged spell attack" NOT "Whenever you would cast a warlock spell". It litterally only works with like 3 spells, 2 if you don't go Fiend. Witch Bolt, Vampiric Touch, Plane Shift

>I did not want it working with saving throw based spells.
That kinda limits what the warlock can do and further corners them into sorcerer style gameplay of 'all I really do is blast stuff'

But the utility thing is different because my main problem with pact of the blade is that people see it as just a straight combat enhancement/changing thing when I think pacts should be mostly utility.

>Made a chill Paladin of the Ancients
>Group has a Circle of Dreams/Life Cleric multiclass, SS/CBE Deep Stalker Ranger, GWM Fighter, and Lore Wizard
>Went for 15 Strength and plate armour, shield and whatever, and full charisma.
This is the most comfy campaign I have played so far, holy shit. We are level 8, and I am just chilling around, giving save bonuses and magic resist, and maybe smiting once a while, and getting hard carried through every single fight without any pressure on me.

Ancients Paladins are fantastic for groups of super optimised groups. This is just incredible.

How do I make a character that basically dispels magic on contact less special snowflake-y and not gimp the party?

I'm considering making the character a hybrid fighter-monk class because, considering the AMF, Ki use is out of the question unless the DM homebrews Ki to be more of a life force than magic. I also recognize that the character can only use mundane healing methods, of which the choices are limited in 5e AFAIK.

Written in the adventure, the PCs only encounter Strahd once or twice. No one runs it that way.

He's getting constant feedback from his spies about where the PCs are, listening in on their plans, etc. Learn his psychology, and RP him behind the screen. He can show up just to scare the shit out the PCs, and should often. The first night my players were in town, staying at the burgomaster's house, he sent a swarm of ravens down the chimney, just to prove they can't hide.

I've also had his carriage thunder past when they were in the tavern, and all the non Vistani took cover in fear.

Right now, they haven't even spoken to him. They saw him staring creepily through the window of a house they were staying at, saw him ride his nightmare to watch a ritual, and once when he got away with Ireena (they made some poor choices).

Also worth noting, read the adventure all the way through, just to see how all the subplots connect and play off each other. I also warned my players ahead of time of a Skyrim amount of sidequests, so they should take notes on names, what people want, etc, because it's gonna suck to go back and figure that out again. "Was it Igor that wanted the doll? Or the hermit, whatshisname?"

>It's the same sort of feature that other guy pitched for his Revised Stone Sorcerer.
That's cool, you remembered that. Some user had shown me a feature from a homebrew Shaman class and I basically just moved it to the Warlock, to see how it would work out.

>You might as well just make some higher level spells that function the same way as the SCAG cantrips.
I hope they do this, this would be easier and people would probably like it a lot. This might be happening as there are some spells on the Wizard spell list that might be doing just this.

Would this be better for your tastes? I personally don't like the wording and it leaves some stuff ambiguous but it might help with the versatility. Just replace the words "Rite-Enchanted" with "Pact Weapon".

>lore wizard
vomit.jpg

Unfortunately now it's getting a bit long-winded
Maybe we should just go back to war magic