/5eg/ D&D Fifth Edition General

Ban utility magic that replaces mundane skills and make magic a more primal less-precise thing in your setting. Easy.

Late to respond but two DMPCs isn't so terrible in that case. It's still not ideal, but if you had 5 or 6 players or you played using some sort of mdedium that didn't allow easy tracking of everything and people taking their turns quickly and keeping track of things it'd be quite bad.

Keeping them at a low level and have them 'in reserve in case things turn sour' and 'working as the spotters/rear guard' works. They can mostly focus on giving advice mid-combat I gujess.

Champion only worked well with certain weapons and builds. Now, it works well with everything, for better for worse. It's a better build for new players now since a new player can use any weapon and gain a damage bonus.

>Create Food and Water
>It means there's no sense of having to scrounge for resources out in the wilderness anymore

Why take a chance and not waste time?

Scrounging for food is boring and not why people play the game.

It sounds terrible.

All it does is enforce the boring stereotypes like the Elven ranger or the Half-orc barbarian. It flat out fails when you get to more exotic races like Kenku or Merfolk, who don't have stereotypical classes. It'll also make encounters fucking boring. If you come across a group of say Dwarven pirates, you already know there isn't going to be any danger from magical attacks.

The only reason to do it is to try and create a primarily human only setting, which is fine. But if you're doing that, just tell your players that's what you're going for, don't try this race=class nonsense.

>Scrounging for food is boring and not why people play the game.

Speak for yourself, I love this kind of mundane shit. Makes me feel like a grounded character who's actually surviving in the world, not some video-game demi-god who just uses cheat codes (spells) to bypass basic needs.

Errr, maybe not BAN them. But what if the item is consumed upon use? So making a hut would take ressources and therefor be used less often. Or a monster makes the PC forget how to cast the spell?

How much do you/your DM enforce shit like food/water in your sessions?

always wanted to play a grounded survivalist type campaign
banning shit like Ranger who's a super forager and spells like Goodberry n what not.

curious to see how it goes having to do mundane stuff like track game and keep track of rations.

I'll usually give players a level of exhaustion if they don't have a large meal or a couple of smaller ones in between Long Rests,and then another after a few days if they're in some sort of starvation-situation.

I know it's not 100% accurate, but it's how I generally tend to enforce it.

I see the appeal of such game, but the tone of the game shifts greatly at 5th, 11th and 17th level. It is hardcoded into mechanics.

May as well take magic out of the game.

D&D is so reliant on other people coming together for a few hours, it's such a waste of a session when you're waiting around because people want to roll for what type of mushrooms they find or going shopping and making the DM read out every item at the shop and make them list everything about them.

That shit is mundane and boring and takes away from the actual adventure of roleplaying together, fighting, exploring, solving puzzles, pushing the story further.

I mean, it's what the Ranger's character is supposed to be good at. I'm OK with letting the ranger be good at it as long as there's more Roleplaying involved than "LOL I CAST GOODBERRY". Having to go out and actually hunt creates opportunities to bump into encounters and plot-hooks.

Do people actually play the game past around 10th or 12th level? It always became too videogamey and super-powered for my tastes at that point. I think the highest I've ever let a PC level was 14.

>If you come across a group of say Dwarven pirates
Note that PC classes are not NPC classes.

We always have someone with Outlander background in our group, just not to be bothered by it.

Yes, because it takes so much longer to have a couple of players roll survival checks and say "X player managed to shoot a couple of rabbits".

Fuck man, let the martials feels useful every once in awhile.

What's so big at 5th, 11th and 17th levels?

You are both playing the wrong game. D&D is what it is. If you want a more grounded campaign play WFRP or GURPS

>Do people actually play the game past around 10th or 12th level?
My campaign's currently up to level 14 and it is getting a bit too powerful for my tastes. But then, I'm the DM and I'm ramping up the difficulty to "world-conquering" so it's going OK.

They're the levels where you go from solving small community problems to solving the problems of a city, a province, a kingdom, a country, a continent, ect.

I probably messed up the steps a little, but the DM specifically certain levels are meant for certain "scales" of adventure, with the 17+ stuff being where the fate of entire worlds or planes is resting in the hands of the wiza-err, players.

Yes, because god forbid 5e be tweaked to run anything besides Forgotten Realms for the 9001th time.

*DMG specifies

Best familiar for a Monk?

Always owl, because flyby is broken as fuck, and flying familiars are super good because of flight anyway.

depends what the familiar is for
Owl is the go-to
but you could possibly take a spider or snake and extract venom from it during downtime for cheap access to poison
or take one of the sneaky types as a pickpocket

DnD works fine for lower-powered stuff. Even if you take away all of the casters' convenaince-magic, they still end up being incredibly useful and potent characters.

Honestly you just sound like one of those players who always picks wizard and can't stand the idea of losing a few toys or needing other player as anything besides meat-tanks.

Anyone else think circle of spores looks really fun? I think this UA overall was a pretty good one

Reminder that if you have some sort of a smart idea to do anything like a weird race or taking a feat or putting an ASI outside of dexterity or using a non-core archetype on monk or multiclassing or whatever the heck you're thinking
You're a fucking idiot 99% of the time

i liked Spores and Brute
Brute is just a better champion, but champion is fucking boring as shit and i welcome a replacement
also really good for dual wielding because none of it's attack features are once per turn and dual wield needs help when compared to the other fighting styles

Spores looks okay flavour-wise, but I can't help feeling that it doesn't do anything specifically new to the druid that another subclass couldn't do better with spells and regular Wild Shape, except maybe raising the dead.

Psst
Want to hear something even better than dual wielding?
SS+CBE or PAM

>I think this UA overall was a pretty good one
Brute is just an improvement to Champion and Inventor is fucking atrocious. Spores was okay.

sadly yes but there's already many great ways to use those

But I wanna ROLEplay, not rolePLAY

Brute invalidates Champion, which is fine, Champion sucks, but it also kinda invalidates Barbarian too.

It's also the best martial in the game but the most fucking BORING, because somehow those two went hand-in-hand perfectly.

Spores kinda reads like it's supposed to be the "weapons-druid". Free instant damage within 10', Temp HP bonuses while not!Wildshaped.

Maybe its supposed to be something like the bladelock/bladesinger for druid?

Then why would you ask what the best familiar would be, instead of taking the one that's most fitting to the narrative? Fucking hypocrite.

>DM for wife, son, friend, friend's wife and friend's son
>Wife informs me today she and other wife organised a sleepover
>D&D themed sleepover
>This weekend
>6 new players
>4 kids, 2 adults
>Makes 11 players at the table
>Fuck

This is gonna have to be a oneshot.

I'm thinking a group of pregenerated goblins, kobolds or grung who got kicked out of their home by dragon and giant having a fight. They'll get to team up with one to fight the other, take on both, or if they're lucky resolve the dispute.

Any good simplified character sheets for newbies out there?

>Trying to take 'fun and flavourful options!'
>On a monk
Here begins every journey to suckdom.

I use myth-weavers sheets. They're formatted plain and simple, but you have to input everything yourself. Sample sheet; myth-weavers.com/sheet.html#id=1452447

It requires an account on the site though, which triggers some people here.

>11 players
>Some of whom will have very short attention spans

Nothing is stopping you from using the spores while in wildshape, right?

High level druid just flying around the tarrasque shooting no-roll, no-save spores at it...

The difference though is that druids could already get up close with Wild shape. Bladelocks and Bladesingers are a way to rethink a class by taking them into the middle of the fray - but druids are already there most of the time, which just means spores is an underpowered version of the same thing.

It reminds me of the fungal lord Walrock homebrew.

I don't know. I guess not, but isn't there a part of Wildshape that you can only use features the new form can also use? That aside, pretty sure a Tarrasque doesn't care much about 12 damage a turn.

I guess, but Spore Druid looks like it's supposed to synergize more with weapons/shillelagh shenanigans than any other druid subclass we've had so far.

Using your Wildshape to gain temp HP, doubling your 10' Halo of Spores damage, and bonus poison damage on weapon attacks seems to push it that way.

Another thought occurs. A more apt comparison might be to Kensei monk. It's a class that already has solid melee options, but with a different approach.

Thanks for that, I'll take a look.

What doesn't kill me, makes me stronger, right?

Can you get some friend to DM and split the horde into two manageable groups?

Seems like you and wife should split dm duties, since she set it up. Two groups with a set destination and time frame for a final encounter.

Yeah. Have the wife handle the kids and you do the adults.

>pretty sure a Tarrasque doesn't care much about 12 damage a turn.

Poison damage won't affect a tarrasque anyway.

1) Do you do the bird voice?
2) Why are you such a faggot?
3) Get a decent haircut

yes
no
maybe

Wish I could get another DM, a different friend who DMs lives 4 hours away ;_;
The missus doesn't/won't DM.

I did have some choice words about throwing new players at me unexpectedly.
But, things we do for our kids.

Also few things I'm figuring out. Any opinions?

Make players Level 1, 2, or 3?

What do you think about players stacking up for 2/3 attacks at advantage?
Stack has 15 AC. If it gets hit everyone takes damage and they fall in a pile.

because the grogs at r/dndnext wanted a better champion fighter.

So they got one. On average nearly twice as much damage over ten rounds.

I'd say start at level 1 so they won't get overwhelmed by their features. Don't be afraid to level them up quickly after one or two combats and some roleplay and exploration. It makes them feel awesome and once they applied and understood their abilities they will be eager for more. Stacking up souunds like a lot of fun, but I'm not a fan of the 2/3 attacks at advantage mechanic.

Back when they were introduced as a core race in 4e, paladins didn't do oaths, so the Cha/Str/Con bonuses Dragonborn could get made them perfect paladins.

I'd say start at 2. Quick progression to interesting features at 3 for most classes, but not as squishy as only having a single hit dice.

Level one is boring as shit for new players. Your session will be spent with them constantly requesting to do cool shit and you saying "no, you can't do that" but not being able to provide any other options for coolshit to them, because all level one characters are permitted to do in combat is attack/cantrip basically.

What are the first 2/3 invocations everyone usually grabs for warlocks?
Wouldn't armor of shadows just give you permanent 13+dex AC at will?

Owl. There are other competitors in a vaccum, such as the Cranium Rat for telepathy, the Tressym for seeing invisibility and poisonous substances but as a monk at high levels you are understood by just about anything, and are imune to poison or something anyway, and are expected to have a super high perception state, giving you rather marginal gains.

So yeah, I say owl for OP purposes. You should aim higher than that tho

I made my player Wizard roll for his familiar, that came out a velociraptor, I reskinned it as a zombie black chicken, and its been one of the most memorable elements of our campaign

>Agonizing Blast
>Repelling Blast
>Devil's Sight if you want to be a turbo-faggot who will end up hindering your team with Darkness more than actually helping.

Armor of Shadows is a waste. You already have Light Armor, and a simple +1 set will match Armor of Shadows. You also have Hexblade if you want medium armor and a shield, or a dip in Fighter or Cleric if you just want Heavy Armor.

It would. Not really sure why they bother making you cast it to begin with when it's at will and not even on your spell list

Not a bad idea, I'd say. Basically have people group up into groups of maybe 3 and they all move together and act on the same initiative. I'm not sure I'd suggest linking their health together though. And then they might have pack tactics to give them advantage and they can do whatever attack actions each when their turn comes at the same time.

You managed to identify one of the most useless invocations, congratulations.
Popular ones are Devil's Sight, Agonizing Blast, Repelling Blast, Book of Ancient Secrets and Repelling Blast.
Also, the at-will detect magic one and fiendish resilience are good.

Armor of shadows' niche is multiclassing into abjuration wizard.

Why the multiclassing into abjuration, is the lvl 1 spell slot really that necessary?

Abjuration gets a ward that is recharged every time you cast mage armour.

Otherwise, literally all mage armour is is +1 AC for you assuming someone else couldn't have just cast it on you anyway.

You can cast armor of shadows repeatedly without spending a spell slot which charges up your Abjuration ward.

You can do the same thing with Alarm, as it's a ritual, between combats, it just takes a bit longer.

I make armor of shadows a little more apetizing for RP by giving it the property of an armor of glamour

Thanks anons. Still seems stupid given how easy ritual casting is for wizards in 5e

This is why later UA classes with similar abilities have always added the wording "when cast using a SPELL SLOT" so there's actual resource-use going on. I'd recommended doing the same thing as a homerule.

Unless you're playing Adventure League, then you're just fucked for much bigger reasons.

>Autism League

Alarm (level 1+) regenerates your ward at a rate of 11/hour.
Forbiddance (Level 11+) regenerates your ward at a rate of 36/hour.
Armor of Shadows regenerates your ward at a rate of 1200/hour.

Also note you can't short rest while casting spells.

This pic is obsolete now that Brute fighter is rolling nat 20s on all death saving throws at all times.

Not that it was hard to deliver a single point of healing anyway
all you do is make the monsters decide to slaughter your character before continuing.

What're some good Bard multiclasses? Paladin, for sure, but what else? I don't really care to Wizard.

bard.

>Not that it was hard to deliver a single point of healing anyway.

Even at level 7 using an action to get someone up, or using a spell slot to healing word them is a valuable resource. The fighter just gets up for free on his turn with no need for any resource.

>DM has to make monsters metagame now because of a class feature.

Yeah nah it's not OP

>A UA turns out to be shit tier homebrew
>People act like this isn't roughly 40-60% of UAs on average.

Feels like half a Ravnica supplement.
Spires for Golgari
Brute for Gruul
Inventor for Izzet

When the monsters see you get up after going down, they're going to go 'Oh, okay, this time I'm going to attack you when you're down' and when you're down it only takes one fucking hit that has advantage to put you on the edge where you could definitely die on your next turn. If they don't attack a second time, in which case you're absolutely, definitely dead if they hit.

There are spells that allow you to get someone up every turn with just that one spell slot, such as aura of vitality. A rogue with the healer feat can get you up as a bonus action for as often as they feel like doing it. A celestial warlock can do it with a bonus action and still cast a spell with their action. Nobody sane would actually use an action to get you up, there's plenty of bonus action or similar sources or AoE heals or whatever that handle it.

Better yet, be a sorlock and repelling blast the enemies away so they never reach you and can never hurt you in the first place, have all sorts of magical utility when you're not blasting, get to choose celestial warlock to get a couple of 'get teammate up as a bonus action heal' or shadow sorcerer for the 'don't go down when you hit 0' deal or whatever the fuck.

Holy fuck, didn't even think of this but yeah. I'm not huge on magic anymore, but damn some planes would make great official settings. The ones their doing with PS aren't great, but Ravnica? Theros? Tarkir? Those would all be awesome.

>mobs beat some guy till he drops to the floor and move on
>he jumps back up on his own within seconds
>they come back and make sure he stays down before chasing after anyone else
>this is metagaming somehow

While I hated Theros as a set, it would make a perfect D&D setting. Greek inspired heroes going around fighting evil creatures and dealing with divine matters would be fun. Also already a shit ton of legendary creatures who could make fun NPC's.

Planeswalkers were a mistake, hell everything since that time spiral has just been spiraling into the drain.

True, I used to like getting actual info about planes and people on them. Not "WHY THE PLANESWALKERS ARE HERE" booklets. Towards the end all I played was commander so I could nearly always ignore new sets.

How would you pull off an offensive bard that didn't rely on illusion shit? Or would it just be better to take a few levels in bard and then the rest in sorcerer and then flavor the sorcerer spells as coming from the instruments?

One of my players wants to play a vampire.

Should I allow this? I'm obviously not going to let them play the monster, I'm not that dumb. But is there like, an official Dhampir? I know there's a vampire from one of the Planeshifts, but iirc they're not very classical vampire-y.

Thoughts, suggestions?

Does it make sense for the game?

Do you want a special snowflake power fantasy or do you want more gritty realism?

Sup /5eg/.
I'm pretty new to DnD and just hit level 3 as a Hexblade warlock but I think I've got some math problems. I just got pact of the blade and the improved pact weapon invocation and I'm just doing some prep by writing out the common pact weapons I'll be summoning the most. My dude is themed around rapiers so I tried writing it out, but the To Hit and damage seem higher than expected: ±6 To Hit and 1d8+4 Dam.
The things I'm taking into account are:
Hex Warrior (CHR is the modifier used in attacks)
Improved Pact Weapon (+1 To Hit and Damage)
+3 CHR mod
+2 Proficiency
1d8 from the rapier itself.
Is this right or did I fuck something up?

blade bard who swears and cures everyone to roll shit and smack them with his lute?

Could always just use Drow race but instead of drow magic let them turn into a bat once a day.

no you are right enjoy outshining the actual martial classes while also casting magic