/5eg/ - Fifth Edition D&D General

You have pretty low standards for metagaming if all it takes is knowing a single cantrip on your class list.

>What can you do?
you can open the fucking book and read it.

Green Flame Blade: Attack a guy, do some fire damage to the guy next to him.

Booming Blade: Attack a guy. If he moves, he takes some extra damage.

Not that guy, but even the book says some warlocks pick the patron to focus on the shadow magic over the combat boons.

those cantrips actively make the game worse

You only really need 2 levels of Warlock. You can go to three for pact of the tome or chain if you want the utility. Put the rest in Sorcerer for spell slots and sorc points.

Can anyone yell me about the relationship between Orcus and the Raven Queen?

Why do you say that, user? I think they're fine Arcane Trickster and Eldritch Knight.

Just saying, don't bitch about something and then turn around and defend the use of it.

>those cantrips actively make certain subclasses viable
FTFY user-kun

>Hmm I might need to be able to hit things at a distance
>Metagaming

Arcane tricksters were already the best rogue subclass before they existed, and now they get free d8s added to their damage for free.

great

THEY'RE BOTH LITTLE BITCHES THAT HAVE HATE BONERS FOR EACH OTHER
What? You said 'yell'.

Going to ignore the Eldritch Knight, then?

>eldritch blast is the only ranged warlock cantrip/ spell
lolk

You made me nostalgic for MR.RAGE for a minute there.

>eldritch Blast is the only ranged warlock cantrip/ spell worth taking
FTFY

REAL players roll for their acquired spells.

It's also a free buff for them too at certain level ranges; otherwise it's a fine alternative to attacking normally.

It's mostly ATs that bother me.

Tell me your best D&D joke, /5eg/.

If AT couldn't use Find Familiar to get a portable source of advantage, would you not mind them getting the SCAGtrips?

REAL players roll for
>Race
Then
>Class
Then
>Background
Then
>Stats
In order.

Yeah, so how do those specifically make arcane tricksters really good? My favorite use was polearm master + war caster. Some enters you reach, attack of opportunity, booming blade their ass. Do arcane tricksters just booming blade, cunning action disengage and runaway?

PHB Beastmaster Ranger

No, real players roll for their stats in order, figure out what class suits it, then roll a random race and background.

PHB Ranger.

It would have better without the last part lad.

Extra d8s of damage when you have a Familiar guaranteeing that you can Sneak Attack is good, anonymous.

Pfft.
>Not playing a 6 CHA Bard.

>Random Spells
Sounds fun!

So, I have now a different stat for Magic DCs/attacks but casters still use the old mental stats (int/wis/cha) for how many spells they can prepare.
How can I make the three mental stats more appealing for "specialists" characters?

Rangermind

I have no beef with find familiar.
It's not very reliable when used for help spam since they're so fragile.

Man, I would love to have players like that.

Bumping through the shitposts

You could make them more appealing by having the caster's Magic DCs/attack bonus scale off of them.

Wot4E is the best Monk archetype and let's you be the Avatar.

Tome can basically do what Chain does by getting Find Familiar into their book.

I had to tell one of my players to roll for race/class because he couldn't get off his ass and make a character.

I'm new to dnd, I'm just parroting what my friend who knows what the fuck he's doing said.

I mean, you pretty much nailed it. Does the party have another ritual caster? Might help you decide.

>Not rolling for gender and hard-rolling for stats IN ORDER.

I did that to one player who always diddles around and somehow finds the most special snowflake broken shit on DnD wiki that I never allow but explain how to roughly build in game. It's his best character he's ever done and even he admits it.

But the tome familiar has none of the abilities that the chain familiar can use and it takes an invocation to get it on par, which are already limited.

But I don't want casters hard-focusing on them. Can't they have any other utility?

I have to do this for one of my players every time. He loves playing,but he gets choice paralysis, so I just have him roll everything.

The only other way I could get this guy to make a character is to actually sit down with him for an hour as we clicked the options on 5etools and he wrote down what he wanted.

I have a friend who ONLY plays Champion Fighters because he doesn't want to bother reading anything else.

actually that spell list isn't the worst ever. got some useful stuff on there.

Tome, especially if you have a Druid or Cleric in the party. Rituals cost a feat, sure, but you can bug your party members to teach you their rituals instead of praying for scrolls. Chain is better if you're the lone spellcaster in the group, but literally any caster other than wizard can benefit by teaching you their rituals so they can prepare other spells, or unlearn the ritual at a later level for another spell they wanted.

I... What?
My brain, it hurts.

Maybe give little bonuses or more information based on someone's score. A person with higher charisma will more easily see social ques and understand them, a person with high int will be good at observation and deduction and depending on how you view wisdom it could be they have a vast reserve of experience to draw on to apply to situations or are able to view their surroundings with ease and quickly recognize what's amiss.

So Im relatively new to DnD, and I rolled a fighter in my friends campaign. Should I go Champion or Battle Master? Champion just seems so bland and boring and doesnt seem to get any fun toys such as Maneuvers. Im not a huge minmaxer when it comes to games like this but Id like to balance power with a subtype that feels interesting.

Yep. Every time I propose another subclass he goes, "nah, I don't want to learn the abilities".

Tell your friend he is the reason we can't have nice things and martials are once again the "real world only, but never mind these magic users bending reality."
inb4 reeeeing about how it's magic so it's fine and only weeabo shit let's martials do fantastic shit.

If champion looks bland and boring then you already answered your question, go Battlemaster.

So, I have been floating an idea that I like with some friends and I was hoping for some feedback on my current plan... Justice League of Faerun.

Batman I am seeing as an Elf -> Eladrin Monk -> Shadow. Gives him the ability to stealthily get around and do serious melee.

Aquaman must be a Triton Fighter -> Eldritch Knight. This covers his swimming, breathing water, fighting, and magic use.

Doctor Fate is an Aasimar -> Protector Warlock -> The Celestial. Gives a lot of holy damage and healing ability and ties him to an external force.

Hawkman is Aarakocra Fighter -> Champion. Flying and fighting is all he is good for.

Green Lantern I don't see as easy a path, best I could see was Genasi -> Air Warlock -> Archfey. Flight and blasting power.

Flash I was thinking Elf -> Wood Monk -> Open Hand for him, though his powers would never really get good until very late game. It would give him moderate speed and the knock down effect that Flash favours.

Wonder Woman I was thinking as a Goliath Paladin -> Devotion. The heavy combat kind.

Superman I saw as a Dragonborn -> White Sorcerer -> Draconic -> Gold. Gives him frost breath and fire powers plus flight.

The Spectre is Human -> Revenant Warlock -> Undying... Magically induced vengence upon earth is his bag.

Cyborg I think of as Warforged Rogue -> Arcane Trickster. Gives him the variability to be the hacker/blaster.

Anyone got any better thoughts for Flash? Really he is the weakest of the bunch.

>tfw autistic bard

please don't put a space between every fucking line, it's unnecessary and horrible to look at

Battle Master has the general consensus of being more interesting.
Put him in a position where there's already enough martials.

Variant human, takes mobile for first feat.

He thinks the game should ONLY be martials and that magic should be removed entirely.'

He just decides he won't play until someone switches. So he tends to sit out a lot.

I'll try that for now.

Tell him he's autistic and what I said earlier, only tell him to go play a different rpg that is straight sword and board.

No player worth their salt should be refusing to learn new things.

Or not only, some days I wonder how the fuck auto correct works.

>he tends to sit out a lot
seems like a good thing desu

Makes Flash a Tabaxi. Take a look: dandwiki.com/wiki/Pushing_the_Speed_Limit_(5e_Optimized_Character_Build)

Not every player is worth much.
You can find a lot of player that, even after months as the same character, still do not know their own fucking attack rolls. Sometimes you will encounter players that don't even remember what spells or attacks they even have.
Hell, just look at Penny Arcade's C-Team, they don't know shit about their own characters even after a year playing them.

I know, but still.
>Related
Going through Critical Role for the first time and listening people's failure to read their own spells/abilities is infuriating.

If you're determined to make players take int/wis/cha at the expense of other stats and not have them be combat related, then players will probably always want to spend their points elsewhere first instead of focusing on becoming a "specialist".

Any character under your system has about as much reason to max out any of those stats as a barbarian does in the normal game.

It might work better if players had a separate point buy for int/wis/cha. This would take away the disincentive to pump these stats, but it would also mean that no character is going to be strictly a "specialist". They would just be one in addition to whatever their class normally is.

kek

The system works! Champion has a niche after all.

This, our Tabaxi managed to catch Glasstaff before he could escape by burning all his skills to catch him and lmao running 120 ft.

They mostly get better except for Marisha who gets much worse

You take Eldritch Blast because you're a warlock, you blast things eldritchly, it's in the job description

I'm only at ep 45, please don't kill my hope so early.

Holy fuck.

Watch it for Sam, Travis and *harp music* Laura Bailey. They make it all worth it.

Better you learn now than experience the rage down the road user, some people just refuse to improve themselves. Also Travis is best boy and I will fight any of you fags that disagree.

Laura is such a child, it's endearing.

I'm liking this new season Laura.

Anyway to try and keep it mildly more 5eg friendly, have you ever had a player surprise you by playing against stereotype? Like the the tiefling rouge not having some crawling in my skin back story and just doing it for the giggles?

The Monster Slayer Ranger, instead of being TOTALLY-NOT-GERALT is actually just a nerd that tracks monsters down for his book.

So I somehow got roped into making an actual magical duel tournament for the spellcaster PCs, around level 5. What are some mage or magic wielding "archetypes" from the nearby magical aacademy should I have for their opponents, scalable to either at, below, or above their level depending on what level of the tournament they enter in?
Right now for ideas I have sidequest-important chainpact warlock, beefy eldritch knight to whack them and adjurate, illusion bard, necromancer with skelly minions, and someone using magical items they made (alchemist or magical arms crafter)

Illusionist can be really fun if you're clever, an abjurer who is just stubborn and does everything to not go down, maybe a spook that uses some divination.

I have a hexblade player that didn't multiclass.

So, dude, did you liked the tabaxi build? I used it before as a npc. I had a blast.

Dammit the dexterity/agility split did have some positive results (ranged dex focused characters with low AC) but changing the magic stat from the mental trio was just pointless, guess that is not my or the system fault, the problem is that players will just focus on combat.

I just wanted my casters use their magics instead of using their mental stats to solve problems (sorcerer steamrolling social challenges for eg) and my specialists (rogue, ranger bard) to actually focus on those stats.

>I just wanted my casters use their magics instead of using their mental stats to solve problems

I like that, actually had a player that was hunting them to see what could be good for a fancy restaurant that served fresh monster meat.

Haven't had issue with this, but I can easily see the temptations. Then again I also make it a little harder to multiclass in you actually have to RP out doing that and finding some way to facilitate it.

A foppish golemancer who uses an army of tiny animated objects could be amazing.
>Guy in a tuxedo and luxurious cape steps out into the arena
>Doesn't prepare any spells as the duel starts
>Simply points at the player
>"go"
>five knives fly out of his cape, charging at the player
>conducts his minions like a maestro
You'd have to gimp the animate objects spell to better suit a level 5 character but it could be a really fun fight that nobody expects.