/5eg/ - Fifth Edition General

The AC bonus feels like a tax, albeit a much needed one. Assuming you go 16 in Dex and Wis at first level, you can finally be a frontline fighter with 18 AC.

Pretty much at all times. Fighter has action surge and the battlemaster can do more damage with maneuvers. Barb has reckless but fighter can go champion. Unless I'm missing something.

If they're an elite squad of pure Fighters or mostly martials, employ formation tactics and have them be ready to defend against the arcane. Sticking together and moving as one, holding actions so they can act in unison or react to attacking any spellcasters, imparting bonuses to one another and gluttonously chugging healing potions and other 'combat drugs' when necessary.

Positioned in a tactically advantageous spot to make circling around them difficult.
A frontline of Shield-bearing Protection type Fighters, guarding one another and forming a line in front of the second row of Pike-wielding Polearm Masters/Tunnel Fighters and third row of Sharpshooter crossbowmen ready to send a volley at the party's magic users, with the Leader immediately behind them.

Borrow from 4E and give the Leader a few of those inspiring Warlord At-Wills and Exploits for your Legendary actions. Depending on the level of this encounter, he probably has some interesting gear, including something that would allow him to put down an anti-magic field as a further fuck-you to anyone in the party seeking to nuke the lot of them in their tight formation.

Are abilities that surpress or hide an evil alignment or fiendish heritage?

Once again, anyone have any feedback on this Sentient Sword? Anything you think would be worth changing or in need of balancing?

I think the lvl 11 ability is super powerful and quite underrated, especially if you have a weapon like flamebrand that doesn't have an attack bonus. But in general it seems like you hardly gain anything except the 1 extra damage. I've been toying with a longbow sharpshooter build, 1 lvl in fighter for close quarter shooting style. You run into melee, shoot two sharpshooter'd shots and then punch the bad guy a couple of times.
Yeah, it's just pretty lame that they made 'monk guy with swords!!1!' as the sublcass gimic and then designed it in a way that you only get to make 1 attack a turn with your sword and spend most of the time punching

What?

Yes

Basically hiding an evil alignment or the fact this monster is a fiend.

ring of mind shielding

Nondetection

I've seen enough class tier lists. Show me the race tier list.

Are there choking rules? Specifically for a garrote use. One of my players really wants to be the strangler assassin and I have no idea how to implement that. He was talking about 3.X how there was a locking garrote and I kinda remember it but grappling was a clusterfuck in 3.X

A little bit, but you can give them a magical weapon or something to give them that life draining effect.

Page 183 of the PHB.

Ettercaps have Garrottes as options, MM131, which may be of use.

Overpowered: Yuan ti
God tier: Vhuman, half elf
Top tier: Aasimar, mountain dwarf, gnome (as long as you're a wizard)
Good: High+wood elf, half orc, hill dwarf, tabaxi, bugbear
Mediocre: Triton, tiefling, firbolg
Bad: Halfling, regular human, hobgoblin
Trash: Kobold, Drow, duregar (enjoy disadvantage on everything lol), orc, dragonborn
I missed some, cbf going through volo's

Suffocating
A creature can hold its breath for a number of minutes equal to 1 + its Constitution modifier (minimum of 30 seconds).

When a creature runs out of breath or is choking, it can survive for a number of rounds equal to its Constitution modifier (minimum of 1 round). At the start of its next turn, it drops to 0 hit points and is dying, and it can’t regain hit points or be stabilized until it can breathe again.

For example, a creature with a Constitution of 14 can hold its breath for 3 minutes. If it starts suffocating, it has 2 rounds to reach air before it drops to 0 hit points.

> totem barb eagle path feature. You gain the eyesight of an eagle. You can see up to 1 mile away with no difficulty, able to discern even fine details as though looking at something no more than 100 feet away from you.

> Commander's Strike maneuver. When you take the Attack action on your turn, you can forgo one of your attacks and use a bonus action to direct one of your companions to strike. When you do so, choose a friendly creature who can see or hear you

Help your friends from a mile away

I am kind of digging that from the Ettercaps.
A garrote should skip right to choking then? That seems kind of strong given that most enemies will only have a couple of rounds but several minutes is way not viable.

No, because they never hit 0 hp. Power word kill still works.

they have to be able to see/hear you too.

>who can see or hear you
who can see or hear you

Taking time is the real issue there.

Of course, you could always simplify things, especially since as a rogue, and an assassin rogue at that, he should be getting some usage out of his class features.

Make a garrotte a 1d4 bludgeoning, finesse weapon with the net's special feature (although you're not able to break it as easy)

The actual strangling bit comes from the damage done. Which the rogue will be better at, what with sneak attack and assassinate.

I think they mean that the commander waves their arms, and the barbarian sees them a mile away and gets inspired.

I need ideas for semi-creatively replacing a PC mid-dungeon in case of PC death.

I'm going to run a fairly hard dungeon next Saturday, and I have 4 players. There's a good chance someone will die (or be put to sleep for 5000 years), but how do I give someone a new character? What will the excuse be for there suddenly being someone new in the group? It's a one-shot so I guess I don't need a big narrative reason, but it'd still be nice to have a small reason.

I think the point was also that the battlemaster had to see or hear or at least be relatively close to the barbarian.

Thanks heaps, bros!

Is it temple of tamoachan by some chance? If it is, a member of my group died while going through there. His new character had been put to sleep thousands of years ago and the party found him and woke him up. Was pretty cool desu.

True. Applying sneak attacks would wear down enemies quickly as it is. And it only applies to creatures that breathe and have necks. It isnt like a choke hold that goes for the carotid arteries, though that might help explain the con rounds surviving part.

Thanks anons.

Yes it is! I was thinking of using the sleep thing and having new characters be former victims of the curse. How/where did he die? I haven't been able to find much feedback on the dungeon and I'd love to hear people's experiences with the place (bot as DM and player).

My DM is making a Post-Apoc world where the gods of ancient mythologies came back and wrecked everyone's shit to bring us back to the stone age,
bringing about all the alternate races and magic etc, after humans reached super high-tech
(still able to find artifacts that are from before gods, but nobody really knows how they work, they just pump magic into them to get-em working).

I want to make a Storm Herald Barb Warforged, basically a terminator that dun got re-wired to not kill all the humans.

What would you guys make?

GOOlock of a nuclear bomb.

Hah, nice.

Ancient AI as a patron.

A Mad Max style half-elf cavalier who rides a guzzolene motorcycle and worships the V8. He's a grizzled loner type with a heart of gold. He also has an antimatter rifle replacing an arm.

Ok, well I think I can help you out a bit as I ran it a while ago. First of all, there is a room in there (the one with a giant snake I think) that has a hole in the ceiling leading to the surface. I would remove this, as it makes it really easy to escape the dungeon before the characters should. The adventure says you can't climb the dirt or something, but fails to take into account the fly spell/racial flying or a character with a climb speed.

I would say overall the dungeon was fun, but a little bit too easy for my group. Most of the encounters were over in a couple of rounds and the enemies were really spread out. One character died, and that was because of a combination of poor decision making and horrible rolls, plus the group had no healer. They were trying to rest, I can't remember what room, but they had previously awoken the vampire guy in the coffin and failed to kill him. He was stalking the group, and waited until the squishy wizard was on watch. The wizard wanted to go and do something on the other side of the room, I can't quite remember what he was doing, but anyway the vampire spawn guy attacked him, critted, and downed him really fast. The rest of the group was too far to help, and the vamp attacked the downed player twice before fleeing.However my entire group makes very optimised characters, so it could be different for you.

I think you really want to emphasise the trapped/survival aspect caused by the gas which permeates the dungeon. Really wear your players down and make them desperate to escape before they succumb to the gas or the enemies. Also, the fight against the roper/tree is really difficult imo. Good luck user, and if you have any other questions I will try and answer.

MEDIOCRE

What are some fun/creative uses for Phantasmal Force that you can think of?

I'm thinking about a Black Hellraiser Mask that is fit just for your face and head, you can't see outside of it and the nails/pins continue to cause this painful bleeding effect.

Probably a Moon Druid, the product of genetic experimentation gone wrong

You died, old man. You had your jaw torn apart, you wouldn't even be able to say that word again.

Oh, another thing I just remembered is that traps are a really important aspect of the dungeon and a lot of the danger comes from there. Unfortunately one of my players make a character with a passive perception of like 22 and the dungeon delver feat, so he pretty much found every trap easily, which was lame. Another thing is there is a room in there with a doppelganger. If one player goes in alone, take him aside and do the fight vs the doppelganger in private. If the doppelganger wins you can get the player to rp as the doppelganger disguised as his dead character. I think that would be cool.

Thanks man. It's good to get some info from people who've done the adventure. My group will have a healing focused cleric, so they should have quite some staying power. Since I haven't found any good resources to use, I'm pretty much going to run the adventure as-written, though I will remove the ceiling hole you mention.

What level were your PCs? My players will be level 5. Maybe we'll find a 5th player.

What did you think of the dungeon overall? And how long did it take? I imagine it will take at least two sessions to complete it.

>Reborn in Valhalla
Nothin personnel, Max

Im looking at the revised ranger and comparing it to a phb ranger. There seems to be no reason to play the phb ranger since my dm allows both

>one of my players make a character with a passive perception of like 22 and the dungeon delver feat, so he pretty much found every trap easily
Sounds useful for avoiding confusion at parties

Valhalla is a lie, rest in rust.

Why do you think they revised it in the first place user? This is why you people don't cast with Int

>Currently riding eternal, shiny and chrome
Lol get rekt mortalfag

After years of lurking on this board, I finally got around to playing my first campaign, and it's immensely fun so far. I tried to pick something easy and so took a goody two shoes paladin, but the GM didn't let me get off that easy and has already thrown two challenges at me I had to role play my way out of.
First I had to convince a travelling orc that our party meant him no harm despite our rogue stealing his weapons and surrounding him in his sleep while he was making camp. He's now a valued member of the party and we get along fine, when the bard isn't trying to high five him or impress him with his nearly fatal sword swallowing skills. And then I convinced a high up officer at a military camp that holding orcs as prisoners with no chance of release or trial was dishonorable. I manipulated him into challenging the leader of the orc bandits to a one on one duel by calling him a coward, and when he won I was able to convince the orcs that it would benefit them to follow a strong leader. They're now working off their debts as soldiers and the militia they joined is much friendlier to us. Was funny to watch the GM scramble to make stats for the orc and the officer, he didn't expect me to go that route at all.

That's only for the living. You only get worms and rot.

I'm consider about homebrewing my own setting, but I have difficult to decide to use the existing gods or homebrewing my own gods.

Consider if the existing gods fit anywhere in your world. Otherwise, you could take the existing gods as inspiration.

Mine were also 5th level, they were 6th by the end. I tried to find resources for the dungeon online as well, but like you I didn't have much luck. In terms of your cleric, you want to really stretch out his spell slots. Remember, if your characters want to take a long rest, they will be taking 8d6 damage each. If they are on low health when they start the rest they may fall unconscious during it as well.

Overall I thought the dungeon was fun, but near the end it became really easy and my players didn't interact with a lot of the stuff like the mirrors and the room with all the different terrains because they are really cautious players. I think it took us 3 sessions, but one was really really long, I thought we could finish it up that session and underestimated the speed my party would get through content. I would estimate it would take you 3 or 4 sessions, depending on the speed of your players.

kek

Thanks for the feedback! If you think of anything else please let me know. Planning a whole dungeon is a lot of work.

Sounds like a good time user, I'm glad you're having fun. Sounds like you have a good party and character, and your solution to the orc problem was creative and in character.

Sounds like you're having fun.

Now go on and ask your DM about horsecasting and simulacrums and share your plan about defeating a beholder with a level 1 wizard casting booming blade.

No problem, hope it helps. I'm going to sleep now, it's late and I'm a bit hungover haha. It's good that you're planning it all out, I'm sure your group will have a blast. Good luck!

Come on user, it's a lvl 3 wizard with fog cloud, mobile and a lot of crossbow bolts.

I thought it was a level 3 thief with mobile and alchemist fire.

Isn't halfling's lucky trait useful?

Ooh, nice.

Do you think grey ooze is actually grey goo?

I would prefer the level 3 warlock with darkness and devil's sight, plus mobile of course

Yeah, it's nice, but you get no good features other than that, plus you are small (no 2 handed weapons) and you only have 25ft movement. RAW a nat 1 only auto fails attack rolls, so it is really not that amazing. If your dm is a retard and uses crit fumble tables then maybe it's a bit more worth it.

Ignore him, his opinions are bad.

I promised a buddy cop game in 5e, what’s a good law-enforcement equivalent in a gonzo fantasy land?

Powerful sorcerer wants the party to undertake a quest for him, to retrieve a magic item, but they've already failed to fulfill a quest for him before. How can he guarantee that they will do as asked, or that they would deeply regret it if they double cross him?

I'm thinking something similar to Geas, but since the party is 12th level, 5d10 isn't really anything deadly, and Geas itself can be broken too easily with remove curse or greater restoration. What do?

The Harmonium.

Kobolds are generally recognized as trash due to sunlight sensitivity, but in a setting with a lot of cave and dungeon delving it’s not an issue, and advantage from pack tactics might actually be really strong

What’s the big deal? If they don’t do the job he just doesn’t pay them. He can enlist as many second-rate adventurering parties as he wants, he only has to pay the one that succeeds.

hostage

While true, you haven't taken into account that the party could just walk off with the object.

considering they are the only race with a negative stat modifier as well I feel pack tactics isn't out of line. Small size kind of sucks too.

Pretty simple, they have three options. Help the sorcerer and he’ll make it worth their while, betray the sorcerer and he’ll kill them all, or decline the sorcerer’s request and be on their way.

How many miles can a sailboat cover in a day? A pirate ship? etc?

How is the sorcerer going to find them?

Not a big deal, strength is a easily dumped on any class that’s not a barbarian. Also pure Orcs have a negative int mod, so kobolds aren’t the ONLY one.

>Horsecasting
What did he mean by this?

A few other have some neg mods too, orcs -2 int.

I cold see the fun in a full kobold team with rangers that have wolf companion/mounts.

Magic

Hostage was something that crossed my mind. But the party doesn't really have a lot of loved ones all over the place, sadly.

Ok, here's the whole story. When the party unknowingly invaded his lair, they made a deal: in exchange for not killing them, he first had the party go after an item that he feels belong to him (or so is how he thinks), which they retrieved and then decided to keep for themselves. After four months, he found a way to communicate with them again, and established a deadline: they had a month to bring it to him, or else.

Now, a single day before the deadline, the party is assaulting his keep and killing all of his minions. They're also much stronger now, so they actually have a chance to kill him. He would go all out and do his best to destroy them, but one of his lieutenants is a past friend of some of the PCs, and this lieutenant will try to avoid further carnage by brokering another deal between them, since he knows there's something else the sorcerer covets even more than the first item.

If you were tasked with making a 6e that takes 5e and focuses on the speed of resolution, i.e. tweaks to make combat and other encounters as fast as possible (and that means in real time, not in rounds), while still maintaining the essential feel and mechanical core of the system, how would you do it?

Other than fucking with summoning spells?

From a sorcerer? not very likely. I'd be more worried if there was a wizard involved.

Not a hostage of a person. A hostage of loot. The only thing players truly care about.

the sandbox is coming together. Soon my players will have a morrowind style anything goes sandbox to play in.

DMG page 119

Dedicated Digital tool for it.
That or really tard it down to "roll X fight dice, target rolls x defense dice" Hero quest style.

Youre just trying to make some us jealous. Do you have a racial conversion?

You know what happens in sandboxes right?
Cats, dogs, foxes and hobos shit in them.

The time for diplomacy has clearly long passed
Why are we even talking about it?

>A hostage of loot
Heh, also crossed my mind. It'll be hard to convince them to leave anything with the sorcerer, though. I'm thinking of giving them temporary magic items (as in something that loses its magic after a month or two) in exchange for what they leave behind.

Huh, that's overly complicated. I've got 30 mile hexes, and doing some research, it looks like a knot is roughly 30 miles per day. So I'll just rate the boats in knots/hexes per day.