/5eg/ - Fifth Edition General

>the compendium
I've seen that one before and god damn I liked it, I never really wanted to play a lock before finding it but damn the archive patron just seems cool as fuck.

I'm partial to the Storm King (Weak 14th level ability aside) and Chord myself. They look like a lot of fun, but sadly DMing comes first.

>Why is so much Fifth Edition homebrew so bad
I think a lot of homebrewers don't understand the design philosophy of 5e. They treat it like 3.PF, which is why you get things like every niche build getting a homebrew class, abilities that ignore bounded accuracy and other limitations and, worst case, features that refer to rules that don't even exist in this edition.
There's also the general 'not understanding balance' problem that isn't unique to 5e.
>how can we make it better?
Honestly, I think the only way to do that would be to work on a curated list of good homebrew. It won't necessarily make the overall quality better, because of Sturgeon's Law and all, but it at least makes the good stuff easier to find.
At the end of the day, idiots don't care about criticism.

On the note of terrible homebrew, I recently had the party find a dragon egg (unintentionally) and unsuprisingly the druid wants to train one. Ive said he'd have to become a beastmaster (3 levels of Ranger) to bond with it and sacrifice his wildshape in order to speed up it's incubation. Is this unreasonable given its only CR2 alongside the issues dragons naturally bring? Or will a dragon pet be OP?

Dragons are fiercely independent immediately from hatching. Treat it as an RP buddy, not a combat pet. Even at CR 2, a wyrmling is going to be naive and scared enough that it's not going to defend them to the death and would avoid combat whenever possible.

>curated list of good homebrew
The Unearthed Arcana Reddit page has this check this out.

reddit.com/r/UnearthedArcana/wiki/list

>Good homebrew
>Good
>Homebrew
Pick one of the two latter options or one-half of the first, but not both

I appreciate the laugh, but there is some pretty good homebrew out there and that list has a lot of them.

Yeah that is pretty unreasonable, dragons are smart creatures, raising a hatchling wouldn't need class based stuff and it'd know and appreciate being cared for by someone even if they weren't its biological parent, they're pretty self sufficient by nature sure and tend to be solitary but it wouldn't need anything special to get a friend and ally out of it. Just raising it with care and love, and that opens up a lot of fun RP stuff you can do with it.
>your druids face when you have the wyrmling ask him where baby dragons come from
>he now has to do the birds and the bees with a fucking dragon
If it's a chromatic dragon and not metallic then you have the potential for even more fun, the baby dragon trying to follow the example its "parent" is setting for it while its instincts are screaming at it to just fucking kill people. Hell if the little bugger lives to the end of the campaign you can give them an epilogue, or a followup campaign after a timeskip where it's literally the only good aligned chromatic dragon in the world.

Shit that's a pretty good plot hook to start a new game off with actually, party hired to slay dragon and find out it's actually a good guy people just assume it's evil because it's red.

Aasimar Sun Soul Monk (7) Totem Barbarian (3). What rank from 1 to Saiyan would you give this? I obviously don’t care about optimization.

Sure I was planning on it being a cunt (Green dragon) anyway. Maybe If it's bonded via beastmaster feature to my PC I'll have it trying to assert control in the relationship?

so /5eg/ my character died today. My half-orc hexblade was paralyze rayed and auto-failed the save from a disintegrate ray from a beholder in the Tomb of the Nine Gods. Just dust, lost in a Tomb.

The rest of my friends retreated via dimension door. Well, we were already on the retreat, but I was too slow. The halfling was petrified, although the Druid can reverse that.

I believe the rest of the party intends to replace me via Planar Binding an Earth Elemental, and pressing forward. Still, I am dead, and I am sad. I offered so little in the fight against the Beholder, and had, for some time, felt I offered marginal support at best to the party, that the Earth Elemental may be more valuable contribution anyway.

...

What are you going to roll up next?

How do I Storm Sorcerer? Is there a recommended list of spells someone can give me?

Play an Earth Gensai who accidentally gets summoned
instead when they summon the Earth Elemental.

Well you can always use that character in another campaign

The next time I play, which may be some time, I will play a Cleric. I think I will be DMing again first.

As a Barbarian with 14 DEX, am I better off carrying throwing weapons or a Longbow to use in case I get forced to attack at range?

Get javelins and strength throw at everything to maintain rage until you can cover the distance and smash it in the face.

Alright, one other thing I'm noticing, do Reckless Attack and Rage damage work with throwing weapons like I think they do? If so, I might make a Barbarian specialised in throwing weapons, assuming my DM will let me draw more weapons then 1 of course.

F

no, since it clearly states for both of them
>melee weapon attack with strength

Sorry I forgot if melee weapon attack was an actual melee attack with a weapon, or just any attack with a melee weapon.

Fuck the weapon attack rules are badly written sometimes, it's not that hard to figure out but I'm just surprised that they wrote them so badly when they're the ones who have to sageadvice all the answers.

So I know it's bad, but how bad is Frenzy Barb exactly? I can basically only use the Frenzy once per long rest with it right?

essentially, but 3 attacks of 2d6+4+2 with advantage is a lot of damage at level 5.

How do people make their own char sheets? I want to make one with some variant rules integrated (Honor, Sanity), but have no clue where to start. Do I use GIMP? Is there a toolbox?

Do you guys know of any scary spooky dungeon crawling books? I have been reading accounts of groups venturing into Tomb of Horrors, and it does seem pretty horrific. Are there any books which have the same feel; a party adventuring into a horror dungeon and dying or barely scraping by?

This list has dozens of special snowflake races, classes and subclasses and only three adventures: two obvious railroads and a short dungeon. I suspect the problem with 5e homebrewing is that people are making the wrong things.

That sounds good, I like the sound of an RP and non combat dragon especially the parent-child dynamic. I only suggested the class levels to not create discrepancy with one player having a dragon psuedopet for free. I'll see with the player what he wants out of this pet dragon and if it's not a combat assistant or familiar I'll let it hatch "naturally" (magically induced faster incubation or something) although he was happy with the beastmaster idea when I offered him it.

Do you put up with player creative ideal? Warlock been trying to make a mobile tower of undead. He would command one to grapple onto two other. He arguing that grapple only reduce your movement speed by half so his tower of undead should move at half undead speed.

Don't even bother with grappling shit, just work out what the carrying capacity of a skeleton is with its statblock then let it carry a tower of skeletons up to that weight. Since a quick google tells me the dry weight of a human skeleton is about 10lbs and skeletons have 10str, it could technically carry another 9 skeletons before it hits heavily encumbered, it's a small tower but fuck it, it could be funny

Technically he's correct about grappling but eventually the tower is going to exceed the zombies ability to lift, which does have rules.

That being said I do like player creativity and will usually be lenient with the rules when they have a good idea. For example I would allow a pyramid of undead.

Hell you could go further than this and have a tower with a base of 4 skeletons with 2 on top of those and those 2 carrying another 18 skeletons and assuming the weight is split evenly then they'd still be under heavy encumbrance. And that's 24 skeletons, hell I think those bottom ones would be under regular encumbrance and be able to move the tower at full speed.

Tell him the tower of undead's speed is reduced by half per grappling monster.

You want to bring back forbidden schools?

No, magic needs a complete overhaul from the ground up. Trying to apply forbidden schools to magic as it exists in 5e right now is like trying to fix a decapitation wound with a band-aid.

They wrote it as binary options referring to attacks made. Melee and ranged, weapon and spell, all falling under attack. It's done so that anything can refer to any one part and work mechanically.

Forbidden schools as executed in 3.5/PF are bad.

Forbidden schools as executed in 4e were great. Where they're tied to archetype and multiple schools instead of one so it's not just "dump necromancy because conjuration is better anyway, lel".

This, desu

What's the best campaign book for 5e? Bored so I made a poll

strawpoll.com/fcx2aya5

Is Sentinel a decent feat?

Oh, to be less singular in it, I'm using a reach weapon, specifically a whip.

This is the right direction. Schools of magic as they're presented are pretty useless. They are generally too narrow to be a valid character concept (divination and necromancy are the exceptions here) on their own and are too powerful to allow for multiple focused schools. Also, they way they are split up makes no sense. Some schools are grouped by the way they achieve their effect, some by the effect itself.

Either split it by the way it works
>Thaumaturgy, link stuff that's apart(much Divination)
>Incantation, put an ongoing effect on stuff (abjuration/enchantment/Necromancy)
>Evocation, summon stuff from nothing(plus Illusion some conjuration)
>Transmutation, permanently change stuff that's there

or split it by the things it affects
>Divination, knowledge
>Evocation, energy (gets some abjuration as well)
>Alchemy, unliving matter (gets transmutation and parts of enchantment)
>Alteration, living matter (healing spells, enchantment etc)
>Illusion (mind affecting enchantments fall under this)
>Necromancy as banned-for-players because now it'sliterally summoning undead

now in either split you pick one primary school, two secondary schools and two banned schools. You can't learn spells above 6th level in secondaries.

How's the bladesinger as a gish? Do they really make their blades sing? Ie good in melee?

Horrible. Almost worse than Bladelock.

Yes, they can achieve super high AC and survive in melee combat, but just like with the Bladelock, your best option is going to be to cast spells, not engage in melee combat.

5e only has one good gish, and that's all it really needs. Man up, play a Paladin, fluff it as an Arcane Paladin if the religious stuff bothers you. Paladins are god-tier gishes and everything else that even tries is garbage by comparison.

>just refluff it brah
cancer

>Playing DnD without fluff.

If I had to live like that, I think I'd be one of those shitposters who constantly spams those "When did you realize DnD sucks" meme images.

There's value to refluffing but sometimes you want to actually play a concept without having to play double pretend.

No, you fucking imbecile. He clearly said refluff not no fluff, you illiterate mongloid.

What determines which target the DM chooses to target? Can he choose to just let every enemy attack one player in a row if he feels like it?

> Be Deva
> Change Shape into Priest statblock

Does this grant them the Spellcasting ability with spell slots?

yes, but a dick move, unless the enemies have a legit reason to all target the same thing in combat while letting the others have free reign

Yeah? But that's really douchey. What I do when I DM is I sort of "roleplay" how a monster would act. You just killed a bandit's wolf buddy? He's probably gonna be pissed at you. You know stuff like that.

A good DM has the enemy type determine how they attack, an organised group of soldiers are probably going to try and focus people down starting with the biggest threats first. A group of random bandits are probably gonna just go for whoever catches their eye first. A prideful dragon is gonna try and gut either the biggest threat or whoever pissed him off the most. Shit is variable

Enjoy not playing a good gish ever then. Paladin is the only class in the game that actually accomplishes the idea of combining magic and melee in a satisfying way.

Every other gish is just a caster with a melee weapon stapled on, or a melee character with a shit selection of 2 magic schools stapled on (only one of which will actually be useful most of the time).

Show me a gish in the game who gishes better than a Paladin.

Y O U C A N T

I like EKs

Hmm, okay. There was a situation where I ran in and hit a guy at the start of the battle. Then without my knowledge the next turn was the enemy so all of them ran up and hit me so I insta-died. At the time that felt cheap but I guess I should factor in the chance that the enemy might have rolled a really high initiative so I should probably have stayed back there. Being a monk I should also have ran away but my class was not optimized at the time so I couldn't do that without provoking an AoO.

But so I guess I should be aware of the enemy potentially rolling high initiatives? Because I guess that's the standard rules? That the turn order is not revealed to the players?

I'd like them alot better if they were actual gishes and not just fighters with a couple of defensive spells slapped on. You're never going to see an Eldritch Knight using magic offensively unless it's Booming Blade or Greenflame Blade (and even those start to lag behind once they pick up their third attack feature).

Funny how all the UAs that tried to make Warlock and Sorcerer into Gishes just gave them a couple of Smite spells. You know, that thing Paladins already had on a much better class "chassis" with better features and better hit dice.

Yes, you don't know who plays when or if there are hidden enemies around. Gotta be cautious.

Some enemies will hit even downed/unconscious people, some will just pick a new target. Some will knock you down and use your body as leverage/hostage.

If your DM is half-decent, they will play by the story/motivation and it should be fine.

For example, I had a specifically trained hobgoblin tribe in my game. They would kick people when downed, while running to their next target.

>wish-fulfilling

But that's all official and unofficial content dumbass

There's also Bladelocks they get 9th level slots and a number of abilities to help their survivability in melee

Aside from hilariously grimdark setting, Shadow of the Demon Lord >>> 5e in every way.

Cool

>an ek is never going to use fireball
Ok

Why the fuck are you investing in Intelligence as a fighter? Are you rolling for stats?

Just give EKs and the other gishes the smite spells as additional spells, they automatically learn them as they level.

A fireball with 16 int is still decent damage

Ah. Thanks.

In an ideal world, yes, every gish class would have smite-like spells.

Unfortunately, Paladin was the class designed from the ground up to combine melee and magic. All the other casters were designed as casters. All the other martials were designed as martials. Stapling new class features on those two doesn't change that they weren't originally designed for it.

There should be feats that alter the ability modifier used for DCs, so an EK taking this feat could use Str or Dex for the DC.

It should be an easy fix and solution. 5e of all things is extremely flexible.
Stapling those things onto those classes is extremely doable.

Why don't you just play a valor bard if you want a gish? You even have sword bards soon too

>REEEEE it's not the same because Pathfinder did it differently
Gish players are the worst people in D&D. Not all of them are quite as bad as the majority, but there's just too many shit ones that unless you know the person you should be very cautious about anyone who picks a gish option that isn't single class with no refluffing.

The ones happy to play Bladesingers, EK, straight Bladelocks and so on are generally okay. When they start multiclassing or telling you they're refluffing then that's when you know they're one of the thousands of shit players.

I say all this as a Gish fan, who is happy to play EK or a Bladesinger who actually uses melee. Even though they're not optimal, because it's the character I enjoy.

So guys, what are you going to run tonight or tomorrow for your halloween one shot?
>inb4 death house

Does XGE drop today?

Looking for a monster, guys.
Iike frog fishguys, there was a hyphen in its name.

halp

Who /alignmentchecker/ here?

I play a neutral good wizard. Yesterday, while rescuing slaves, I broke away from the main convoy to check a chest we saw (nobody else would help because they thought it was bait). It turned out to hold phat lute, but it was guarded by a Wood Woad.
The Wood Woad attacked from surprise and, predictably, squished me. I took my death saving throws and survived. Just. By one die roll.
I was PISSED.
When I came to I escaped to a safe distance with the loot, cast Phantom Steed as a ritual, and started systematically burning down all the trees in it's home with Fire Bolt. Luckily it was living in a small forest ravine so it didn't take too long.
When the last tree was burned down it had nowhere left to hide. As it ran at me I moved backwards, matching it's pace, and Fire Bolt'ed it to death.
So after that wall of text, my question is; was this justified? It's what my character would do (NOBODY shelfs the Elf, NOBODY) but do I need to change hus alignment? I know they don't seem to mattermuch but maybe he's more... neutral than good. Maybe even chaotic?

November I believe

Death house, with integrated lovecraft stories, like the picture in the house, rats in the walls, and shadow over innsmouth. Also, no boring dead children, insane doctor

At worst you'd change from Neutral Good to Chaotic Good, but unless destroying the land somehow negatively impacted the locals, you should be fine.

Any tips on how to gently kick people out of the group?
We have six players and for the next campaign I want to drop that to 4 to make things easier.
The two guys I'm kicking out are also just weighting the group down. One is a childish, metagaming asshole with some kind of ADHD and the other is the most passive person I have ever seen. Not that I'm going to say that to their faces.
I guess I should just say that six players is too much work for me and tell them they just got the shortest straw, though I suspect at least one of them will be personally offended and will at least cut all ties to me afterwards.

Bring it up with the other four members of your group. You might be fine with cutting them loose, but the rest of the group might not be, and that could cost you more than you'd expect.

So I got a Goliath Ranger and a Halfling Barbarian, I'm thinking of allowing the Goliath to throw the Halfling the latters movement as an action, but that would consume the Halflings movement.

Thoughts?

>16 INT
>when you could have 16 CON instead
lol@u

>six players
>the most passive person I have ever seen
a-are you kicking me?

I have talked with them. One asked why I hadn't kicked them out sooner, the rest agreed that it would be for the best to let them go.

Someone might as well get use out of smite spells. Paladin pretty much never wants to use them over Divine Smite. Really, paladin pretty much never wants to cast anything but maybe the occasional Bless when those spell slots could be Divine Smites.

Kuo-Toa