/5eg/ - Fifth Edition General

>Xanathar's Guide Table of Contents
web.archive.org/web/20171016180500/https://www.dndbeyond.com/members/BadEye/articles

>Forge Cleric - Xanathar's Guide
media.wizards.com/2017/dnd/downloads/DnDXL2017_Forge.pdf

>Unearthed Arcana: Fiendish Options
media.wizards.com/2017/dnd/downloads/UA_FiendishOptions.pdf

>Trove
rpg.rem.uz/Dungeons & Dragons/D&D 5th Edition/

>5etools
astranauta.github.io/5etools.html

>Resources
pastebin.com/X1TFNxck

>Discord
discord.gg/HzAfUGt discord.me/5eg

>Previously, on /5eg/...
Dragon edition

Other urls found in this thread:

youtube.com/watch?v=Y5mmQUCIdEo
twitter.com/SFWRedditGifs

>Cant decide between my AT or my Oarh of Ancients Paladin
FUCK, why is choosing a character so hard.

I just have way too many classes I want to play, and characters that I have personalities and backstories for, but I am always torn between who choose.

The suffering is real

Why did everyone trick me into thinking Critical Role was the SJW podcast, because I’ve listened to like five episodes and it’s pretty typical.

Is it some other podcast that has the progressive bullshit leaking through?

let the dice decide

>Eldritch Smite
>Once per turn when you hit a creature with your pact weapon you can expend a Warlock spell slot to deal 1d8 force damage plus an additional 1d8 force damage per level of the spell slot and you can knock the target prone if they are huge or smaller.

One of my players, a tiefling sorc (player also wants to play a paladin of vengeance too) might be dropping out soon since they're developing a social life.

Leaving the party with only a Lore College Bard and a Champion Fighter.

Everyone else I know doesn't seem interested in joining the campaign/lacks the time so I might need to either throw in an NPC helper or just scale things for two players, possibly both.

Any ideas on what might compliment support bard and a tanky fighter who is also surprisingly sneaky and cunning? (Guy's backstory is that he's a mafia legbreaker)

There's the one by Adam Koebel, the one who co-authored Dungeon World. That was is very SJW-y, especially the one where he got Mike Mearls, Matt Mercer, and Matt Corville together, and shoehorned in a racial equality question in the end.

>Sorceror leaves party
Literally nothing of value was lost. A tank and a lorebard are about as balanced as you're going to get - just scale down the encounters and go nuts

>Cast Animate Object on a huge flat-topped boulder
>Cast Leomund's Tiny Hut on top
>Strap self to boulder
>Fly around crushing niggas
>No ramifications

What's something fun I can do with a Tortle classwise? I've been advised that str monk isn't as worth it as it seems, so I'm totally at a loss

>>Why did everyone trick me into thinking Critical Role was the SJW podcast, because I’ve listened to like five episodes and it’s pretty typical.
Essentially the show decided to not talk about politics during the election, but then one of the players wore a Hillary shirt. I absolutely concede that a ton of the fans of the show are liberal, but I don't think its fair to fault that to the players or shit. I don't claim to know every single thing done in the show but I've never watched the show and been like, "wow what a bunch of liberal bullshit"

Seriously, I have yet to hear anything that would indicate liberal bullshit, in fact most of the stuff has been quite raunchy. It’s a good podcast, but I’m finding Kaylith(?) is kind of annoying? I mean she’s super cute and even sweeter, but she’s kinda random in the problematic way.

One of the video near the end of the experience on solo interview showed that she's really "in character". Some people replied to that saying they'll be glad to see she being done with the character, so you aren't alone in that sentiment at all.

Making my character for the first time, but comparing it to the starter set ones he has better stats.
So my character has an intelligence score of 15, which is +2 on the modifier, with an added one because I am a human, correct? That is +3.
The starter set wizard has a score of 16, which is +3 on the modifier, but shouldn't he have +4 since he is an elf?
What am I getting wrong?

High elves get +2 Dex, +1 Int. So if he's using the standard array, the best he could get would be 16 (+3).

Yeah people like to circlejerk how bad Keyleth and the girl who plays her (Marisha) is. Most of my enjoyment came from the great voicework, some very funny moments, and a pretty good story. To be fair, Veeky Forums, myself included like to bitch about everything so doesn't really mean much. I really hope you enjoy it, if you're on episode 5 you only have 110 episodes to go!

You don't add the ability modifier (the +2) to you stats - that's for if you need to roll for something that requires that skill, then tou'd add it to your roll

No, it's right.

15 int, +1 for high elf get 16 int.
The 14 went into constitution.
13 dex, +2 for elf.
rest is standard array without modifiers.

That's it, I was adding it to the modifier, not the actual number. Many thanks

Also, if you are not going variant human, keep in mind human has overall higher stats. An elf get +3 in total, while a human have total of +6, just distributed all over the stats line. In exchange, elves have a lot of other abilities on the side that supposedly makes up for the differences.

Variant human, on the other hand, has only +2 versus +3, in exchange of having a feat. That may not be allowed by your GM.

See, that’s silly because I find her cute little blurbs adorable, and while she can be annoying I’m an adult who knows good people can sometimes be awkward at times, everyone does it!

Grog, Tiberius and the entirety of the DM is god-tier voicework, there’s one guy too who sounds like Mr. Protagonist, but that’s just because his voice is so... Casually dashing? Good series, good cast, though I want it to get the hell out of Kraghammer because I want some humans.

It never really comes up during the game, I've watched 90 episodes and they mentioned the election maybe twice during that. No other politics comes up.

But I have noticed that whenever Mercer invents a strong brawler or guard captain type NPC, more often than not it's a woman. But maybe that's just for the benefit of Grog's magical realm.

I mostly like Koebel, but one time when he was hosting at a festival and Harmonquest was live there and they were oblivious-drunk and talked about jerking off or animal rape or whatever the whole game, and Koebel basically told them off and then had to do a Q&A section with them at the end was pretty terrible.

youtube.com/watch?v=Y5mmQUCIdEo

She gets worse

Personally I just hate how the character she's playing and the character on her sheet are clearly two completely different people

The racial bonus is added to the ability score, not the ability modifier. So with a bonus of +1, 16(+3) becomes 17(+3), not (+4).

let's not derail the thread

Is Xanathar's the product we need but don't deserve?

>People already have Xanathar
Where the fuck are the leaks.

I dunno, it has a 2d8 weapon for arcane tricksters, which is a bit strange

You can sneak attack with it, you can booming blade with it, you can dual-wield it with a shortsword

Go to GameHoleCon and donate to charity first.

There's so much hype for it.

there were some in the discord

Whoo... more spells and ways to say "fuck the rules" for casters and jack shit for martials.

Sure is what we deserve, I guess.

For me, I think PHB and XGE are the only books I'll need to physically own. (For monsters I'll probably use a computer.) It seems to round everything out nicely, and honestly the SCAG classes that weren't carried over weren't that great. Having more rules for downtime and all that is great too, but there's a chance their rules/subsystems will be shit and I won't want to use them anyway. Count me in for the hype.

>cavalier/knight
>arcane archer
>samurai
>scout
>ancestral barbarian
>drunken master
>kensei
>more ways to use tools
>tying knots
You call that jack shit?

You can't question his hyperbole, it'd ruin his narrative.

It sure is hitting that sweet spot. And damn, say anything about Wizards but they actually listened to feedback and responded. Good on them for doing that as well.

I've been invited to a pathfinder game, and I've been reviewing the material. There is so much more content than 5e. It's kind of refreshing.

It's made me wonder: Why are we afraid of rules bloat when the DM can just balance/manage that pretty easily anyways?

i should clarify that I like 5e's base rules better, since they're simpler. but pathfinder has so much more class options, monster options, etc. It's great.

Pathfinder's profuse content is itself a trap. A great deal of that content is so poorly designed and imbalanced, taking it ruins your character. This is something you can't do in 5e, even with the PHB ranger or 4e monk.

You may think you have choice in Pathfinder but those choices ultimately don't mean anything. 5e offers actual, meaningful choice.

>bladelock
>ranger
>picking any martial without spells

5e has plenty of trap options too though. I also still don't get the ruin's a character criticism. If your player makes a character that does something really good, but overall isn't good, as the DM you should balance the encounters to make that character workable. The big problem is party mismatches, where one player has a good character, and one player a bad one. This can be done in 5e, when one player picks a caster, and one player doesn't. And it surely happens in pathfinder, but that's what that tier list I saw is for is it not?

>Wrestling with the idea of having my Paladin take time away from the party, where he'll confess his failures and change his oath. "Falling" in a sense from Devotion to Vengeance.
>Talk to the DM about this, since it's a bit fruity.
>Not only is he ok with it, he fucking encourages it and offers a free RP-related feat should I do it.
>Only downside is having to play a different character for 3 or 4 real life weeks.
>Tfw even the DM wants me to fall.

Pathfinder tiers are much further apart than 5e tiers. A Wizard might be more interesting than a Champion fighter, but they are both useable against the same levels of threat.

Take a bottom tier character class in Pathfinder and you can't even exist in the same frame of reference as a top tier. Anything that won't instantly blow you up will be completely laughable to the top tier guys.

>picking any martial without spells
Oh shut the fuck up. That does not make your character useless.

It depends on the context, as always. In a standard 1/3rd combat game, your character will be sitting out 2/3rds of the time unless:

1. Your character is a rogue without spells or
2. the entire party agreed to forgo spells

This doesn't really sound much like falling, at least in the 5e sense. You just deeply reflect upon your oath, and decide to rededicate yourself to wanton murder.

That's fair. I certainly haven't played a game of pathfinder yet to know how the combat stacks up. At least in 5e though, after DMing for a few years now, i've noticed the class discrepancy doesn't apply in combat, so much as it is a vast chasm outside of combat.

It's ok though because I'll just be murdering wizards.
FUCKING MAGES STOP RUINING EVERYTHING REEEEEEEEE

Those aren't traps options, you're not taking something that won't work and actually is a detriment to your character.

Those classes, and the fighter, monk are fun af. It just makes me wonder if you've actually played 5e or just parroting opinions.

The problem with a character being ruined is that the system shouldn't put forward that premise in the first place, the DM shouldn't need to do that, especially not if the DM is new or is even an experienced one.
Pathfinder is also knowingly designed against martials, if you're making the argument that picking martials is a trap option in 5e, this is doubly and multiplicatively so in Pathfinder where the casters make the martials obsolete. This doesn't happen at all in 5e.

>This can be done in 5e, when one player picks a caster, and one player doesn't.
Have you actually played 5e?

Hm. Have you played much after the early release of 5e?

Bladelock's not great, it's like a warlock without pact. Sure. If you just go without the blade, you are still a full-functioning warlock able to Eldritch Blast harder than a lot of people.

Ranger has one and only one option, Beastmaster doesn't exist. As long as you keep that in mind it's perfectly serviceable, if not amazing.

Battle Master's one of the better options overall, and barbarian's overall fun. Fighter's fine even on Champion, which is one of the weaker option already. Monks are really only there to eat legendary resists, granted, but are fun when you play them - even not "Properly". Rogue's... Good fun for my players, but I don't really like the subclasses myself.

Because martials are forbidden from speaking and using skills? Shut the fuck up already, your bullshit is making my hangover worse.

Oh boy, will you be in a for a treat.
If you haven't even played PF, why are you even saying it's "better" than 5e. The PF casters absolutely invalidate the martials. See all those choices? They're utterly meaningless if you're a martial in party with a caster.

I had a ton of fun as a Shadow Monk, even if you aren't using the ki spells the basic monk setup is fun and interesting to play. I had a guy in a game I DM'd who played an Element monk and had a blast.

Are you actually retarded?

I am currently playing a Dwarf Fighter Champion called Senbei Gutbuster, whose from a lone line of Iron Chefs. Gourmand is a given. I have solved problems by oiling up and flexing my muscle to intimidate them, grabbing foes, and during downtime I cook meals that'll melt everybody's pants off within 5 miles of the food. Sup?

I pack the tools, giving the Catapult spell sorc a net, giving caltrops out, and use my wit to solve problems from attracting cats with homemade cat food to identifying stoneworks via stonecunning.

This isn't hard, dude. Learn to be fun.

I haven't played 5e. I'm a permaDM, so I can only describe my observations, and what has been reported to me by my players and other players.

What you guys are describing are incombat benefits (though the "logic" you use to justify blade pact not being a trap option is quite hilarious). If 5e were 100% combat, I don't think I'd have a problem with the status of barbarians, fighters, etc.

Go back to the original post: I'm mostly wondering why everyone is so afraid of rules bloat if the problems that people associate with PF are already present in 5e, a much less bloated game? I would prefer to have the options and trust myself (or other DM if I'm ever so lucky) to balance issues.

Class discrepancy doesn't apply in combat?

I am guessing no one with an IQ above retard level has played a wizard or bard in your games?

Why are the factions so shit in every setting? Annoying.

They are either dumb or conceptually childish.

>dwarf champion
I'm so sorry dude
>my contributions are cooking and cleaning for Caster-sempai, and carrying his bags
Oh, nevermind, you cucked yourself on purpose didn't you?

We are afraid of Rules Bloat because we has a good object lesson on the damage it can do in the form of Pathfinder.

Right now as a DM if someone comes to me and says "I want to play a bladelock" I can adjust my game for that by giving him a magic item early on that compensates for the lower power level, or just tell him it's not very good and steer him to a better build.

If someone wants to play Pathfinder I have to start by banning literally everything and only allowing things once I've had time to review them. And if I don't want the horrific power creep I have to ban full casters straight up.

That's primarily because you don't run a "Bladelock", you run a GOOlock, Faelock, or pacting a demon. Or Hexblade if you are really going there. Bladelock is part of your toolkit, not your warlock identity, and people seem to think otherwise really often.

A bladelock is like a warlock whose using a ritual sacrificial dagger to appease a dark power, not like... "I am the bone of my sword". It's NOT a subclass option.

When is wizard of the coast going to make martial a new resource all to themselves?

>tomelock and chainlock both add amazing new gameplay options on top of the base class
>bladelock gives you an option that requires you to put your character in greater danger in order to do less damage than a base class feature

Just admit that it's a trap and move on. Not every aspect of 5e needs to be defended.

I'm ready Wizards

I think you're exaggerating pathfinder's problems a bit there m8. Why can't the pathfinder DM just give boosts to the lower tiered classes, or have the party agree on a tier to pick from?

is the college of whispers any good?

it needs tweaks, but yeah, if your dm is competent, it can be.

For the "whisper to somebody for 10 minutes to make them afraid" feature, just remove the limitations on using it more than once. It takes 10 minutes to do, just like any ritual, it should have the same usage rate of any ritual.

...

I did it sort of on a dare, it's true. The group of players.. I don't want to say bad. They are really inexperienced - people taking Catapult without being ready to have things to fire with, for example. Meanwhile, I made a bet that I can make Champion fun to another player that I've been playing with, and proved my point.

So yeah, you are right on the "on purpose" part. Turns out you can have fun if you just git gud, even on a Champion, and carry a bunch of new players.

I dislike the forge cleric. Bonus Proficiencies and Blessing of the Forge are cool, but everything after that is dumb. You can't craft magical items, but you can magically transform a pile of coins into a metal tool? After that it's just a bunch of combat stuff relating to fire and armor, which doesn't seem to have much to do with actual forging.

Not everyone wants to play the wizards sidekick all day

I believe you, but that doesn't seem like a stunning endorsement of the champion fighter.

The item creation is great in direct proportion to your creativity, and the scientific advancement of the setting. Remember that gunpowder is metallic if your DM plays with gunpowder. I would change the boring passive features after it though. Especially fire immunity at 17th or 18th level (can't remember which one they get it on). At that level, fire immunity is already easy to get. Move that down I think, and put something interesting up there. Like magical item creation maybe.

Now give me a 5e edition, so I can run on cloud.

Instead of forming your own opinions and actually understanding the player side of things you parrot certain viewpoints, are you actually retarded?
Enjoy your boring shitfest that is Pathfinder, guess what, I played and DMed Pathfinder, being in both positions was an excruciating experience and I loved Pathfinder for a time. Never again.

Rules bloat isn't the problem, if you actually understand it, it's the fact that Pathfinder's rulesbloat is fucking poorly designed and not worth the time or effort. 5e's mechanics are actually solid and fun.

I dare you to play a non-PoW non-caster class in Pathfinder.

It's not an exaggeration if the problem is as imbalanced as it is. DMs shouldn't need to ban tiers. That's a shortcoming of the system.

It's not, I'll tell you this much that Battle Master is 100% better in combat without batting an eye. But there's that dude who said "Martials without spell can't into anything but combat", which I really doubt. That should only be the case if the player is bad at the game.

If a player doesn't have mechanics outside of the combat, and their first reaction to any noncombat encounter is look down on their phone, maybe they are the one that should seek a solution?

>rules bloat isn't the problem
So going back to the original post, if rules bloat isn't an issue, why are we so afraid of it in 5e?

Your original post was lauding Pathfinder and mistakenly thinking 5e has plenty of trap options. But you hadn't actually played either.


You see a prime example of rules bloat being a problem in Pathfinder, and also in the 3rd editions, do you actually read?
Testing content takes time and constant revisions. If you want poorly designed shit, just run the playtests how Paizo run them, by banning people who criticize their design, and then designing the way they want to design because they know best.

Now see me complain. It limited to the new class and not in 5e.
Subclass. Thanks for another battlemaster.

I wouldn't call noting a positive quality that one thing does better than another "lauding", especially when I clarified a post later that I still prefer 5e's base rules. Are you some kind of system war retard?

It doesn't seem like wizards is actually testing and producing content though. Xanathar's Guide, the first class supplement in two years I think (since the scag), is just full of unearthed arcana archetypes with 0 to minor changes. I've been following it, and none of the fundamental issues with those archetypes have been fixed.

So I don't really get the "this content has to be tested" argument either. It isn't being tested or fixed. It's still getting to publication in a shitty state (see the SCAG classes too). So clearly whatever testing process wizards has is not working, and isn't worth the content drought that it's causing.

>Subclass.
Things that can be implemented as a subclass should not be implemented as a separate class. That's like one of the first rules of design.

Not that guy, I think the main complain was that it's, on a quick glance, a battlemaster clone with things rubbed in. If he'd given it a more careful glance, he would've not said that.

Well, guess we should scrap the barbarian, bard, cleric, druid, monk, paladin, ranger, sorcerer, and warlock then.

To be fair, some kind of generalized Subclass would be really interesting from a design perspective. Similar to how Revenant only exists as a subrace, what kind of subclass only features would you do that any class can choose to take in place of their normal subclass?

There's no need to be upset. And you basically tried to start a system war by posting your shit opinion, without even bothering to play at all. Nice one, system war retard.

>just full of unearthed arcana archetypes with 0 to minor changes. I've been following it, and none of the fundamental issues with those archetypes have been fixed.

>So I don't really get the "this content has to be tested" argument either. It isn't being tested or fixed. It's still getting to publication in a shitty state (see the SCAG classes too). So clearly whatever testing process wizards has is not working, and isn't worth the content drought that it's causing.
There's no need to be this retarded, if you actually bothered to watch the videos and actually was able to read the forge cleric posted in the op, you'd recognize they're tested and fixed a lot of things.
What you're saying is fucking disingenuous, you haven't been following at all, but whatever suits your narrative.

Something like Survivor of the old 3e days, a subclass that give up feature for survivability. There's other ideas too, but I am really fucked up right now to give a shit.

The problem is, the subclass levels are uneven in 5e, so a generalized subclass would need a way to make it so that there won't be dead levels, or be weird as fuck in implementation.

Martials work fine out of combat if you remember they have a background and race and all that and give them benefits as you see fit to that.
Also if you remember that they too can do superhuman things.

>You used to be in the town guard? Well, it seems they'll let your party through without trouble, then.

>tries to pretend to be severely retarded.

>barbarian
Could be viably done as a fighter archetype (if they got archetypes earlier maybe)
>bard
nope
>cleric
I don't think you even believe this yourself now
>druid
nope
>monk
Not without the subclass changing so many of the features as to make it pointless to have the main class. You'd have a better time arguing to remove it entirely
>paladin
see barbarian
>ranger
It's a shit class no one understands correctly anyway
>sorcerer
Yes
>warlock
Yes

I don't know how you'd think I'm upset. I'm just idly wandering. You however do seem very very upset.
And they didn't fix the forge cleric. It's still overloaded with passive features, and one really great active feature.

You also avoided commenting on the SCAG I noticed.

It just give you that resources only if you choose it like the BM/EK.
No.
Martial resource table akin the caster spell slots. Fight with the most and wizard could have a subclass, Knight Eldritch, to access it.

>It's still getting to publication in a shitty state (see the SCAG classes too).
I have a suspicion that they made PDK and Battlerager intentionally weak to basically make them picks for flavor only.

Swashbuckler is just awesome cause everyone likes those types and they have to be awesome to work.

>The wizard used to be a town guard too

>background is limited to getting room and board with faction X
>wizards can have the same background.

That's not a plus to martials. That's a net 0. I'll make it simpler for you: If you're using skills as a plus for martials, consider that a caster can have the exact same skills. Same for background, race, whatever. Casters get access to every RP tool that martials get access to, plus spells.

Well, that's fine. But it means the martial doesn't have 0 fuckall things to do.

Also the 'martials can do superhuman things too' bit is relevant.

Stop reading it exactly off of the book. Background should give other benefits that aren't exactly stated. If you say 'If it's not in the book, martials can't do it' then you're purposefully fucking martials over.

Possibly, though given the general state of barbarians, I have a feeling that battlerager is a result of mearls+crawford between them having no idea what to do with barbs.

Also a nother general problem with 5e: the athletics rules (what a character is physically capable of doing) seem to be generally balanced at either the level of a high school track athlete (probably mearls' high school), or olympian. When for martials, they should be superhuman.

Oh, then I'm going to stop reading spells exactly in the book too. If the wizard can control water, he can control it like avatar, not the 4 narrowly defined ways the spell supplies.

You have to limit this discussion to the book.

1. Limiting the discussion to the book keeps the gap smaller. Using common sense to interpret rules in novel scenarios actually helps casters more.
2. Limiting discussions to the book gives us a common ground of discussion. Otherwise we'll just end up fighting over what a good DM would do in X scenario with the martials and the mages.

Sure, man, there's no need to stifle those tears. Let them roll out.

What's your definition of overloaded with features? You wanted choice and then say it's too much, what the fuck is your retard brain doing? Shield is gone from their spell list, for one.
Have a look at the Reddit thread about the classes in Xanathar's. That thread alone proves you're blatantly lying and a disingenuous autist.

You do realize SCAG wasn't entirely a Wizards in-house production, don't you?

You also avoided commenting on being clueless about the videos I noticed.

>u mad u mad u mad
not an argument
>overloaded with features
reread the post, you misunderstood what I was saying. The forge cleric has too many passive features, and only one good active feature. The implication being that it should have more active features.
>SCAG wasn't entirely a wizards production
I don't see how that's relevant. The problem is that wizards isn't producing enough content. Whether that's with or without help, the problem remains.
>clueless about videos
I provided my criticism of the forge cleric to demonstrate that yes, I have watched the videos.

I get the feeling that you know you've lost, since your responses are losing argument and gaining memes. So that's the last (you) you'll get from me.

Legend did pretty well on that front. Giving DCs for shit like 'Run on water' or 'Balance on something too light to bear your weight'

You seem very upset. Again, just let it all out.

What do you mean by having too many passive features? According to what definition? According to what criteria? According to whom? You can't just flippantly blurt that and not have any actual meaning behind it. But I expect as much from someone who doesn't actually play and can only form opinions based on conjecture.

If you're not retarded, you would realize not all classes were produced by Wizards.

So your only criticism of the forge cleric means that you watched the videos, when in the fact the videos prove you're disingenuous and a liar.

There's no need to be this assmad and butthurt. Next time, learn to lie better, your responses and the bigger hole you're digging for yourself just makes you seem utterly retarded and like screeching with no reason and evidence.

>I get the feeling that you know you've lost, since your responses are losing argument and gaining memes. So that's the last (you) you'll get from me.
What the goddamn fuck. Only fuckwits who know they got goddamned btfo'd would resort to this nonsense.

I don't know if DCs for that stuff would fix it. You've still got the problem that casters could be just as good at the DCs as the martials.

One way to fix it would be splitting proficiency into physical+mental proficiencies, but that would make multiclassing weirder.