/5eg/ Fifth Edition General

Asking again because thread died. In what order should I buy the 5e books after PHB?

Which, if any, of the official adventures are worth buying/running? Which is the best one?

>Of all the NPCs your characters have encountered, which one was your favorite?

Isbahn the forgetful 20th level wizard. He mostly started out as a nod back to the abandoned wizards tower dungeon I ran early in the game but soon became a recurring character as they ended up liking him. His persistent amnesia was mainly there so they couldn't just "wizard did it" the plot.

You should buy DMG book if you like it, and Xanathar's Guide to Everything optionally. Monster Manual you can rip off notes online and just look at them later, but XGtE and DMG are very useful reference documents.

I had that problem, so I just started creating situations where doing this WOULD lead to negative consequences

Mouth off to the speaker for a GOO? Make a DC 25 will check to not take a buttload of damage as he glares at you without the guise he wears to protect your minds.

Pull "hilarious" shenanigans on a town mayor? Enjoy dealing with the guards hassling you for the rest of your stay.

Teach them what all children learn: actions have consequences

where does /5eg/ go to find new games? I'm tired of being forever DM and i want to play via roll20 with a new party.

What's your go to wretched hive of scum and villainy?

also I'm torn between
>Were do you hide your wings?
and
>Did it hurt? When you fell from the Dragon Eyire.

>In what order should I buy the 5e books after PHB?
Monster Manual at the least. If you plan on DMing get the DMG. After that if your table doesn't have it I'd get Xanthar's for the class options.

>Which, if any, of the official adventures are worth buying/running? Which is the best one?
LMoP is the best adventure I've personally played. SKT is alright, stay the hell away from HoTDQ (RoT isn't bad but HoTDQ needs serious work).

I've got a couple of discords that have LFG channels, and I also use reddit but it's the least efficient way I've found.

playing? Xanthars.

dming? DMG, Xanthars, MM if you prefer a book to online.

That's it. Period.

>tfw reddit is better in every way than here

I mean I hate it but still

Honestly DnD focused discords have been the way for me.

You could change it to a Mummy Lord (CR 15) or a Vampire Spellcaster (also CR 15) which are both still deadly but doable encounters for a 10th level party.. You could always provide the party with a buff, items, or circumstances that makes the Lich more manageable. Maybe a party ally provides them with a Heroes' Feast before they fight the Lich, and/or they somehow catch the Lich unprepared and it has sub-optimal high-level combat spells prepared for that day.

Seconding this. I own MM and prefer to use other resources.

>Which, if any, of the official adventures are worth buying/running? Which is the best one?
Curse of Strahd seems to be a popular favorite; it is my personal favorite. Lost Mines of Phandelver is also popular but it is not as long as the other modules, going only from 1 to 5. I'd say my next two preferred modules are Tomb of Annihilation and Storm King's Thunder.

With the exception of Hoard of the Dragon Queen, the rest of the modules are good depending on what you're looking for.

I've never used discord beyond using it as teamspeak for vidya. how do you go about finding good d&d discords?

PHB>DMG>MM>XGE>VGtM>SCAG

VGtM is a viable option to replace MM *if* you plan on doing campaigns based around specific enemy types e.g. an extended campaign arc against illithids or something like a goblonoid war host where you're encountering a specific family of enemies for a drawn out period. It also contains extra character race options and whatnot for players who have experience playing the game and want fresh options.

XGE is also very useful for it's contributions to non-combat activities, new spells (e.g. shadow blade which is really fucking cool), magic items that aren't combat centric, etc

I should have done this from the start, will do next time for sure.

I'm planning on DMing CoS soon, and I really want your guys ideas for what he should serve the PCs at the dinner table. The description sounds fine, but I think it needs to have that very Gothic and decadent spread. So far I've thought of the Ortolan songbirds thing in the pic, mostly because I really liked the Hannibal presentation and because you're traditionally supposed to gouge the eyes of the songbirds out. What other decadent, dark foods would you include?

That picture is the most accurate representation of a RPG session I have ever seen.

discord.me/
That's one way.

Discords that I currently use are
discord.gg/Xp6Up5
discord.gg/ZBDdk7
discord.gg/b7u4Sn

What happens if you cast Rope Trick inside Rope Trick?

Can't be done. Rope trick only works if the rope used can stand completely vertical and the dimensional space is to fit the minimum rope length required

thanks user, hopefully I'll find something soon.

>You touch a length of rope that is up to 60 feet long. One end of the rope then rises into the air until the whole rope hangs perpendicular to the ground. At the upper end of the rope, an invisible entrance opens to an extradimensional space that lasts until the spell ends.
I don't see a minimum rope length

>silly mode on
You can technically argue that the space inside can be 60 ft. tall as no objective dimensions are stated, just "The space can hold as many as eight Medium or smaller creatures". 8 goliaths standing on each other's shoulders would probably have combined height of somewhere around 50-60 ft.

Or that, yeah.

A McChicken

The head of his last guests.

Weird, I could've sworn from memory there was a specified length in the component requirements but apparently not.

Presumably then if you got a rope about your height it would work then.

If you really want to push things, try pulling the same rope inside and using it to cast another rope trick inside itself

I guess it's moot and unclear. If my players attempted that, when the second Rope Trick timer runs out, I would throw the drifting in the Astral Plane, as most 'interdemensional pocket' things do (Bag of Holding, Handy Haversack, Portable Hole and whatnot).

A goblin named Droop, who my character scared into fainting by Seal Team Sixing a door and who followed us for all of 5 seconds before some bandits murdered him and our Goblin Rogue started sperging out over him and trying to convince the DM to let him force us go on some stupid quest to revive him for like, a week.

I'd argue it implies the floor space fits 8 medium creatures, and the window in the floor is at minimum 3 x 5 feet so you'd assume its not tall and thin

I could probably rules lawyer it all day, but as has shown, the actual height of the Trickspace doesn't matter.

A delicate, sumptuous feast of foods carefully set and arrayed and lit. But without plates, silverwear, or cups, save for those for Strahd himself.

To feast, anyone but the Darklord himself would have to use their hands, to claw and maul and sup like animals, all while he composes himself like the civilized noble, warlord he believes himself to be, putting himself above the rest of the hungry beasts he wants to see everyone but himself as.

It should be ironic, intelligent, and ugly. He should encourage them to eat, drink, and be merry, because it would allow him to lie to himself a little longer. To see them as the monsters and himself as enlightened.

I'd figure the fuckery happens when the first timer runs out, because the 2nd space would no longer have a rope attached to it. The spell implies you can't remove the rope as the window out of the space is centred on the rope itself.

1st room dissappears>rope is thrown out of the space>2nd room no longer has rope > 2nd space can no longer lead to the 1st as the 1st space doesn't exist> 2nd space is also sealed off as the exit is dependent on the rope being fixed in position in its floor

I'm DMing for a game, and I'm afraid that I'm doing a bad job. When I ask if they had fun so far they've always answered yes, but I'm scared that they're just being polite. I want to become a better DM, but I feel bad if I'm putting my group through a boring game

Is it just my insecurities? How should I handle the situation?

>RAW answer:
It works. Whatever happens to the contents of the second room when the first spell ends is entirely up to the DM.
>Sensible answer:
It either fails or it acts like a Portable Hole inside a Bag of Holding, as most interdimensional space intersections tend to do.

Next session, get naked

>How should I handle the situation?
Do the best you can to be a good DM, and trust that the players are being truthful with you. One thing you could do is, instead of asking if they've had fun, ask each player how they think the game could be better.

You missed a sentence in the spell description, buddy:
>The rope can be pulled into the space, making the rope disappear from view outside the space.
But your point is still valid, because there's information and matter (at least light) passing through the 'window' anyway.
The rest is pretty much an argument about planar structure. AFAIK, Astral Plane acts as the medium in-between all of the Outer, Material and Artificial (Demi)Planes, so it's a reasonable guess.

Dont just ask
>Are you having fun?
Cause the usual answer will be "Yes" either to spare feelings or as an actual indication they are , indeed, having fun. A nebulous and open ended question merits and equally nebulous and open ended answer.

Try asking a more constructive question that demands more though out and definable answers, such as
>Okay guys, its been a few sessions, and we all know I'm pretty new to this. I'd appreciate if you guys could tell me one thing you are enjoying about the game, and one thing that's annoying/boring you about it, so that I can try and improve and tailor the game to suit what you guys are wanting to play.

Either go round the group after a game or ask them to PM you if they aren't comfortable talking about it in front of everyone

They can be telling the truth while you also could have plenty of things to work on.

An easy litmus test is whether or not the players are being led along in the plot by NPCs or whether they must discover things for themselves. New DMs tend to subconsciously just lead their players around to whatever even happens next. Often things are done by accident like and NPC asking "when are you returning to x place i need y job done" instead of the npc waiting till the players mentioning going back to x place and the npc responding by saying "oh can you do y if you're going there anyway"

Another good technique is to ask the players to summarize the last session when starting a new one. Players are more likely to recall what they considered the most memorable moments or at least the moments they were attentive. If after several sessions the players still struggle to recall basic shit you may have a problem. Likewise, the moments they can recall could suggest those are the ideas/NPCs/scenarios that best engage the players and you should potentially incorporate them into future sessions.

I know the rope can be pulled inside, its just fixed on one end to the window centre. The other end is attached to the 2nd space's window in my scenario. If you tried pulling the rope through to the 2nd space you'd presumably fuck up the first one entirely as there's no rope anymore

Most players are happy to play, and most people know that other people take criticism very poorly. Send them each a private message and ask if anything is bugging you, do it in private.

Definitely this
Let them tell you what is important without knowing that you want to/don't already know

Just thought you'd like to know Dark Sun is going to be announced soon

thanks user, i'm going to run with a combination of all the above. Refluffing the Spellcaster, getting them the feast, and favorable circumstances so that way they can wrap it up and not just die

It's not nice to tease people like that, user.

>reminder that posting 'insider info' without any proof is bait

What would be some must-have spells for a high level (15) pirate-hunting Wizard? Ideally ships are captured without sustaining too much damage, for resale purposes.

Eh. Dark Sun is almost as separated from 5e's 'universal' cosmology as Eberron, and Perkins has been laying too much out there about the Multiverse for me to think it'd be Dark Sun.
I expect a setting sourcebook about Sigil and the planes, maybe pulling a 4e and using it as an excuse to introduce Spelljammers in the book.

most of my sessions involve a capital city hub and questy things outside of that city. i tried doing a wilderness session and it ended up playing out horribly. I want to pull my players from the comfort of having a city and inns nearby but i have no faith in my ability to portray wilderness and dungeons. any DMs have any advice on how to turn outdoor adventures into something exciting instead of nature checks to find roads?

Doubt it since Perkins has been talking about the default cosmology, which points to either Planescape or a generic "Guide to the Planes" book.

Alright 5eg I'm at a pinch in designing a character.
Adventure is Hexcrawl!
Party is
>Druid
>Paladin
>Monk

Whats a good niche to fill in this squad?

Skip travel unless something interesting is going on.

An arcane caster. Preferably a Wizard, but Warlock should work too, good short rest synergy with monk.

Bard or Wizard

>Of all the NPCs your characters have encountered, which one was your favorite?

My younger brother's creation: Edwad, the Orc Sorcerer/Walking Disaster.
Imagine the dumbest Orc on the planet wearing a tattered set of mage robes and hat, and wielding a black tome, wandering around showing people "magic tricks."

By "Magic Tricks," I mean surges of Wild Magic. And since my bro uses a d1,000 table for the rolls, the possibilities range from harmless to absolute clusterfuck.

Pic related. That's basically what Edwad looks like.

Give me some items from your campaigns that have actual in story use

I'll lead off with my own example:

>Hags Tarp
>Attuneable
>20x20 magical tarp. Once attuned, the owner can sense when a living being has stepped on the tarp. The owner can use an action or reaction to issue a mental command to have the tarp trap the target. The target must make a DC 15 Str save to escape the tarp and be free to act.

This item was given to the party by a hag who used it to catch children in a group of nearby towns, and given to the party as they did her a favor. The favor was that they removed the curse that was driving people out of the area and drying up her food supply. The hag offered her "help", as she correctly suspected this group of adventurers would be able to solve the problem. She was smart enough not to give this reward to the party in person. They've already made it quite clear to me the DM that they're GOING to kill her later, and if they had not failed their checks to track her minion, they would have come after her immediately

Imprisonment is a 9th level spell, but why bother?

Not sure what spells would work but freezing the water or fucking up the sails would immediately immobolise the ship

Hard mode!
I don't wanna play a human. And I want a class that works well with the racial bonuses
Also elves are gross

the party got a bunch of sentient ropes and replace the rigging of their ship with them so it would respond to verbal commands.

B A R D
A
R
D

Or wiz/sorc/warlock. Spells important here basically

I used to be a Forever-DM for 3.5 back in the day before That Guy's astounding autism turned me off of role-playing a decade ago.

Now I've got some co-workers who are all noobs who need a DM, and one of them has played 5e before. I'm thinking about taking them up on the offer.

How does 5e compare to 3.5?
What books/gear would I need to DM 5e?
Anything I should outright ban, just in case?

A kensai monk.

but humans are the objectively best race, for both RP and being a grognard. No taste.

Anyways, you've got a utility caster depending on how your Druid plays, Nukes on the Paladin, and a utility character out of the Monk. You want something with consistent DPS,

You want a Dragonborn/Tiefling Warlock or a Halfling Rogue. My own personal preference is the Dragonborn Hexblade. You and the Paladin shouldn't step all over each other's CHA shoes but if you're concerned at all, go Halfling Rogue

>Party enters a room of 10 zombified goblins and holes up in the doorway
>It took approximately 93 damage to down a single one of them, including fire, force, and lightning damage
>And it still only barely failed an undead fortitude save
What the fuck? We're all level 5.

I'm willing to bet they're going to announce on the 6th of this month(when they are purportedly going to announce the real names of those two production codenames that leaked) something that covers many Planes.

Either a Large Adventure book that covers two or more worlds or an adventure and a setting primer for more than one primer. Like three settings each with the coverage space the size of SCAG in one book.

Whatever happens, from Mearl's AMA on Reddit the other day, we know that they'll be working with Keith Baker so something involving Eberron is in the pipe.

Possibly two Adventures this year, both on different settings or involving planehopping

>How does 5e compare to 3.5?
5e's a whole lot more streamlined and beginner-friendly, so right off the bat you have that going for you. Less options overall and everything's been simplified, for better or for worse.
>What books/gear would I need to DM 5e?
Player's Handbook, Monster Manual, and Dungeon Master's Guide. Those are the core books you'd need. As long as you have those and some dice you'll be fine.
>Anything I should outright ban, just in case?
I'd suggest banning multiclassing, at least for now. Most new players have no clue what the fuck they're doing, and multiclasses can range from incredibly sub-optimal to very good (Comparatively speaking. Class balance in 5e is much better than in other editions until you get past level 14).

Your DM might be dumb or you missed some gimmick.

Tempted to play a shadow sorcerer is the subclass decent?

How to reconcile spell-less ranger with Xanathar subclasses? Specifically, they all give the ranger bonus spells at certain levels.

I have to assume something else was going on there. I'm the type of DM who will absolute stretch something's HP behind the screen but even in my fudgiest of fudged numbers, that's a bit much

Just read the DMG and PHB and you'll understand everything you need. Monster manual is good also but not necessarily worth buying because monsters are prepared in advance and you can just print off the necessary info, rarely should you be looking up monster info during the session

Personally I'd ban variant humans for being objectively broken, +1 in two stats, a free skill proficiency and a feat is worth much more than +1 to all cause who tf uses all their skills for their class.

Multiclassing is also either very broken or very lackluster and players often have no idea about the rules

5e as a whole is more streamlined and leaves options open, imo this is good because you get to use DM discretion more and players get less overwhelmed.

>Player's Handbook, Monster Manual, and Dungeon Master's Guide
You only really need the PHB and some dice to get started. DMG is nice to have as a physical copy, but a pdf will do you well to start. Same for the MM which I like to have on my phone for quick access. The PHB could work fine as a pdf, but a physical copy will go a long way to helping you learn the rules faster as in my experience reading a pdf isn't as engaging as looking at a real book. That all said, if money isn't an issue, those three books are the best to start with.

Variant humans are broken as shit but they're also dull as a sack of hammers to roleplay unless you can really get into it like our Bard does (he's a snobby noble out to make his own glory and he's openly racist towards the rest of our party except the Tabaxi and just calls us "green people", and completely ignores our Goblin Rogue from time to time for comedic effect). If your argument is that humans are the most PRACTICAL for RP then yeah sure, I guess, but it's not like Half-Elves and Halflings are bad for it either. The more monstrous races such as Half-Orc (which I'm currently playing unfortunately) definitely have a harder time, but they can lead to more interesting encounters depending on how your character acts.

If your DM hasn't dropped hints as to why they're so tough, they're SHIT
abananandon.

Seriously, I admire that your party actually bothered to hole p.

Fuck that dude just use the UA revised ranger.

>hole p
Sounds sexual

DM shouldnt have to drop explicit hints, party should always do a perception check for certain details as it doesnt even take an action to do

So the difference is that 5e is streamlined and simplified. There are fewer choices to pick from when creating and leveling characters, but 3.5 was just an illusion of choice anyway. The martial/caster disparity is lessened so NO classes and archetypes except for that really bad wizard one that lets you change saving throws really need to be banned. The class bloat has been condensed and instead of whole new classes to do specific things you get a standard kit (i.e. Fighter, Wizard, Druid) and an Archetype (Battlemaster Fighter, Necromancer Wizard, Circle of the Moon Druid, ect). You don't need to pass out +X weapons and armor anymore because chasing around +X magic items isn't really a thing anymore and characters can get by with a stock standard weapon and still do well.

To DM you need the Handbook, The DM Guide, and the Monster Manual. Current generalist splat include Volo's Guide to Monsters for more monsters and player races and Xanthar's Guide to Everything for a SHIT TON more class archetpes and Psionics IIRC. You can also go through Wizard's Unearthed Arcana archives for new shit every month.

We've been told that that explicitly have no damage resistances of any type, and they only have 13 AC. They jut actually all have that much health, apparently just CR1. Two attack Multiattack for 1d6+1.
Nada. But yeah, we had a solid front line with an EK, a Brute, and a Barbrogue.

You can either leave them out (spell-less has features designed to replace the utility from spells) or make each bonus spell castable once a long rest.

Oh, 12 AC, my bad.

5e is streamlined as fuck, and it's even easier to teach it. Let everybody know up front that you're learning it with them, and you'll have a good time.

You don't need anything more than the core 3. You'll not use the MM and DMG very much at the table, those are really more for your DM prep. The PHB will be open almost constantly while you're learning. Honestly you're better off just buying the PHB and the DMG, and just getting the MM out of the trove.

I banned monster races and only allowed the core Human/Dwarf/Elf/Half-Elf/Halfing/Gnome/Tiefling/Dragonborn/Orc because I didn't want people getting off in the weeds TOO much with their characters. Of course, none of them picked humans. If I could do it again, I'd restrict it even further desu, because I really find it important for people to understand that their character's race doesn't make the character interesting.

Control Weather would be your go-to spell for encountering bigger groups of enemies. Change wind to Calm and you got yourself an easy non-moving target. Control Water is more fiddly, but also more precise. Mirage Arcane can replace it all, if you're an Illusionist.
Fog Cloud upcasted to a fairly high level might work as a decent discreet distraction.
Cloudkill is probably the best AoE spell that will leave the ships unharmed.

Welcome back.
5e will feel familiar, but kinda simpler and more streamlined. Grapple rules, for once, are not a horrible mess. Refer to the pdf here to see the differences.
Get yourself a PHB and a Reincarnated DMs screen (original is kinda weak sauce). Feel free to pirate MM and DMG, you won't use them much anyway; and all you need from there can be found on 5etools.com; but these two are still worth buying nevertheless. If you get into it - consider buying Volo's Guide to Monsters and Xanathar's Guide to Everything, the two non-setting specific splatbooks we got, but don't hurry with it. Both enhance the process a lot though.
Don't bother banning anything (apart from Homebrew and UA if you hate fun) from the get go. You'll find what does and what doesn't satisfy you kinda quickly.

>doesn't even take an action
It takes an action unless you have a specific feature
Your DM should strive you give you hints at every turn

Volo's guide is exceptionally useful when focusing on a particular enemy type for an arc e.g. you want to fight a war against giants or some shit cause you worship dragons or somethinf