/5eg/ - Fifth Edition General

Have you tried hitting them with your mace?

Arcana Cleric with boom blade and one ranged one of your choice.

If I wanted to do that I'd play a Zeal/War/Nature/Life/etc. Cleric. The fact they even make cantrip spam Cleric an option, a good option, but just don't let me roll my attack is dumb.

I mean of course Arcana Cleric gets that, but I just want something for my Light Cleric. Maybe I can convince my DM to let Magic Initiate: Druid for Produce Flame count for Potent Spellcasting.

My big disappointment with clerics is that they made armor proficiency dependent on Domain, but then made it so it's Medium armor and shields by default and half the domains have heavy armor anyway.

A bit more granularity and alternate methods of giving different clerics AC would have been interesting

How do they do it?

Seems like a small ask to me, it's still a Wisdom cantrip.

What, like no armor as baseline and then lots of light/medium/shield sprinkled around as well as heavy?

Could be neat to have the baseline Cleric be more of a priest/scholastic clergy, and would be a good reason to give Clerics better damage cantrips.

It's the same with Darkvision. It doesn't feel special when 80% of races have it, same with Domains and Heavy Armor.

It's only a couple more than a warlock. The point is it's only a cantrip if I can do it all day with no or minimal break.

What races should darkvision be narrowed down to? Just the ones that also have sunlight sensitivity?

Fuck what you're talking about, source on that Hobgoblin? He's hot.

hobgoblins are not for lewd

But you do jerk off 5-6 times a day?

Have you played Keith Baker's draft for Warforged in 5e? It looks a lot better than the one in the UA, but the one in the UA is a lot simpler.

Has anyone played a death cleric? Did you use a Martial Weapon with your Medium Armor?

Not every single day, but it's fairly easy to do if I feel like it, or feel like I need to.

It would be great if there were varied clerics out there, some built around cloth, some using various tiers of armor.

Honestly I don't feel like Death Cleric really needs to use a weapon, the fact they get free twinned Chill Touch is really powerful and going to be better then using a weapon unless you're up against a solo guy.

If you want to though, then just use a Longbow or Crossbow.

I'm strongly considering either death cleric or warlock for my Skeletor-type aspiring superbaddie. I didn't plan on going with a weapon, focusing on casting instead. Is a weapon wise?

Yeah, that's the sort of thing I mean. Have them get none or Light by default, then you can give things like War Clerics heavy to make them proper fronline, and leave stuff like Light with little to no armor so that they can have more blasting power offset by the fragility.

Plus stuff like Trickery could be built around the thought that the cleric would be running around with high Dex in light armor.

Alright, /5eg/.

Most caster types gain new spells by independent research or by finding them written down somewhere and nicking off with the relevant notes. If a caster develops a spell independently, then that usually means that their version has a unique twist to it - a minor visual trait perhaps, or some quirk in how they cast it.

Have you, or any of your players, ever had a particularly neat twist to any of your spells?

I'm not a fan of Baker's version, personally, it's very clear that his grasp on 5e's mechanics back then were pretty weak. I use my own homebrew version that takes note of the 4e warforged and 5e's general take on natural armor for races.

This is good to know, I was thinking it seemed better.

Damn it. I guess I can whip something up with the DM.

>Have you, or any of your players, ever had a particularly neat twist to any of your spells?
A continual light spell that allows the caster to turn the spell on and off with a snap of his fingers

It's a mess. We need an Eberron book and we need it badly.

You could try selling him on this, I've read good things about it: homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/SyHA7hDlb

I'd do that.
Make room for low light vision.

I'd leave Mountain dwarves with Darkvision at least. Other than that, low-light fits basically everyone and makes torches and Light actually important.

I like this, I'll bring it up, thank you.

What is Baker's draft for Warforged in 5e? I don't remember seeing it.

That's a pretty sweet utility spell, not gonna lie.

Not gonna lie, I was asking more about just unique ways that they present standard spells - For example, /mydude/ makes all of his spells really flashy because he thinks it looks more heroic, which fuels his massive messiah complex. Casting Haste results in lightning crackling around his legs, Chill Touch manifests as ice blue finger lasers instead of skeletal hands, that sort of thing. But I think your interpretation is more interesting, so let's roll with that.

My current character is a necromancer. I critfailed an arcana check to investigate a shadow dragon chained up in a library and instead got very engrossed in a spell tome of Create Small Undead, while the dragonborn sorceror actually did well on the check and had some kind of weird mind conversation with it.

It's just a cantrip that lets me make very small zombies.

So I plan to send my characters down into the Underdark soon, and I'm trying to come up with good enemy factions to encounter. Drow, duergar, and illithids are the most obvious, of course, but is there any good orc-ish set of monsters that I'm blanking on. Crude, violent, tribal-level society, that sort of thing.

Orcs work just fine in the Underdark. They've got darkvision and everything.

Why did I say not gonna lie twice? Because I'm a fucking eejit, and that second paragraph was originally at the end of the post.

Dark orcs, which are actually albino because pigmentation is useless in low light conditions.

Plan to send my players, I should say.

keith-baker.com/extra-life-hacking-the-warforged/

The oft forgotten Troglodytes.

I wish more Clerics got Martial Weapons and no Heavy Armor, like Death Domain.

Like Trickery Clerics! They should definitely have access to Shortswords and Scimitars and Rapiers and Whips.

Yuan-Ti are also an option I believe.

Trickery Clerics getting an assortment of Finesse weapons with Light armor would be great, especially if they could apply their Stealth advantage to themselves

It feels like it would be tricky to reverse-engineer things to work that way from what we have now though

Eh, Yuan-Ti would be pretty rare down there, their empire was on the surface in the South. Some Mersshulk cultists might be up to shenanigans but they wouldn't fill the role of orcs.

Kuo-Toa, maybe? They're pretty savage and primitive. Not too buff, but they are still medium tribal sorts

In the case of Trickery, there's zero risk of unbalancing them. They're objectively terrible at the moment, as great as their Domain's flavor is.

I still want to make a Warforged Cleric, who's literally a puppet being controlled by a minor Trickery Deity.

Kuo-Toa. Basically "What if Sahuagin lived in the underdark!"
Think Grimlock's have some crude and tribal aspects too, can't be arsed to check though.
There's also Dire Corbies. Which are best described as drow harpies on amphetamines.

Friendlier faces include deep gnomes and Flumphs. Nobody knows why a species who feeds on good vibes would live in the Underdark.

>Nobody knows why a species who feeds on good vibes would live in the Underdark.

Maybe the reason it's so terrible is they're constantly feeding, so everyone feels bad?

Ok, let's break this down and analyze what he did.

> Main stat bonus is CON
Fine, makes sense with their origin of being literally made of metal or some other hard, non-flesh substance.

> Living Construct
Same as the UA one, no issues here.

> 'Power Down' mode
Basically just a Trance for Warforged, still fine.

> Warforged Resilience
Probably a bit too strong when combined with the bonus to CON already, as it incorporates something that other races usually trade off for, or negates some magic item options. I'd remove it entirely.

> Integrated Armor
I get the fluff behind it, but the base being 12 + DEX when in no armor means that a level 1 Warforged Monk or Barbarian will have 18 AC at level 1 assuming 16 in DEX + WIS/CON, respectively.

> Self-Stabilizing
Again, too strong, gut it entirely.

> Warforged "models"
Those are fine, probably leave them as-is. If anything, maybe add another one or two that are like, "Warforged Tactician" for a CON/INT option and a "Warforged Diplomat" for a CON/CHA option.

>Marionette Cleric

That sounds pretty neat. Trickery as a whole feels like it's a very odd setup, like they weren't sure how to fit it in into the general heavier armor and good-aligned flavor that clerics lean towards.

>but the base being 12 + DEX when in no armor means that a level 1 Warforged Monk or Barbarian will have 18 AC at level 1 assuming 16 in DEX + WIS/CON, respectively.

That's not how it works. You could use either 10+Dex+Wis or 12+Dex. Not both. We have something similar on Lizardfolk

> Integrated Armor
>I get the fluff behind it, but the base being 12 + DEX when in no armor means that a level 1 Warforged Monk or Barbarian will have 18 AC at level 1 assuming 16 in DEX + WIS/CON, respectively.
Holy shit, your opinion has just been dicarded if you can't comprehend this simple as fuck rule.

YOU ONLY USE ONE AC CALCULATION/

I don't even care about the race, but c'mon it's like basic shit know to the rules for dude. Look at Lizardfolk who have 13+DEX.

>I get the fluff behind it, but the base being 12 + DEX when in no armor means that a level 1 Warforged Monk or Barbarian will have 18 AC at level 1 assuming 16 in DEX + WIS/CON, respectively.
Maybe have at least some understanding of how 5e's mechanics work before you critique someone else's homebrew.

Mechanical servant sucks, I don't wanna be a summoning fag bogging down combat

or if I am, then at least an alchemist should have some kind of fucked up homunculus

Just either make the 6th level class feature something more general, or remove it and give different alternatives to the subclasses

So, out of curiosity, being aware that fennec-people were actually a thing in AD&D (Lupin Vermin Hunter breed, from Dragon #237), I was inspired to give making 5e version a shot. How overpowered would you rank this as?

Fennekin
Ability Score Modifiers: +2 Dexterity, +1 Wisdom
Size: Small
Speed: 30 feet
Vision: Darkvision 60 feet
Desert Born: You are Acclimatized to Extreme Heat, which means you are immune to the Exhaustion loss caused by Extreme Heat (DMG pg 110). Additionally, you only need a half of a gallon of water per day, or one gallon in hot weather, and have Advantage on the Constitution save against Exhaustion caused by not drinking sufficient daily water.
Keen Hearing: You add double your Proficiency bonus to Perception checks based on hearing, but suffer Disadvantage on saving throws against the Deafened condition.
Lucky: When you roll a 1 on an attack roll, ability check or saving throw, you can reroll the dice and must use the new roll.

For comparison, back in AD&D, Fennecs looked like this:
+2 Dex, -2 Str
Movement Value 6
Bite attack that inflicts 1d2 damage
Infravision 60 feet
83% chance to detect if a person is a werewolf
+2 bonus to detecting invisible and ethereal beings
Free proficiency in Blind-Fighting
Tracking skill equal to one-third Wisdom (rounded up) with a Ranger adding a bonus of +3
Can recognize a race by smell with an Intelligence check with a +2 bonus and a given individual in the same manner with an Intelligence check with a -2 penalty
-1 penalty to saving throws vs. odor or sound-based attacks
Hear Noise Proficiency of 40% + 2% per level
1/day, can reroll a single dice result for itself, an ally or an enemy

True strike should really be a bonus action spell.

Indeed. It wouldn't even be overpowered if people followed the bonus action spellcasting rules so you could only cast a cantrip with it.

Take out lucky and just give it the same thing it had before with the 1/day

True Strike should give you an insight into the target's defences. The way I rule it is you get to ask one question - what's the target's AC, what's it's con save, is it resistant to fire ect. Makes a useless cantrip useful.

Yeah. Strongest thing would be using it at low levels for accurate strikes with bigger weapons if you build it right, but even that feels like it would taper off as soon as you get extra attacks or higher damage cantrips really.

Sorry, I derped on it because I've not had a player use a class that required different AC Calculations.

You guys are right, let me re-evaluate it.

> Integrated Armor (2nd review)
... Maybe a bit underpowered? It's ok for lower levels, but having it be a hard cap of 17 doesn't scale too well into higher levels. And because a Shield is classified as armor, you have to integrate it during a short rest, which means you can't drop it mid-fight and turns off the 12 + DEX scaling already.

I'd rather it was like someone above suggested and turned into a scaling Natural Armor. As I envision it, I would turn it into a thing where if you don't wear armor or use a shield, it scales as 10 + Prof. Bonus + DEX modifier.

My personal theory is that the mechanical servant was meant to be a third archetype to let the artificer be a sort of pet master, like the new UA Beast Master, but they couldn't figure out a way to make it scale properly and balance it out for all levels.

did they drop the twilight circle in xanathars? or am i just retarded

Except Shields do apply unless the calculation says specifically says 'while not wearing armor or using a shield'

See: the difference between Barbarian and Monk armored defense wording.

So you still don't get how the rules work.

Why not both?

The feeding is passive, no more affects the person than a plant feeding on rays of the sun, Larry.
People are miserable in the Underdark because it's a terrible place to live. Like Milwaukee, almost.

got me there

But based on how I'm reading Integrated Armor, it says 'suit of armor' and RAW, a Shield is part of armor.

RAI obviously it's meant to not be used, but some people will mincemeat the wording and try to play it by RAW, which is why I applied it that way.

Even with it working RAI where a shield doesn't turn off the bonus, it ends up being 19 AC, which doesn't scale too well into the mid and high-tier levels of 5e.

Tbf, shields are armor, but not armor that you wear to use

Yeah, the designers really derped/had a brain fart when they designed that spell.

>RAW, a Shield is part of armor.

Except a Barbarian can use a shield, hence the difference in wording between it and a Monk

How do you balance Tiny races without giving them a bazillion negative ability modifiers?

>cannot wield melee weapons without Light property
>weapons must be specially made or whatever
>cannot wear medium or heavy armor
>have disadvantage on strength contests

In the past it was much stronger (+20 to an attack, a near-guaranteed hit). Honestly they should have made it a 1st-level spell that made the next attack against the target creature a guaranteed hit.

And WotC worded it that way because they know that they have DMs who play by 100% RAW, not RAI.

I can't find where in the PHB it says whether the minimum for damage rolls after modifier is 0 or 1? The "Damage rolls" section has nothing about it.

Well, you don't have someone to clarify what RAI is as the table, only the book.

Why? PCs shouldn't be tiny.

Ok /5eg/ I have a question for everyone involving skill checks.

So this came up in our game last night in the context of lockpicking. We needed to bypass 4 gates, whether by picking them open or climbing around them or whatever. We had 2 party members and 1 accompanying NPC who all have proficiency in thieve's tools.

So this led to all 3 people attempting a lock until someone succeeded, which quickly led to an extensive conversation about how we wanted to handle consecutive skill checks at the table going forward. The DM proposed that every time someone fails a skill check the DC for future attempts increases because the PC gets flustered and begins to lose focus. They can take a short rest after which they can try again at the original DC.

This led to me asking why I couldn't jump in and try the lock at the original DC, because my friend is flustered but i'm not because I haven't attempted it yet.

Eventually we decided that the increasing DC on failure was a decent idea. It allows for a few attempts before the skill check becomes impossible to succeed on, after which the party must find an alternative solution to the problem at hand. A short rest can be taken under the mutual understanding that the DM will punish the party in some way for being delayed. Repeated failures for some skill checks may result in a contextually appropriate debuff for the PC, like a level of exhaustion for failing a difficult athletics check 4 or 5 times.

Has this conversation come up at your table, and if so what system did the group decide upon? What do you think is the most fair way of handling situations such as these?

Is there any good resource or guide to having a bit of warfare/politics in your game? For instance I want to do an arc focused around war, but I don't know shit about how warfare works, or how politics works with that. Also I don't know shit about kings or councils or anything, other than they're rulers. How do I know who becomes king if the current one dies?

If one nation attacks an other, what does that mean? Are they automatically seen as like a warmongering country that's barbaric, or is it seen as like "conquest is just a part of being a nation." Where's the divide?

Also, is it like against the "rules" or something if one warring faction tries to assassinate the king of the people they're invading?

Help action, group checks, increase DC, etc. Depends on the situation.

What are the different powerlevels of the various levels?
Like, at the first few levels a bandit chief with a taken-over fort and a bunch of men at his disposal is a good threat and at the last few levels, ancient demons and dragons become contenders for the role of over-arching threat

I personally find that time can be a very good penalty. It might take someone a single round to unlock a lock, but if they can't get it, it's usually going to be a lot more complex. So while the original failing check only takes a round, if they want to try the same damn thing it's going to take a very substantial amount of time, or sound, or both. This might attract monsters or foes.

Also depends on the check. If it's a check pertaining to being learned about something, I say you either know it or don't. You can't keep trying a history roll for instance. But of course, with enough time you can keep doing strength checks until something finally moves/breaks.

I'd do either you "Will i open the lock BEFORE the guardsman will came?" instead of "Will i open the lock?".

Otherwise: "Take 20". If you have proficiency, right tools, enough time and there is no penalty for failure (like the guardsman approaching), you will succeed eventually, so why roll for it?

Watch The Hollow Crown series

What title would a duke award a group of adventurers that saved his daughter in order to bolster their reputation and bring them notoriety as monster hunters.

>Anyone can put on a suit of armor or strap a shield to an arm.
Shields are not suits of armor, RAW.

>You guys are right, let me re-evaluate it.
>Hard cap of 17
And you still get it wrong. Going by his rules, if you are not wearing any armor and are not using a shield, your AC is equal to 12+DEX%. If you're using a shield with no other armor it's 10+DEX%+2 which is the same thing. If you bond plate armor to yourself and use a shield your AC is 18+2 = 20.
This shit isn't complicated.

Champions of

It's detailed in the Player's Handbook.
Levels 1-5 players are local heroes. A bunch of bandits, a Gobelin invasion, a handful of gnolls.
Level 6-10 players are heroes on the scale of a country, able to fight creatures and threats that can destroy villages and potentially cities (young dragon, large undead invasion)
Level 11-15 players are world class adventurers, fight vampires and mummy lords, all sorts of Fiends and demons. It's not beyond them to exterminate a big dragon that would have conquered the land, or kill the archimage with level 9 spells.
Level 16-20 you save the multiverse from liches, kraken and tarrasques

>Implying a tarrasque is a threat to anyone

Yeah, it was a weird scenario and I don't think the DM had it fully thought through. He said the guardsmen would come if we took too much time, but we failed quite a few times and they still never showed up.
He also clearly fudged a roll when the NPC tried to pick the final lock, the NPC had failed a check earlier by a margin of 5, implying that their modifier was 4 or less, then later on they succeeded on the check when to do so they must have had at least a +8 modifier (he rolled in front of us and we knew the DC of the check).

Is 20 a hard level cap?

Yes, there are no epic levels in 5e.

No core races period.