/5eg/ - Fifth Edition General

consequences
let them get crushed, but maybe survive in some way

>What creatures make the BBEG?
Multiple BBEGs who are cooperating for a shared goal but who don't trust each other enough because in the end, they each want to be on top. Which the players can use to their advantage sometimes.

Right now my players have three BBEGs they have to contend with. Along with two other parties I'm running adjacent campaigns with

An ancient black dragon w/o a breath weapon but access to wizard spells up to 6th level and 27AC. Also has a lizardman army as well as a clan of draconians and dragonborn he sired.

An Oni Necromancer who has a death knight, mummy lord and dracolich retainer + standard lich army of zombies, wights, skeletons, etc.

Finally, an alliance of gnolls, orcs, drow and evil giants that want to regain access to their ancestral gods that are led by a council of the strongest of each race.

Come up with a couple different methods of keeping them alive when they inevitably fail hard. Make it depend on how well they do actually do. Pit fights are always fun.

>want to play cleric of Istishia
>still no water domain
>have to choose tempest even though Istishia is all about finding inner peace through becoming one with water

The one thing I miss about 3.5 is how diverse the domains were.

Give them a fighting chance but offer no mercy. Make it clear that if they die, it's their fault for being overconfident. This isn't Skyrim where you run around slapping things with a sword until it dies.

The best BBEGs are up-and-coming organizations of a few notable baddies that grow in power throughout the campaign mirroring the party.

>What's the most munchkin thing your or a DM has shutdown?
I fucking wish my dm would shut down his girlfriend. Bitch gets to be a unique homebrew class, is the messiah that we're all supporting characters to, and gets 2 additional characters to play as. She gets rules and enemy behavior fudged in her favor too and the dm is in complete denial over it.

I had a DM put two limitations on Moon Druids.
>Wildshape forms have to be the size of a small rodent or bigger
>Wildshape forms always look noticeably different than regular animals, having unusual patterns or magical rules on their bodies.

Basically we had a druid who loved turning into shit like fleas to do stealth sections, and even one tried to pull the whole "I'm turning into deadly flesh-eating bacteria" shit.

Needless to say, the player doing this bitched endlessly and got kicked from the group like 2 sessions later.

The flea is douchy but fair, the bacteria thing is just fucking retarded and is grounds for being beat with a sock full of d4s

I have a player that likes turning into House Spiders and shit for stealth missions

But this is Curse of Strahd though, so she quickly became acquainted with the realities of life as a bottom feeder of the food chain, and was in constant panic of nearly dying of predators, exposure, and other spiders in mating season

What sort of abilities might a warlock who made a pact with a construct (Such as a Modron, Inevitable, living location or even Primus himself) have?

Maybe to fit in with the lawful aspect they can take an average on damage die?

>Couples and D&D
In my experience it's rarely works out, but chances increase if they're married.

Did he somehow see the microscopic bacteria so he could wildshape into it?

I've got a weird mishmash party that doesn't play all at the same time:

Arcane Archer, Fighter/Rogue, Draconic Sorcerer, Wild Sorcerer, Lore Bard, Nature Cleric

Not really sure where to fit in here. Seems like a tanky type character would work well. Thinking maybe EK, even though there's a ton of fighters already, but also we don't have a wizard.

What else might fit well?

It works as long as one of them isn't dming. Aw, you don't like that you have to play AN official material character like everyone else? Too bad, your boyfriend isn't dming.
Of course that was going too far on my part, and they stopped coming to that game after a few sessions.

>What creatures make the best BBEG?
Personal favorites?
Lich, followed by Illithid
Runner-ups include Ancient Dragons, Demon Lords, and Vampires

We had a druid try to pull something similar.

Our DM put the limitation that wild shape had to conform to an official stat block (e.g. you could be a parrot but take raven statblock) and the druid had to give a plausible justification to have seen it.

Druid flipped his shit for a session and then calmed down. Was either continue tantrum or stay in the group.

A strength ranger, or a moon druid.
Maybe an Eldritch KnightX/ War Wizard 2 multiclass if the Arcane Archer's inteligence isn't anything to call home

My gf plays in my campaigns and I play in her EotE/FaD/AoR campaign and her Shadowrun campaign. We don't have any issues. But she's a fucking unicorn so maybe that's it.

I've ended up killing four of her characters in the past year. Mostly because she plays low INT characters who get themselves into shitty situations.

>What creatures make the best BBEG?
Bodysnatchers, every single time.

Magical utility focus with rituals such as tomelock or wizard works.
A 'tank' works, but if you want to be a tank pick a proper tank like Ancestral Guardians Barbarian which actually gives enemies a reason to attack you instead of your teammates. Your party could probably use a strongman anyway.

I'm working on an NPC for my campaign, sort of a Merlin knock off. His primary class is going to be druid, but I want to toss some wizard levels in there too. What school makes the most sense for that kind of character?

Also, don't be afraid to take things away from them as a consequence.
Enemies are probably going to search the party and claim at least some of their magic items and gold when they're captured. If they can get some of that back later, make it a real pain in the ass to do so.
Getting captured and broken out again is nothing to a player. Hit'em in their wallets.

Pic related.

Conjuration or Necromancy

>most munchkin thing your or a DM has shutdown
We ended-up with a DM who actually encourages minimaxing.
One wiped-out most of the party on level 1 during the first encounter, and told us it was out fault for making such weak characters.
Had to build intentionally broken characters to even stand a chance on the most basic encounters.
The good part is that he was actually a pretty good story-teller when it came down to it
even tho he obviously jacked it to Berserk and Attack on Titan

Multiple ways to fight that. Heavily enforce the "must be seen" rule. Make it so that there are no bacteria or shit but make humors an actual thing. Or diseases little angels fighting little demons in your body. Or you can just say no to him. Flea is fair though.

oh boy a game where everyone is a hexblade with PAM or whatever the fuck my favorite

Second for liches, can't go wrong. Otherwise, highly motivated regular humanoids.

I personally just went with a "it must have stats for you to turn into it"

>Illithid
Not only for the squid head itself, but all the fucked up monsters it'd have with it. Honestly, if a pack of intellect devourers doesn't fucking set off your panic alarm I don't know what will.

Oni. Bonus points if the Oni, whenever they encounter the party, can seperate the party and disguise themselves as different party members to attack and fuck with them.

Whenever my players realize they're up against an Oni, I can see the horror in their eyes. I fucking love Oni. They're so fucking good.

They'd rather go up against two ancient dragons than an Oni.

I want to make a gentleman thief type character. Wonder whether I should go with Arcane Trickster or Thief. Thief seems a little boring.

My Strahd's been doing this for weeks.

Players havent noticed that some npcs turn weird on them for a while

>using intellect devourers
>ever

Mastermind or inquisitive can work for that very well. You could also be a swashbuckler who's a duellist that believes that fencing is a gentleman's sport, kind of like a gentleman boxer.

>hexblade
how did you know?

Go nature paly, pretty fun and should be able to tie into some of the other characters backstories.

good to take a munchkin down a peg
or twenty

Munchkin or not, intellect devourers are bullshit

If you wana be a charisma-thief, go with Bard honestly.

There's actually a lot of viable builds.

But there are some that are simply obnoxious and I hope are bannned.

What could some features for a warlock who's made a pact with a construct be?

Last time I pitted them against an Oni, they attacked his fortress without much preparation. I filled that place full of all sorts of Scooby Doo traps like spinning walls, trap doors and stuff and then had him slowly pick them off one by one by posing as other members of the party.

Only the paladin (in-character) realized that he wasn't the rogue but it was already too late. They woke up outside his fortress in their skivvies with "Stay out of my house" painted on them in ink.

They have a love-hate relationship with oni in general.

Swashbuckler goes pretty well with Charisma

>Major Image of Strahd bullies the party and some npcs with a speech
>Including one Vasilli Von Holtz whom they have seen here and there for the past couple of days
>Party recruits his friendship
>They go together to krezk along with Ireena
>Ireena is acting increasingly weirder
>They leave her behind along with their friend, Lord Holtz after being paranoid as all hell about her safe being every since they left Death House
>They are out and about towards the Winery when lightnint cracks back in Krezk
>They rush back to check on Ireena
>She's safe but she's terrified. Something, someone that *looked* like Strahd almost came right out of the pool after her
>It would have gotten her too if it hadn't been for Vasili who snatched her from his claws last second
>Party is besides itself with gratitude to lord vasili who seems to have been so struck by the effort that took away to his bed for rest
>Party kicks itself for their foolishness of having left Ireena alone ever
>The paladin even tried to give him a pile of cash in gratitude

I fucking love Vampires

Bard or Swashbuckler

Mastermind if you have the crew for a heist

Bards are fun, but I don't wanna go too magical.

I might try that. Was thinking of maybe having a more pirate-y character for that. Rogue is my favorite class, so I've got a couple different rogue concepts

His familiar is a Tiny Servant

Pet Rock.

Gentleman=/=charisma.
Some gentlemen can have low charisma, be shit at lying, not have an awfully influencial personality and sometimes even be reserved.

But persuasion proficiency is pretty much expected and decent intellect, too.

Also, thief can be a lot of fun, but it requires a bit of DM cooperation and I'd say it's even harder than arcane trickster.
The difficulty of rogues is simply:
>Swashbuckler

Pact of the celestial, the "Light" they serve is code for the light of Eureka

Why does every published adventure end with a boss fight that is clearly way above the party's ability to fight, only for the party to be massively buffed or the boss to be massively nerfed?

Does the level 11 party really need a level 20 end to their adventure every time?

I guess they expect the party to level-up on the way

Epic boss fights sell. That's pretty much it.

I have a setting, I know the rules, I can tell a decent story.
I also have frequent depressive episodes which would probably prevent me from putting prep into sessions.
What should I do anons? I want to DM but I feel like I'd end up just disappointing people.

>Was either continue tantrum or stay in the group

I'd probably wait for the exact most damaging moment (like before the climax of the story) and leave just to spite you.

So I'm building the "Medic" character, and other than Rogue Thief with the Healer feat, I feel like I'm looking at 2 levels of fighter, for Dueling and Action Surge (to use more healers kit)

Any idea when one should take these levels, and if any more levels in this or other classes are advisable?

Multiclassing for math is tasteless

For medicine

>Wanna run but don't have a setting and don't wanna use realms

You could always try adapting modules to your setting. Against the cult of the reptile god, dms guild stuff, etc.

If you have a relatively understanding party I think you could do fine.
Focus on loose storytelling, a non-serious tone and making stuff up as you go, with lots of player agency. Putting a lot of prep into those kinds of adventures is useless anyway.
Put the xp difficulty budget from the DM handbook somewhere where you can quickly reference it. Have some flash cards of common monster stats ready so you can whip up encounters on the fly. Bookmark a few town/name/dungeon generators to bring up whenever you need them (personally, I'm a fan of the Wu-Tang name generator for my villains).
I've done adventures where I laid out everything beforehand, and I've had adventures with almost no prep whatsoever. I know which one was more fun for everybody.

why cant evil dragons shape change?

I had a player that did not want to deal with the restrictions of Wild Shape used per day or level cap.

Why would they ever want to not be a dragon?

Are you mistaking them for some of those race hating metallics?

For the purpose of taking over, say an empire or manipulating people directly who are trying to thwart him.

The non-retarded ones can via magic. They just don't have an innate ability.

I can think of at least 1 shapechanging evil dragon

Alright chaps

I need a short adventure that takes about 6 hours maximum for a not very experienced group. I previously ran House of Poe zith a previous group of similar people and it turned out to be perfect in length. Gimme whatcha got! Would you kindly, evidently.

well, in the mm, only metallic dragons can shapeshift.

Who says they can't?

The DMG, PHB and MM are guidelines that you can build upon if you so desire. Do you want shapeshifting evil dragons? Do you want evil dragons w/ spell slots? Then take the template and make alterations.

God King's Thunder has at least 1 blue dragon that shapechanges into giants

Run one-shots of short campaigns?

she has no pride, clearly

Whites are too stupid.
Blacks and reds are too arrogant.
Blues might, depending on the circumstances.
Greens are all about manipulation and fucking with people, so it makes complete sense for them to.

So how do i play up something being off with a group of people my party saved? Im going to have some yuanti purebloods along with some humans and traveling lizardfolk.
The yuanti attacked an outpost on the edge of a desert and the party is on their way to check it out. Im gonna have the people thrown into cells with some of them taken away and have some of the people be insistent that they get rescued.

If you're using actual adventures, then Sunless Citadel (1-3) or Lost Mines (1-5) are a couple of your best options, since they're for lower-level play and don't have a massive level growth range. Sunless Citadel is one of seven parts of the Yawning Portal campaign, which will allow the players to keep adventuring with the characters they have made all the way up to 14+, whereas if you're just testing the waters, Lost Mines is good for stopping at level 5 after introducing game mechanics and helping your players make better decisions for a different campaign.

I would suggest avoiding a homebrew setting if everyone is new to this, and only move on once someone has figured out how to "break" the game.

>Whites are too stupid.
>Blacks and reds are too arrogant.
took me a while till I realized you were talking about Dragons

You've inspired me.

Of course, back in Dragonlance wasn't there a black dragon who was shapechanged into a human body?

I am introducing pupils to dnd, we made the character sheets last week, time to start playing this week. Thanks for all the info, now to get the pdf's so I can take a look at them!

Why do Dragonborn look...like that. What's with the fucking head tentacles? Why don't they just look like bipedal dragons? This is silly.

All the dragons, save the whites, could shapeshift in dragonlance. That's a not insignificant part of the lore. Well, the super space kaiju god dragons couldn't either, but fuck that entire series.

good-aligned dragons shouldn't exist

Warlock pact if you have the charisma.
Slap some Faust on that shit.

Take Undying for Spare the Dying + Healer feat synergy, or Hexblade for extra bistury

Yes, yes. All of D&D is wrong and your headcanon homebrew is perfect. Good for you, user.

If I had to guess, I'd say it was to look kinda like the Predator.
But there's plenty of art of them without the scaly dreads if they're not your style.

It's not me vs. D&D.
It's D&D vs. the entire western tradition of dragons.

Dragon morality should be alien, they're so above any life form that anything but another dragon are irrelevant.

actually you're wrong. they look exactly like biped dragons, it's the dragons having been drawn wrong all the time that's the problem.