/5eg/ - Fifth Edition General

>Barbarian: slap shit as as as you can while taking less damage
Did you have a stroke?

proofreading is hard when you're in a shitposting frenzy

I'm about to start a game of 5e with a couple of my internet pals, what the heck do I have to read to be able to play the game? There are so many books that I have no idea where to start.

Start with classes, explain the subclasses if they're intrested.
Barbarian is all about taking hits and not giving a fuck. Unstoppable.
Bard is the Jack of All Trades and the best support. Inspiring.
Cleric is very versatile, but he always serves a deity and is the best at healing and buffing. Caring.
Druid is just as versatile as Cleric, but has a different approach to combat - Beast Shapes instead of Shield&Mace. Fluid.
Fighter can use any weapon, knows tactics and is well-trained in his field. Professional.
Monk is for hitting and running. They're the most agile. Slippery.
Paladin combines Cleric and Fighter - less professionalism, more buffs. Protective.
Ranger combines Fighter and Druid, while also being all about wilderness survival. Always ahead.
Rogue is an alpha-strike killing machine and, usually, a bit of an engineer. Never caught.

And then there's these three:
Sorcerer is a born mage. He doesn't know many tricks, but has a big supply of power. Everburning.
Warlock gets power from selling his soul. Knows even fewer tricks than sorc does, but needs next to no rest. Sinister.
Wizard is a learned mage. He has a lot of spells, but has to manage them with care. Intelligent.

Something like that.

the 3 base books are a good starting point, Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide and the Monster Manual if you're a DM.
If you're a PC you could just read the handbook for now

Read the Basic Rules and the 'Lost Mines of Phandelver' adventure, if you're the DM. Will do for now.

How much dead weight would a non-hexblade melee warlock be?
I want to do a blind melee fighter who sees through his familiar, which necessitates a Voice of the Chain Master warlock.
But I also think the Seeker patron makes more sense for the character than the Hexblade does.

Nah, I'm just a player so I'll just check out the player's handbook for now. Thanks for the help!

5etools.com is a great resource to have once you've read the Player's Handbook. It's constantly updated and checked over for validity.

>5etools.com
That's pretty handy, I'll bookmark it for later.
Any tips for roleplaying and getting into character?

Fighter: Warrior
Barbarian: Wild Warrior
Paladin: Holy Warrior
Cleric: Holier, less War-ior
Ranger: Bow Warrior
Warlock: Warlockier

>Ranger: Bow Warrior
This meme has to die

Drizzle fo' Shizzle needs to die.

Reminder that coffeelock is RAW legal and mainly opposed by wizards salty that other casters can do a thing.

What's the craziest shit your party's barbarian has done?

GOO warlock or necromancer wizard? I change my mind every other day.

Goolock has been my favorite class so far, even without multiclassing.

Fucked a cow

Was he a minotaur? Hotter if he wasn't

I forgot, is it Mearls or Crawford who actually has a say in the rules of the game (in regards to Twitter posts)?

>Fucked a cow
no he means "in character"

imgur.com/a/ExQrW

rememba the good times.

I have been leaning towards that this week and the day is coming soon. Thanks for the reinforcement.

The party needed to cross an rope bridge over a whirlpool thingamajig in a magic forest. The bridge was pretty old and some of the slats were out, so we needed to jump across a few points.

The Barbarian managed to roll 3 ones in a row and:
>missed the jump, only just catching the edge on the other side
>failed to pull themselves up and fell into the water
>failed to swim against the current and ended up being sucked into a cave system where they lost an eye in an unrelated incident before the party found him again.

He wasn't the most...competent of characters. We don't even play natural 1s/20s are auto succeed or fail, the Barbarian of all classes just managed to fail 3 strength checks in a row with the lowest roll possible.

Crawford. Mearls is 'Chaotic Cool' designer, Crawford is the 'Lawful Gay' designer.

that's actually a good description of them.

>discord drama
you guys really should kill yourselves already

What is the dumbest, shittiest sage advice ruling?

>Mearls is 'Chaotic Cool' designer
Citation needed.
Also fuck 'after the spell' Mage Slayer. And fuck Heat Metal's the save does nothing while we're at it.

Nerfing orc nipple sensitivity

I'm not saying he's cool himself, but he stated multiple times that he values the 'Rule of Cool'

It's a tie between "super advantage" Lucky and the one where they decided that elves can break the rules and take a long rest in 4 hours.

Well, 4 hours long rests aren't sage advice, it's already errata at this point, afaik.

Pretty sure it started as a sage advice before it got errata'd

>the one where they decided that elves can break the rules and take a long rest in 4 hours.
Enough of this elven crap. Day of the knife when?

>Heat Metal's the save does nothing
Do I want to know?

God damn 5eg what a horribly fun session I ran tonight.

Had a loud hippy dippy "everyone should get along" "let's peacefully resolve this" chick who was the kind of player who walked up behind the drow player while said player was sneaking- IN THE DARK- with her fucking torch blazing.

The best part, reminding her of shit like this got an, well yes my torch is still lit, duh.

What a story I'll have for you cunts after next session. She is currently 3 floors away from the party trying to chase down someone who shot her in the back then clocked her with his mace TWICE before running because she wants to ask him if he is a good person.

I literally can't stop laughing.

>If a creature is holding or wearing the object and takes the damage from it, the creature must succeed on a Constitution saving throw or drop the object if it can. If it doesn't drop the object, it has disadvantage on Attack rolls and Ability Checks until the start of your next turn.
The save only lets you choose to not drop the weapon, so no matter what you do you're taking damage and either disarmed or gimped.
Armor can't be dropped, either, so in that case you don't even have the choice of being disarmed.
The save does nothing useful.

man that spell is pretty brutal

>The best part, reminding her of shit like this got an, well yes my torch is still lit, duh.
There comes a point where you have to ask for a Wisdom saving throw from both the drow and the torchbearer to save them from their own stupidity.

It's suboptimal but if you're having fun then it's fine. Dead weight depends entirely on the composition of the rest of your party. Your Warlock could be focused on utility instead of combat or only take combat Invocations.

If you're going Seeker, Tome Pact can let you use Shillelagh, which makes you SAD and shores up one weakness of the build.

It's a brutally effective single-target disable and its only catch is Concentration, which isn't really one at all the way it works.

That's it, my next character is going to be a wizard killing machine. Should I go Fighter for Indomitable and Action Surge, Paladin for save bonuses and Smite, Rogue for Sneak Attack and bonus action Dash, or Monk for Stunning Strike?
Mage Slayer and Sentinel are a given.

>If you're going Seeker, Tome Pact can let you use Shillelagh
A warlock can only have one pact, right?
For this character, Voice of the Chain Master, and therefore Pact of the Chain, is a necessity to allow him to see through his familiar at all times. Otherwise he'd need to choose between using his action to attack or see while in battle.

If your DM ever gives you magical weapons then they help to make up the difference a bit. Not going pact of the blade sounds pretty horrible though.

Has anyone revamped fighting styles to give more long term benefits to martials?

Mage Slayer got totally gimped by another '''Sage''' Advice ruling. Its first benefit is next to useless.
That would require non-elves and non-wizards to get nice things, so no.

Like what, scaling benefits or something?

Yeah, and perks that are exclusive to that fighting style.

>Mage Slayer got totally gimped
Don't remind me. It's still useful enough for breaking concentration and hitting them if they're too dumb to teleport away. Plus having advantage on your saving throws when you close in is great for if they try to knock you back or dominate you.

tfw have been DMing a campaign for over a year and players haven't read the PHB and only like one or two have read their classes all the way through

read the book niggas. please. Don't come crying to me when I forgot you had a class feature from the most recent level up that would've changed something. That's your job.

Learn some basic improv techniques.
It's the single best way to instantly get better at DMing and playing.

tell me about it, what is coffeelock? I'm interested.

I had the same issue back when we were playing 3.5. Shit was rough.
But 5e caught on, and my players, no matter how bad their English is, read through PHB properly, and know their classes well. WE can finally play high-level (and did play a tier-4 campaign last year, which was... well, let's say rules knowledge wasn't an issue, and neither was balance).

I literally read the PHB as if it were a bible.

Your players suck.

It helps to write down character traits to make sure you stay consistent to them. I recommend not treating your character as a self-insert and trying to play someone that is decidedly different than yourself, more fun that way.

GOOlock for sure.
No one wants to play with necromancers in reality unless everyone is already on board and most people likely won't be.
If not just for the reason that no one wants to sit around while you take 5 different turns.

Wait they ruled it's 4 hour long rests?
What the fuck. I thought it was 4 hours of meditation, 4 hours of chilling and doing light activity?

What are good invocations for a level six hexblade with either the pact of chain or tome?
I'm thinking agonizing blast and maddening hex, but I can't decide on a third.

That was the main reason I started looking at alternative classes that suited the kind of character I had in mind. I have been told you can just use mob rules and give all your skellingtons a single turn, if it comes to that. That probably should be the default rule for summoner types and I don't see how this got through playtesting as it is.
I'm hoping to play as a skeleton directly, so I don't really need to summon more of me anyway.

>hexblade
>didn't take pact of the blade
user, I

Deciding sorcerer's can no longer apply +cha to multiple damage rolls.
So for some reason your fire draconic sorc can deal +cha to ONE of his meteors, but the rest just aren't quite as hot.

Meanwhile evo wizards can get magic missile as: 1d4 + 1 + int x however many darts they summon, no roll required! And they can also sculpt their spells perfectly.

Sorcerers meanwhile still can only help you pass your save, not actually avoid all the damage of a fireball.

Coffeelock:

A new invocation in Xanathat's Guide makes a warlock no longer need sleep of any kind and grants immunity to sleep effects.

The rules for exhaustion due to sleep deprivation are explicitly optional, per the PHB.

A Sorcerer can use pact magic spell slots to make sorcery points, which can then be used to make sorcerer spell slots. sorcerer spell slots reset only on a long rest.

Taken together, this means a warlock/sorcerer with Aspect of the Moon can convert all their pact slots to sorcery points, take a short rest, do it again, short rest again, ad nauseam without ever taking a long rest - giving them an arbitrarily large number of spell slots.

Fiendish Vigor for +8 HP whenever you have enough time to spend casting it, basically a free hit die.
Misty Visions for at-will silent image (really good if you've got an imagination and a DM that plays by RAW - remember that creatures get no save vs. silent image unless they interact with it.
Cloak of Flies (dunno if you can get this at 5 but free damage in melee is nice.)

Coffeelock mixes sorcerer and warlock levels, and takes multiple short rests instead of a long rest to generate lots of

How nice of a DM are you? I'd say it's time to throw something at them they are clearly not meant to win. Something not too big so they run right away but substantial for them to get half way through it and wonder if they're going to live.

In other words, make them learn their abilities and use their class to the fullest extent.

Yeah I eventually told them that I was no longer going to remind them of how to play their classes.
If they forgot benefits they'd lose out on them.

It's amazing how well they closed the gap between wizards and everybody else in this edition when it first came out, only to widen it back up with every sage advice and splat.

Anyone else win against a rules nazi DM?

>Out of combat
>Want to cast minor illusion to make a double of myself
>DM says I can't
>Says it's not an object
>Counter his point that I make a realistic looking wax statue
>DM says it can't move
>Tells me silent image is more appropriate
>Counter his point again and say I cast minor illusion repeatedly so that it animates
>Nothing in the spell description says it can't animate
>Tell him he's unfairly limiting my creativity and player agency
>DM concedes my point

And that's how I outplayed a rules nazi.

Is it a coincidence that wizards are a favorite class of the designers?

and that is why I don't allow everything

Who did you expect Wizards of the Coast to be biased towards, Barbarians?

I imagine a slightly melted, slightly misformed wax statue moving at 1/6 fps.

Personally, I'm planning to make a Coffelock Warlock a major NPC in my campaign.

Nobody knows the secrets of his power in how he came to rule his citystate. Just that his arcane force is seemingly limitless. I'll be giving him also an artifact that he developed that let him basically store his Sorcery Points as well outside his body. I don't plan for him to be a real antagonist but just if that's the direction the party wants I'll let them have it.

So it moves once every 6ish seconds?
That's a pretty unconvincing framerate.

You're a trash player for trying to push the limits of a clearly limited cantrip that is already incredibly powerful within its limits. All the while there exists a spell meant to do just this making it so you're likely in the wrong both RAW and RAI.

If this even happened at all.

This.
Which is fucking amazing.

I like your idea, but to expand on it you could have some Inevitables come after him because he's effectively breaking reality over his knee with these shenanigans. Might make a good sub plot.

Sorry that was supposed to be laced in heavy sarcasm.

People get upset about rules lawyers.
I find myself getting upset by DMs that don't even pretend like they know the rules.

If we're just gonna play freeform RP, then don't tell me we're playing 5e d&d.

I have unironically begun to study Pugmire to see if it could speak any of its secrets to me. Giving everyone 10 levels of advancement, having it so that the Fighter equivalent gets third attack at 10, and giving spellcasters casting one level behind usual but with more side effects seems sane to me. But I'm more vengeful than actually serious, so don't mind me.

They were doing so good though. I actually had hope when I first read about concentration.
Now I'm just waiting for the magic item that can act as a spell focus that lets you ignore it.

>Now I'm just waiting for the magic item that can act as a spell focus that lets you ignore it.
Looks like you accidentally skipped or skimmed a page of Xanathar's

I meant lets you ignore concentration.

Only time I get mad with a rules lawyer is if I'm not allowed to do something that is clearly defined in the rules.

Rolled a nat 20 on my death save once, Rules is you roll that shit on the START of your turn. So you get your turn (nat 20 gives you 1 hp). Wanted to take my turn. DM ruled that I didn't have a turn. Was kinda mad.

Fuck you. This isn't true. Say it isn't true.

Don't fuck with me user

I'm more bothered by how boring wizards are than how broken they are. There's no point in choosing a school specialization because you still have unrestricted access to every other school, and their toolkit is constantly revolving by design so that they have no cohesion or theme as individual characters.

Yeah, I can agree with that.
If that's what it says, then go with that.

I DM and try to give the player the benefit of the doubt unless I'm nearly certain it is one way. Then promise to review it after the fact just to be safe regardless of what rule we go with as to not slow the pace.

Reminds me of last thread when some user was arguing that you can't knock a flying creature prone and if it goes prone it doesn't fall. When there is a literal rule saying exactly what happens. Shit is infuriating.

...

things that never happened tonight on 5eg

Hat of Wizardry doesn't let you ignore concentration. It's still fucking retarded that you no longer have to hold a focus, but hey, when did WOTC hold onto its sanity?