/5eg/ - Fifth Edition General

Favored enemy is a ribbon, advantage on init is not that strong, and people do consider starting with one level of fighter or dipping one level of rogue, etc. It could be cut back to just advantage turn one when you win initiative, but it has to be something.

You don't just say *is* that strong without citing why. Initiative is nice, yes, but it's only an effective +5. +5 initiative is nowhere near as impactful as other martial options like Smites, Action Surge, Fighting Styles both get.
The point of UA Ranger is effective damage through utility - ignoring difficult terrain means doing damage to something you otherwise might not have, meaning effective damage. Advantage on initiative means hitting something before they hit you first, but if they don't die your initiative bonus didn't do anything.
Bonus initiative is closer to damage mitigation than anything else. If you kill the target you're not taking the damage they would have dealt, but it's also reliant on actually killing the target. If all you do is kill off a few mooks, you barely mitigated any damage. If you attacked a big guy and it lives, your initiative did nothing.
Revised Ranger aims to mimic what the PHB Ranger did best - utility. Only this is combat-focused utility than RP and exploration utility.
But if you really need to include damage, it already has favoured enemy. Cater it to your campaign and you've got a significant DPS boost. Everyone already knows how strong modifiers are, and hitting an enemy twice per turn with a +2 each is a ~1d8's average per turn.

Once you hit 3 in Revised Ranger you are at the general level a martial should be at the same level. Until then it's more or less fluctuating a bit.

New ua help with the ranger stuff or are they still a class that is there?

Like a paladin's smites are extra good on fiends and undead, but they aren't held back elsewhere in exchange. Favored enemy is supposed to be an extra, not the bread and butter. It'll probably be changed for next version.

Hey Guys! I'm nearing the end of a campaign I'm wrote for my team that's been going on for about a year or so. The final confrontation is in Gauntlegrym and I was wondering if you have any good examples of dwarven city maps? All Ive been able to garnish is Gauntlegrym is its a recently, lightly re-inhabited dwarven city, with 3 or 4 sections with home tunnels sprouting off each area, and theres alot of emphasis on the forge. Theres a Titan (or at least some mega god fire elemental) lake of lava underneath the city, but above the underdark? Or its a point of contact between the material and infernal plane?
TL;DR Does anyone have any good knowledge/advice about running in gauntlegrym? i have a lotta drow, druegar, and snirfeblin. Looking for city details, not bad guys to run in it.

UA fixed Ranger long ago, what do you want more?

Then revamp it so that you can change your target after long rests. It doesn't change the fact that it's there.
Paladin's Smites are good because that's literally all a Paladin does early on, hit shit. Later it gets auras, but until then it's just pure damage. Early Paladin is pure damage with spells acting as minor augments or fuel for Smites.
UA Ranger is utility-focused combat and the early advantage. Advantage is an effective 25% DPS increase, difficult terrain ignoring is effective damage if you can reach targets you otherwise wouldn't, initiative is situational damage mitigation (and has synergy with the advantage, but still doesn't guarantee it).
At 3 they're more or less equal depending on build

>Into the Wild
Oh man. Oh boy. Is this reality? Or a wild fantasy?

Just kill me already. This is actually Negative content. I bet my copy of Xanathar's just erased itself.

A lot of people choose assassin I see, usually. I vavor bards, so i've been thinking about multiclassing in Arcane trickster a little bit. I really like the flavor they add, instead of being sheister supreme, or edgey mcedgelord with theif and assassin.

People literally dip one or two levels into Fighter for multiple reasons:
-Proficiency in all weapons and armor, plus Con saves. Before the Hexblade a Fighter dip was nearly mandatory for the Bladelock.
-Fighting Style + Second Wind can both bolster any character's defenses basically for free.
-I've seen people recommend two levels of Fighter for some spellcasters for maximum nuke potential through Action Surge.

I could see Rogues dipping into a class that gets advantage on initiative rolls at level 1 for possibly Assassinate, but why would they do that if they can just get the Alert feat at level 4? That does essentially the same as Advantage on initiative (+5 and Advantage are on average the same) and Alert also gives two other very useful perks.

As a brand new GM, is Curse of Strahd too much to handle? I was going to start by running the Death House adventure to get myself situated with GMing before getting into the book proper.

I have a full month to prepare before anything happens and there is a bunch of different resources for running it so as long as I utilize what I have do you think I'll be fine? I want to be one focused on engaging my players with the plot and improving their ability to roleplay.

Posting it again, Inquisitive+ elf (wood)+sharpshooter+longbow.

Because dip stack with Alert? Assassin needs all the help they can get.

No, you should do fine with CoS. While it is open world, it's also fairly contained and it's more or less impossible for the players to totally derail everything in way that isn't suicidal for them.

>why would someone take a 1 level dip in something when they could give up +2 to their main stat and waste an ASI for something they don't need, and something people could just take as a Vuman
UA Ranger is fine at level 3. It does good damage, it has great utility while not being overbearing.
Ranger is fine for dips, it's basically just a different take on Rogue. In most of the common Assassin builds, Assassin will always come out over Deep Stalker, both of which are the most DPS-heavy of their subclass options (albeit Hunter averages out the damage by the third round vs Deep Stalker)

Depend of your players and their reckless tendency, the hardest part imo is stopping players act like the usual murder hobo. If you want something simpler and cover most of game-play mechanics (including passive skill), try LMoP.

Hexblade 1 / Divine Soul Sorcerer X for the old favored soul? Would it work?

>Players say the encounters are too easy
>Up the CRs
>Players say the encounters are too hard
>Have the party rogue get eaten by a slime

>would the best dip in the entire game work with one of the two best Sorcerer subclasses, in a build that's one of the top 3, that people did long before XGE came out
Yes
Pick up a second Sorc level so you can add your modifier to Eldritch Blast and get Devil's Sight or something

>players say the encounters are great, as they're on 10% of their life
I like this

What do you guys think of megadungeons?

OP here, I'm currently doing that for a Curse of Strahd campaign we have going. I'm already the skill monkey and have what the arcane trickster has to offer expands my skill set more. This other rogue is for another group, I haven't played a straight up Rogue since 3.5, so was fishin' for suggestions.

I’d love them if players didn’t bitch about them so much. “Waah I want my story-filled epic plotline where I matter”.

Fuck that, be dungeon fodder.

Being a ranger.

Yes, be warned though that your hp is pathetic and hexblade curse is only once per battle/short rest. So you still need a tank.

what exactly is a metadungeon?

I love them if they're handled well. Hate them if they're shoehorned in without much forethought other than 'lol the Lich needed a big house'

I've played in a mega dungeon that was effectively a tower of towns on differing floors. The further down the dungeon you went, the stronger it got. Generally if you were born on a lower floor you were stuck there, so the party would go from floor to floor doing oddjobs as needed.
Then we got fucked over because the major big bad (there were a lot of people who were dicks, but the reigning one we were hunting for most of the campaign, I mean) was actually back in the starting town as he had the strength to just travel back up the tower.
It was fun.

He has medium armor and Shield. He's already the tank. He's a Divine Soul (ie. Cleric spell list) as well so he has more than enough healing for himself.
Being a Hexblade he can just put everything into major stats, so he could go 16 Cha, 16 Con, 14 Dex and be tanky, have good AC, and be good at both melee and ranged shit while having all of the standard Sorcerer/Eldritch Blast shenanigans

What challenges should a party face in a sea voyage that aren't monster fights?

Question about a basic rule.

>PHB 205 The effects of the same spell cast multiple times don’t combine, however. Instead, the most potent effect—such as the highest bonus—from those castings applies while their durations overlap.

So this means you could not stack spells like Bless or Booming Blade, but what about spells that can change the effects activated like Hex or Elemental Bane?

RAW, can't stack two hexes.
But I doubt anyone would have an issue with two Warlocks with two hexes. My DM sure doesn't.

>RAW, can't stack two hexes.

Even though Hex has the ability to target different ability scores? Like one Warlock could target dex the other strength. Do you have a source for this?

By RAW, the enemy can only be affected by one of those at a time. But most DMs probably would neither catch it, nor mind if they did.

Yes, my source is
>PHB 205 The effects of the same spell cast multiple times don’t combine, however. Instead, the most potent effect—such as the highest bonus—from those castings applies while their durations overlap.
>The effects of the same spell cast multiple times don’t combine
It's still the same spell regardless of what you choose.

Okay. Thanks for the clarification anons.

never mind i'm retarded.

I love the idea of megadungeons, but never have gotten to play one. my group doesnt really have an interest in dungeon crawls.

Will the D&D police crucify me if I portray my thri kreen more like ant people rather than mantis people?

I like them in principle. I'm playing one now (Stonehell) and I like parts of it but hate others. One thing I dislike is how our DM handles experience: rather than level up through XP, you level up by selling treasures and getting exp by using the gold you get in town. This puts you in many situations where you might get through an immensely difficult encounter and get literally jack shit for it (we had a TPK a while ago and after going back and defeating the monster that caused it we found out that it wasn't even guarding anything).

Also, our DM uses a variant rest rule that makes short rests take 8 hours, and long rests take a week in town. That sucks, because short rest classes like Warlocks now have only two spell slots per day and long rest classes are basically completely fucked after long encounters if you don't return to town.

Also the spread in encounter difficulty is sometimes not so fun. You might encounter trash mobs you're super overleveled for, or you might encounter CR 10 monsters that'll destroy your party, no matter what floor you're on.

I do like how it places a lot of emphasis on actual dungeon exploration and mapping, as well as looking for traps and secret passages. It 'feels' more DnD-esque while still providing roleplaying opportunities. But, since your environment will be quite similar much of the time, certain classes will never get to thrive, since a Ranger will basically never encounter his favored terrain and a Bard won't have many social opportunities.

I mostly just dislike how slow it can be, since we have had multiple ~4h sessions where we had basically no encounters or loot. Right now we're 50 sessions in, and the party is legit only level 4. Maybe that's just my DM, though.

A megadungeon is what it sounds like. It's a really huge dungeon that's large enough to constitute a large part of or even the entire campaign.

I'll crucify you for being a heretic

>I mostly just dislike how slow it can be, since we have had multiple ~4h sessions where we had basically no encounters or loot. Right now we're 50 sessions in, and the party is legit only level 4. Maybe that's just my DM, though.

Given that wacko leveling system,... yea. It's absolutely your DM. If you had been earning 150XP a week which is a pittance, you'd be past level 5 already. Your DM a shit tier, or at least running a radically different game than D&D for the most part and maybe not even the kind of game you all want.

Let’s see.
>Use normal exp rules
>Keep rests quick
>Use steady CR tables (alter low-level mobs for variety)
>Make rooms and terrains varied
Thanks for the tips, I’m planning on turning the World Serpent Inn into a megadungeon.

anyone? advice on gauntlegrym? its like the dwarven detroit, right?

>rather than level up through XP, you level up by selling treasures and getting exp by using the gold you get in town
>it places a lot of emphasis on actual dungeon exploration and mapping

Your DM started with an earlier edition.

I dunno, I wouldn't mind playing a campaign like that. Much easier to control resource management, and while Warlocks might be screwed in terms of multiple encounters in a day, I can see how towards the end of a week of delving they really start to come into their own.

Plus I've seen analyses of the gold-experience levelling system where it encourages creative roleplay rather than just murdering everything. Opportunities to sneak and such.

I want to make a character loosely based on pic related but not sure whether to go Thief or Mastermind subclass. (never played rogue before)

DM hinted at a new campaign having a bit of a heist/caper feel to it and friend is making a "Robin Hood" (unsure what the other players will make)

Any insights/feat suggestions appricated

I thought he said meTadungeon at first, seemed like an interesteing concept but i had no idea what it was.

turns out its just daylisex

I mean, I wouldn't mind the gold leveling system if there were opportunities like that, but there really aren't. You're either lucky and stumble upon at reasure room, or you're not. So far we've gotten every treasure we found, even if we didn't defeat whatever monster was nearby.

I mean, I like the principle. I think it can work sometimes. But either my DM doesn't put enough treasures for us to find or the level curve (in our case 1GP = 1exp) is kinda fucked. Honestly I'm not sure how he's gonna manage the later levels because selling shit in town means that the shopkeepers there are giving us literally thousands and thousands of gold pieces, which they can't realistically afford.

And yeah, I've noticed that my DM is kinda stuck in older editions of DnD, it really shows in some of the ways he misunderstands the rules but is inflexible on using them as written (ie halfling rogues can't use their bonus action to hide and get advantage every turn because once someone spots you once you can't hide from them again even though that's bullshit).

As for the steady CR tables, it's of course not a bad idea to put some really strong monsters in some places that the players should run away from or roleplay around (for example, Phandelver has Venomfang).

Monster romances

It depends on what you want to do.
Mastermind has a more of a "I'm playing you to get the treasure" theme.
Thief is more of a "I'm gonna break in to get the treasure" theme.
If you want to be a face you can also pick Bard and go College of Satire.
Assassin also has a nice disguise feature.

If you go Mastermind/Assassin background doesn't particularly matter that much because of Disguises.
If you pick Thief or Satire go with something that has a Secret Identity of sorts.

Why does Mike Mearls, indeed WotC itself, hate martials?

Honestly, your DM just sounds like he's incompetent. Have you actually raised your concerns? Because he sounds like one of the stubborn types who also don't know what they're doing.

wizards of the coast not martials that can boast ok

Stormy weather, privateers/pirates, mutiny if they have a large ship/crew and not bringing in the gold.

Until he's given the green light to make Lore Fighter and Lore Rogue, he's never gonna try to help martials.

>The only good martial is one with a euphoric mind like mine

God dammit, I'm tired of Strength getting shat on by the rules.

Because discord is shit. Fuck off.

>party always rushes in and gets into trouble
>zero planning and preparation even if the enemy is patiently sitting still while they plot
>stumble into an ancient red dragon and get annihilated because they are too stupid to run
>spend six months as zombies serving the big bad until they get rescued and resurrected by allies
>now they run from every enemy that's not in their direct path that seems too threathening
>last session they spent two and a half hours devising a plan to fight a demon
I think they learned something.

...

They don't as a whole, it's just that there's nowhere near as much variety for martial skills/abilities.
Magic is limited by imagination, it's a lot easier to believe that the magic user can do things with magic that the martial can't.

Well not a hundred percent certain, though if i had to say, Thief would probably be more in the wheel house. I was suggested Mastermind by NotRobinHood since i'm a bit of the planner/face.
A bit on the fence about taking Assassin.
The disguise is nice, but I figured caper wouldnt really call for too much combat (that said it would probably come down to that if(when) the stealth fails)

Thanks for the response.

>How would you handle food and provisions?
The party's provisions are pooled together and given "units". Each character requires "units"
of provisions equal to their Con modifier(minimum 1) throughout the day. Getting under that amount forces the player to roll to see if they get a level in exhaustion, and if the player eats half(rounded down) or less than what they need daily then it's an automatic level of exhaustion that won't go away until they meet their requirements.

>Magic is limited by imagination

Magic should be limited by training, though. Why should a Wizard know Invocation, Enchantment AND Necromancy? Hell, pull a Warhammer with Humans requiring a school to focus on while Elves can take all of them.

>play 5e since release with numerous different DMs, now settled on 3 consistent ones
>always make a smart plan if given a chance regardless of my character's Wis or Int stat
>never died
>never run from fights
I've learned nothing

>mastermind rouge
Any edits I can make to make it slightly better that wouldn't have other PCs accusing me of favoritism or feeling left out?
It just seems like it's missing something compared to other archetypes, some kind of hook I could add to the 3rd or 9th level stuff, or just some kind of modification to them.

Oh fuck, meant to reply to Not sure how I messed that up.

>make humans even shittier
Stop. On the issue of magic though, I like how Shadow of the Demon Lord does it. There's tons of traditions of magic, and you have to buy a tradition before you can learn spells from it. You can buy as many traditions as you want, trading raw power for versatility.

>Magic should be limited by training
Sorcerers.
DESU I'm a fan of the opposing magic schools dynamic in previous Eds.
It made a whole lot more sense.

Imagine if casters were as limited as martials are. Imagine if 3/4 of all utility spells were removed, and the spell list only went up to 3rd level.

The rage could power Google for two minutes.

>there's just nowhere near as much variety for martial skills/abilities
>but gods are generally as physically strong as they are magical
When I hit level 20 I want to shake the fucking ground with shit like Whelm's knockdown abilities, but in class ability form
Let me *teleports behind you* and do an aoe slash that hits everything
Let me throw you 400 feet because I have the strength of a giant
Let me suplex a dragon and/or train despite not having increased my size
Let me Awaken The Dragon and ascend beyond normal martial artists, kicking people into the sun
Why the fuck can't I push people with wind pressure
If Wizards can drop meteors I better be able to make craters with my fists
>b-but human limitations
Fuck you muscle wizard's genetics and ki flows through my blood

In my opinion, the solution isn't powering up martials, it's nerfing casters. But I'm a low fantasy fag, so I say that about everything.

This, we've been powering up martials forever and it's never solved the problem. The issue is casters, and casters alone. We must topple their ivory towers, no matter how hard they shriek to stop.

I'm low magic as fuck, I'd rather just nerf magic too
But the whole concept of critical fumbles (although they don't exist anymore) is a perfect example of the logic DnD generally has.
As martials go up in level they're more likely to fuck up
As casters go up in level they're more likely to fuck the campaign

If they don't want to nerf casters in 5.5e whenever they eventually make that shit in a decade, they sure as hell better make martials into the physical embodiment of 2004 Chuck Norris memes

My players have a lich's phylactery trapped in a demiplane, and they killed the lich. They're arguing on our group chat about whether it can get out or not.

I'm disappointed in our Wizard, he's usually the most creatively minded in the group, but he thinks that because it doesn't have a tuning fork attuned to another plane it can't get out. He's failed to consider Banishment targeting self, Invisibility for when they they open the door to get the phylactery (which they need for something else), or that it might have a Demiplane of its own for just such an occasion.

I'm thinking that when they come back to the Demiplane, it's packed to the brim with Death Symbols, Glyphs of Warding, and undead. Thoughts?

There's a section in Out of the Abyss you could rip off.

I never said anything about human limits, and I completely agree that I SHOULD be able to suplex a dragon at 20.
Hell, I can suplex a roo and I'm a (relatively) normal human. In DnD I want that to the fucking extreme.
I meant that there isn't as much variety that someone who doesn't have magic powers can do.

Once you hit Lv 20 you should get genuinely fantastic capstones, that's one of the problems of this edition, hell even some of the casters got kind of shafted when it came to capstones.
>Sorcerer - You regain 4 sorc points on a short rest.
>Bard - You gain 1 inspiration if you don't got any left.
There's few times I'm running out of resources at that level. Let alone needing to only do a short rest when I eventually DO run out.
I'd say Barb, and Rogue are the only ones who didn't get shitty capstones.

I have an idea.
If the problem is with the casters, we don't need to wait for Mearls. But simply "banning wizards" is retarded. Let's just figure out a way to balance some spells and ban other ones. What do you guys think? I mean, it's the kind of game where you, the DM, has absolute freedom, isnt it.

I dunno, some of the capstones are really cool and flavorful.

Druid can wildshape every turn at no cost. Isn't that better than the Rogue's ability to get a single guaranteed hit or save every short rest?

I think it'd work better to just have it leave arcane letter scrawled on the demiplane's wall, something like "This isn't over" or whatever cheesy line you want. It's obviously simple for a caster of the lich's level to escape something like that if they only considered demiplane. Shit, it could Magic Jar one of them unbeknownst to the rest of the party.

>Relying on Veeky Forums to agree on anything
Never gonna happen.

I don't need to. I plan on just taking the ideas I like, like everyone should do to their games.

Oh for sure the better caster capstones outshine the fuck out of the martial ones.

>virgin martial vs chad spellcaster
Everyone knows wizards drown in pussy

That's because they're too weak to swim.

Typically the opposite, actually. Martials always seem to get the more involved side-quests or backstory-relevant missions.

>be Kensei Monk
Your capstone is a worse version of Deep Stalker's level 11 ability
>your subclass abilities after level 3 are useless because they're pretty much made for dual-wielding more than anything else, but the class nor the subclass actually supports dual wielding before then

>Wizard said he drowns in pussy
>I grab his hands and throatfuck the twink into the floor with my superior athletics checks
>he can't use any spell components at all
>he now drowns in cum
Can't Dimension Door out of that faggot

>Martials always seem to get the more involved side-quests or backstory-relevant missions.
>DM: I feel sorry for this useless rogue, let’s give them a sidequest so they don’t feel as useless as they are.

Amen

Joke’s on you, that was an illusion. The wizard was fapping to you from a corner the entire time.

A while ago we were looking at how much total could be carried, did we ever find out the max possible load?