/5eg/ - Fifth Edition General

>This ugly SON OF A LICH is REDUCING ADVENTURERS TO ASH and basically you are FUCKING STUPID

>How do you handle resurrections and death? Do you go by the book or use one of the alternative rules written in other 5e books?
Very carefully. I think the most important thing about balancing it is knowing how to manage resources your players get, and balance encounters.

Other ways I handle it are, having afterlife experiences mentioned, making so player actually have to bargain with the higher powers that have the soul now rather than just dump gold into the problem, those type of things.

AKA - make death fun!

Most campaigns I've ever played and ran in would end before a player would have access to any resurrection, and NPCs with access to those spells are quite rare as well. Such NPCs would demand payment in the needed materials, as well as a lump sum--though they'd naturally be willing to take it out in trade. There's a lot a group of motley, traveled adventurers can do for a person or group to balance those scales.
I've also always wanted to do the classic, "journey into hell/Hades/Tartarus/a strange immaterial plane to retrieve the party member's soul!" thing.

That said, I've never been a game where a PC died and resurrection seemed to be an actually achievable goal at all, so it basically has never come up any which way.

whenever someone gets res'd they roll on the reincarnate table no matter what spell was used.

So I'm currently running a high level mini-campaign for my players, and they're about to finish it up. They're on a remote island that's inhabited by friendly natives that have helped the PCs throughout the campaign. The party has finally located the BBEG responsible for all the evil shenanigans on the island - it's a lich.

I want to set up the final encounter so that once they kill the lich and find his phylactery, the party will be met with a conundrum: If they destroy the phylactery, the idle volcano on the island will explode and cover most of the populace in lava and ash because the lich cast a spell on the volcano to keep it idle and preventing eruption.

That said, I'm not opposed to the party having their cake and eating it, too. Can anybody think of a solution that could destroy or permanently neutralize the lich, but keep the volcano from exploding?

I'm interested in this too. It seems half their domain spells are outside the cleric list, at least.

Slows down gameplay.

>Can anybody think of a solution that could destroy or permanently neutralize the lich, but keep the volcano from exploding?
That's the players' job, not yours.

Gandalf is totally a Celestial Pact Warlock

Also is anyone using the encounter building rules presented in Xanathar's?

I disagree. But I understand it's just a different style of DMing I prefer, so I'm not going to argue at length about it.

...

Sure. I find new DM's running modules will refuse to deviate from said module at all. You keep going back to the book, which is the bad habit. You won't balance encounters on the fly, and you discourage player improvisation. Basically, modules tend to encourage new DMs to run static, railroady adventures.

Find a willing soul to substitute for the phylactery and become the guardian of the volcano.

Playing one right now. Path to the grave is bonkers, as is bonus action 30 feet spare the dying

Brilliant! I'll use that. The PCs made lots of friends with the local tribesmen, so finding a volunteer soul is conceivable.

I use this, feels fucking bad that it'll never get a XGTE update.

>as is bonus action 30 feet spare the dying
How is "hey mate, your survival is now up to the rest of the party winning rather than random chance" in any way "bonkers"?

Would you ever cast that when you could healing word instead?

I haven't used it in DnD, but I have in Shadowrun and Fantasycraft. It works well. Requires a bit of explanation and some changes to the character sheets, but once its in place it's faster, it keeps players engaged, and it gives them more of a sense of agency when they're getting attacked. Silly, I know, but rolling dice for your defense always feels more active than the GM rolling dice for an attack against you, even though the probability of getting hit is unaffected by who rolls.

If I were doing this in 5e, I'd combine it with making all the DCs known quantities (your PC doesn't look at a monster in heavy armor and think "AC 17", but they do recognise that it'll be hard to damage, and I the GM relay that in-character knowledge to you as "AC 17") and taking averages for all damage rolls. The MM does that second one for me anyway. That way I never roll dice for anything unless I really want blind luck to determine something. No need for a GM screen, just a notepad that I look at when I'm trying to remember something or pretending to look something up so the players don't realise that GMing is 90% bullshit and arbitrary nonsense in the noble pursuit of fun.

I like Mercers but made it simpler.

DC 5 check with the casters spell ability. +5 DC for each time the player has previously been raised. Also +5 to the DCfor revivify. True Resurrection has a -5 to the DC. Basically their soul weakens and has a stronger pull to the afterlife as this goes on.

Obviously they need to cast a spell to keep the volcano dormant or evacuate the island and let nature take its course. I hope there's plenty of clues to solve this conundrum, like the lich's old notes laying around.

>I hope there's plenty of clues to solve this conundrum, like the lich's old notes laying around.

There will be, certainly.

That's hardly like Mercer's at all.

Currently level 2. Three spell slots a day isn't really enough to healing word whenever you want. I guess it could also be useful if you want to use prayer of healing on them after combat to heal them for max while also healing everyone else.

Because my party members like to go down a lot and it saves me using a spell or running up to them and using an action

The second I saw the original block of text, I knew it needed simplifying- yours looks good. (More homebrew should follow the source material's style.)

By the book. Both the rules and the setting support it and the less you fuck with it the better it works.

I hope someone keeps updating this thing even though the creator got forced to take it down.

So I have been watching Critical Role (So sue me, I need something to listen to while I work)

I just got to the episode where they encounter Vecna for the first time and Vax gets Disintegrated. The next episode the party is talking about True Polymorph'ing something into a Diamond large enough to pay the casting cost of True Resurrection (That is before Vax comes back as a Revenant)

Is this something you would allow, or would it have been a Mercer mercy moment

Object into object transformations are not possible with true polymorph.

They were going to find a creature to cast it on (Scanlan even volunteers trinket)

I do away with the ritual and make the increases by 5 instead of 1. This way death can actually happen, my math is diffrent but the idea is the same. Also for fringe cases or player power gaming it is an ability check so some spells can give advantage and for flavor I give Zealton Barbs a -5 to thier DC.

This is the sort of mentality ressurection brings to people.
'Oh, my friend just fell to fucking pieces. I guess we're just going to find someone to cast an expensive level 9 spell.'

Also
>Having true polymorph but not having as many clones of people as needed or anything to counter disintegrate

Sure, then. Most object creation spells explicitly disallow using the created object as a spell component, but TP doesn't, so it's fair game.

Oh damn I never knew people got murked that hard in Mercer's campaign

Yes, I would allow that. Of course, I would also allow a conjuration wizard to go view a 25000 GP diamond in a museum and conjure it with the level 2 feature.

Creature to object is.

>Player has died perhaps 5 times now using these rules
>They're still coming back to life

Increasing the DC by 5 at a time is more reasonable, but honestly the whole 'have everyone stand around and pray to various gods' and shit sounds a little too soppy and disney magicey, especially when you're doing it for the fifth fucking time.

Imagine you spent your life living with and fighting for this humanoid, just to be turned into a gemstone and consumed by a spell

Watching Critical Role is a really shitty way to try to figure out canonical rules errata.

Why is /5eg/ so tsundere for Critical Role?

How do I create an effective Cleric who can support when needed, but do some decent damage when all the other players are doing fine?

>I do away with the ritual
My point exactly.

Btw, I assume your players cast Enhance Ability every time first.

My gut is success with consequences like rolling an the reincarnation table or being a revenant..

Pick light or arcana

We talked a little about this a day or two ago but it seems like /5eg/ has more of an issue with people assuming Mercer's style of play is law as opposed to a style that works for him and his table.

First, you need to stop being a horny anime waifuist virgin

By playing literally any cleric. This isn't WoW.

Which part are you having trouble with? Life cleric does it easily, but all clerics have the spells needed. And the list isn't so big you can't just read it. Also, put on some armor.

Use spirit guardians, walk into the enemies and use your actions to dodge, or use your bonus actions with spiritual weapon to make attacks.
Alternatively, just use toll the dead now that that's sacred flame+. It's enough damage and trying to do more than that is not knowing your place unless it's time to use spell slots.

... Alternatively, get booming blade and green flame blade through magic initiate and use those when you're in melee. Sword and board. Don't purposefully get into melee when everyone else in the party is behind you, though, or you'll just take attacks you didn't need to take.

Go straight cleric, any domain. Pack Cure Wounds, maybe Restoration, maybe Protection from Evil and Good. For damage, roll with Spiritual Weapon (NOT a concentration spell!) Then wade into melee if you're one of those domains, or stand back firing damage spells like Guiding Bolt and cantrips if you're one of those.

In my first 5e campaign, we had a Lore cleric. She would stomp around in combat with Spiritual Weapon out, Spirit Guardians on concentration, and Guiding Bolt left and right. Her damage per round was pretty impressive.

Was Curse of Strahd good? Never DM’d a pre-made campaign before and it seemed cool.

In my opinion that's mostly settled out of the gate just by being a Cleric and having a balanced selection of spells.

Yes, but grudgingly. I want to tell an enjoyable story, and although "gets wasted by the big bad" is a memorable moment, it cuts off one player's investment if made final. Ideally, I'd want to let them undo this death, but at some cost or complication. The revenant thing was one such good solution.

5.5e/6e when

I've heard it's good unless you have a group that mostly wants to just dungeon delve or cause chaos. Judging from some bad experiences other people on Veeky Forums have had it doesn't support the murderhobo end of things very well.

Both of these are true. I had an anime waifuist, possibly not a horny virgin I didn't ask, in a game I played a few years ago. He would have been perfectly competent if he'd just been a Cleric, but he played a Cleric/Warlock to better embody his foxgirl waifu as his player character, and the result was not competent. He later retired that character and played a pure Cleric who was much better at everything.

So, first stop being that guy, then play a full cleric. Confirmed by reality.

>toll the dead
I realize toll the dead is really good, but isn't the necrotic damage type a common resistance among undead and fiends, i.e. super common enemy types?

Needs a bit of skill to run well, of course, with the high danger level and atmosphere being so important. But yeah, I played through it and had a fucking blast.

>Crawford is the rules guy
>reee mearls!
Poor guy

It is worse than radiant damage, yes, but an average of 6.5 damage (sometimes 4.5 damage) instead of 4.5 damage is far more useful than 'the attack is sometimes not resisted'.

Is there something the obvious options seem to be lacking, or are you just looking for specific build advice?

He's still the one creating UA and new classes, Crawfords just there to make sure Mearl's stupid ideas fit the mechanics.

What's your favorite subclass from XGE? And is there any you find overpowered or underwhelming, compared to preexisting options?

Sorry yes the increase of 5 is cummulative. 6 or 7 is times is the max.

Normally yes, but twice they have been tapped on spells add didn't. I also use extended rest rules of short rest being 8 hours long rest being 7 days. This isn't for difficult as much as flavor, still only 2 or 3 encounters between short rests.

It's because people blamed him for the "death" of 4e, which was literally just a cross-compatible "Basic" line that was released while the rest of the books were still in print.
The resentment lingers, even with this edition. It's weird.

Favourites: Hexblade, Forge Cleric, Monster Hunter
Underwhelming: Arcane Archer, Redemption Paladin, War Wizard.

Yes, necrotic damage is one of the most commonly-resisted damage types. Radient is one of the least resisted, and shitloads of enemies have special vulnerabilities to it (of the "regenerates 20 HP per round unless hit by radient every round" type.)

That's why Toll the Dead does higher damage; it's a less useful damage type. The spells are balanced.

I'm having trouble thinking of a reason anyone would ever go Redemption Paladin. The class doesn't seem to have anything to it, really.

What do you think of the Xanathar Build-a-Background rules? How much of them would you be willing to use?

>Last 2 digits for knowing my parents

meals and crawful are both equally bad.

4.5e when?

When /4eg/ and /5eg/ decide to collaborate

Probably never, since barely anyone liked 4e.

More like never having rolled a Cleric before and looking for general advice. Like Thank you. And everybody else whose given advice so far.

What's the best character builder now that Orcpub is basically dead?

Favorites: Hexblade, Horizon walker, College of Whispers.
Underwhelming: Arcane Archer, Shadow Sorcerer, College of Swords

fuckin saved

>That's why toll the dead does higher damage

By that logic, poison spray should be more than 1d12 damage. It already has a limited range and can't set things on fire which deserves to give it 1d12, but the fact poison is useless against many creatures means it should probably be a 2d6.

They probably considered it but radiant -> necrotic deserves more of a 'Deals 1d10 damage against injured creatures, 1d6 against uninjured creatures' effect.

>42
An auspicious number!

I think they're fun. I'm a sucker for any sort of life path system, and even if this isn't *really* a life path system it's still interesting to play with.
Plus it intersects with backgrounds in a constructive way that should have more players knowing at least a little bit more about their character even if they came in with no idea about how they'd try to present them, and I like that.

What would we want 6e to even look like?

>the fact poison is useless against many creatures
Oh I'm sorry I was under the assumption the dungeon master was the one that decided encounters. My bad

>Needs a bit of skill
Fuck.

I agree with Arcane Archer as underwhelming. It was okayish when it got automatic +1 arrows. Now it's just a fighter whose entire class features are plinking 2 arrows with lame effects per encounter (provided the party rests after each, which does NOT happen in my experience).

XD YOU GUYS

It's pretty funny desu.

I know that I'd like something akin to abilities in 4e back so that martials aren't just "hit things very hard" and casters (especially wizards) can't just do anything they desire.

Exactly like 5e but EK and AT have their own spell lists, CR is more accurate, and martials can jump/lift/push/etc. things x10 better at high levels.

All those bad Xanathar jokes in the book, and you're trying to pick on an actually amusing sound gag?

My fix would be to give an increase to the number of magic arrows allowed per short rest as you level up.

like a cross between 5e and 4e. More active abilities that define classes, more depth to combat with all classes having at least 2 or 3 at will type abilities that are useful to choose from. Martials with useful out of combat ribbons. Martials that are designed from the ground up to emulate mythic characters like perseus, achilles, etc, and by someone for whom mythic athletic prowess means more to him than what his high school quarterback could do.

I do think it multiclasses well with Rogue though, and might do that on my next character.

womp womp *poof* :'(