/5eg/ Fifth Edition General

Rolled 14/10/14/11/16/13 for dwarf tempest cleric, that's with the racial bonus. Thoughts?

Have you tried playing in a setting where humans do have an interesting lore?

Imagine a feat that gave a longer lifespan, +2 Charisma, 60ft Darkvision, proficiency in a skill, proficiency in Elvish, immunity to sleep spells, and advantage against being charmed. That's what being a Half-elf is.

Full turtle.

But I need PAM, GWM, and Sentinel as quickly as possible because I'm playing a boring martial!

Controllers. They (surprise surprise) control a horde of undead via psychic compulsion, with them at the center.

They can also attempt to gain control of all living creatures within a certain range. Those that fail the WIS save fall under their control, making another saving throw everytime they take damage.
The undead that surround them are actually just people that have long succumbed to the controller, bodies moving beyond death.

Finally, they can make a ranged psychic blast.

10 AC, 50-100 hp. They're "easy" to hit, but hard to drop.

Maybe if martials weren't on a timer to get feats before spellcasters begin doing more damage just by existing, then people wouldn't be forced to get them.
The only reason martials are even allowed to attempt to be viable is because of feats, and that also ends up with the martial builds that can't rely on feats (TWF, unarmed) end up falling behind. But casters don't have that issue. All they need to do is pump their stat and then stack as many spells that have multiple hits or just hit the entire battle field so they stack up more DPR.

It's hard to see them as interesting. No one ever explains HOW the humans made themselves the super populous race in most settings, other than the occasional "They breed like rabbits compared to dwarves and elves" or the nebulous "It's their drive/passion/stick-to-it-iveness" which is instantly made uninteresting by the fact that any party of adventurers needs those things to function anyways.

That, and they mechanically suck.

>b-but V.Human feats, user!

They might be strong when discussing level 20 theory-crafted builds, but I don't see them at often at my tables.

I refuse to play any race other than human, because I know if I'm not playing it, every party I play in will be a party of nothing but heretics.
Fuck heretics.

If martials need those things for balance, then they really should be part of the class and not a feat.

Make Variant Humans a +2/+2 race, mandate their free feat be not have "master" or "expertise" in the name, and extend their lifespan to 150 because it's a fantasy setting.

Bam, fixed.

>every single Vuman is now an archer with Sharpshooter and they just take CBE at level 4

>Does your setting have mythical creatures that don't actually exist?
I had some scam artists create the myth of a saquatch, just like how it happened irl. I occasionally have the party meet up with a pair of traveling hicks that coincidentally are 'Squatch hunting in the same area they're questing in.

This is why I nerfed Sharpshooter.

>unarmed
You can remove a spellcaster's focus, they'd be useless without it

>doing more damage just by existing
Nitpick about the spell materials. Nerf the component pouch.

>extend their lifespan to 150 because it's a fantasy setting

Do people really pick races based on lifespan? How often does that even come up? The closest I've ever gotten was my level V.Human Fighter aging from 19-32 over the course of 10 levels, and that's because there were periods of "you all part your ways for a few years before destiny calls for you again"

It's one of the most worthless 'Racial features'. Most games don't last long enough for elves living so much longer to really matter.

It's just a ribbon so you can have coherent fantasy lore. If you wanna play a 900 year old elf off for one last adventure, you can. If you want to play a young and budding starry eye'd child just reaching adulthood you can.

I like that idea, always looking to up my "part of a living world" game which I suck at.

How did you seed it? How did you avoid the players going on a futile quest?

Even though it's not mechanically relevant, alot of people do, yeah. Either for the edge/badass factor of saying they're centuries old, or the wish-fulfillment fantasy of having centuries ahead of them.

That being said, I tend to limit elves to a 300-350 year life span and everything else less than that. Close up some of huge gaps a little. Makes them less of obnoxious mary sues.

>implying I'm talking about fighting against a spellcaster

There are some spooky creatures, namely ghosts, that can make you age. This lead to our half-orc wizard being one-hit murdered in curse of strahd while the drow would've shrugged those years off as if it was nothing.

Help me save some time, tg

I've left my "boring" grounded wizard with an actual backstory and motivation behind because the group I'm with is more lolrandumb than I expected, so now going for more of a whacky Jace Connors/RDJ in Tropic Thunder Grizzled war veteran retired ranger/marine kind of thing with a "repeating" crossbow.

Baseline I'm thinking fighter with battlemaster archetype with variant human feat to get crossbow expert and later sharpshooter, but what else can I do that's interesting?

UA is allowed, Revised ranger looks cool, so do some the new arcane archer/sharpshooter archetypes.

My DM is very fluff-friendly, so the outwards appearence doesn't necessarily have to reflect the actual mechanics, but let's not overdo it.

Basically I want to be the party survivalist/ranger/scout functionally running around with a f-15

This is kind of a mess, but I'm not stupid, just lazy. Just want your opinions before I make like five different builds to compare them myself. We start lvl.3 btw.

Right, but there's nothing barring you from making an appropriately ancient human off for one last hurrah either, right?

Just because Quel'user the elf is 750 when he's just about to kick the bucket and Anonwell the halfling is 145 when he's just as old and venerable doesn't make a difference, does it?

I once had a curse laid upon me based on the prophesied lifetime I had left.
But that was in a different setting altogether.

It matters for setting coherency and explaining why a race that lives 700+ years isn't better at absolutely everything than the race who's going senile after 80-ish.

I do pretty much the spoilered thing here but limit it to their life spans being two to three times longer than a Human's. So about 300 under the most ideal circumstances, but on average closer to 200-250.

Not at all, that's why I don't really get why people care about age so much. It's just a ribbon.

Except for the from Curse of Strahd but that's an AD&D leftover. Modern D&D mostly got rid of save or die stuff like that. So age doesn't matter as much.
Plus if you really don't wanna die of old age you can easily get some magic potion or mcguffin to stop aging.

My setting has a 478 year old human Wizard who's subconsciously keeping himself alive with magic. He doesn't even sleep, he's just a living vessel of magic.
Of course this means if he interacts with an antimagic field he'll probably kick the bucket and die.

I actually wasn't. I was merely elucidating how spellcasters could be balanced if they were bugging you so much

Actually, I've read somewhere that ancient Greeks found skull of dwarf elephant and mistaken it for cyclop's

If your idea of balancing a spellcaster is simply not letting them cast spells, you're not balancing them. It's like not letting a martial pick up a weapon.

I just have a large list of random encounters that I made and every so often I'll just pick whichever one sounds good at the time.
>a couple of hicks roaming the land searching for Sasquatch
>a homeless dude that pops up in random cities and keeps ranting about conspiracy theories(some of the stupider ones are right, but the party has never investigated any of them)
>two rival parties, one made of up Kobolds and one made up of Kenkus, that race each other through dungeons to get the shiny treasure at the end. Sometimes they beat the party to the punch, sometimes they encounter the party in the dungeons.
>a comically depressed Triton merchant that has to regularly dump buckets of water onto himself to keep hydrated
>some carneys that keep scamming the party out of their gold
>crazy gnomish inventors that try to push unstable magical items onto people for testing
>an adventuring duo of a dwarf and an elf. The dwarf, annoyed by his facial hair, seeks a way to magically remove his beard such that it never grows back. The elf, conversely, is jealous of dwarven hair growth and searches for a spell or treasure to allow him to grow the mightiest beard in the land.
>far too many cats
>a band of traveling witch gypsies that sell potions and trinkets
Stuff like that. I've got over a hundred in all.

Im surprised 5e didn't have any legendary plant creature, so i made one based on hindu wish granting tree, Kalpavriksha. Boy, it got weird very quickly once the party find it.

Be really picky about components then. And not just "do you have the holy water needed for 'Protection´from Good and Evil", pay attention to somatic components. ESPECIALLY with clerics and paladins. Sage Advice states that you can't use your shield-hand for JUST somatic components.

I always found it kind of immersion-breaking. Like, you've got a 200yo elf and a 18yo human embarking on an adventure together, and both are level 1 Wizards. But obviously the elf's had so much time to hone his skills, both magical and nonmagical, it feels like he should be able to have more talents than the 18yo human, who's really still basically a child.

Obviously this doesn't make sense from a game balance perspective but it's always kind of bugged me.

Neat, stealing this and gonna make up some of my own. I suppose that table grew over time as you introduced funky stuff in your world?

>far too many cats
You're a monster

That's what Warcaster is for. RAW-wise, you can also just use the power of hand economy. Drop weapon for free, cast spell with free hand, pick up weapon with object interaction.

Rogue-Scout is very good for shoot and run tactics, and he also gets survival and nature proficiency free. Problem is he only shoots once per round.
Emphasis: Damage

Ranger-Hunter is for fire support and general support, with spells and abilities that makes him excellent if you know what kind of enemies you'll be facing (mini-bosses or minions, fiends or just humanoids...etc).
Emphasis: Reliability and Fire support

Don't know much about the rest

Well, yeah, if you do it incorrectly. A 200 year old elf is probably closer to a 25 year old human, culturally. Young compared to people who have had quite a bit more life experience, but he's culturally been an adult for quite a while now.

Right. Now tell me how many players actually think of that on their own, or forget they _have_ to do that?

I constantly catch people casting spells incorrectly at my tables, and with people that have (at least supposedly) been playing the game for years.

That's why elves in my game moult their bodies and memories every 100 years.

Tomelock: Vicious Mockery or Frostbite and Spare the Dying or Guidance? What are the best cantrips and did Xanathars Guide add any worthwhile ones?

>how many people actually think about that
Most people who have been playing 5e for any extended period of time know about it, it's just fucking stupid to imagine your character dropping the weapon each time (it's less of an issue with two-handed weapons as you just take a hand off to cast). If you want them to tell you they drop the weapon each time, I imagine it'll be more of an issue for you than them. Their entire ability to cast spells depends on it so they'll have no issue doing what's needed, but you, and the rest of your players, will have to listen to them say every time it's their turn. So for the sake of most peoples' sanity, it's usually just omitted.

Yeah, as time went on I just kept adding more and more stuff. It turned into a fun little hobby for me. I'll probably never use most of them, but that's alright with me. One thing that's important if you're doing something like this is to make sure there are repeats every so often. The party I DM for have run into the Sasquatch hunters and the rival parties twice and the hobo and the carneys 3 times. Doing so sells the illusion of it being a living, breathing world full of characters with their own arcs and motivations.

Out of those four, Guidance is the best inherently, but your DM will probably get annoyed if you Guidance every single skill check to make use of it, even though there's absolutely nothing stopping you mechanically. Vicious Mockery is second.

I like to do it via lifepath-like systems.

In general, lifepath systems work like this: You can repeat lifepaths, but the subsequent runs bring less of a benefit. And you have a limited choice of lifepaths between end of childhood and maturity, so as an elf, you tend to repeat those a lot - someone who spent 120 years in "puberty" basically had 20x 6-year lifepath of "Growing Up in the Woods" one after another, with all but the first two not giving him much of any game-mechanically relevant benefit.

Now, with a proper lifepath system, you could introduce complications and life-changing events to that path, but I don't think 5e is granular enough for that. Besides, I didn't see a good, proper lifepath system for any D&D version yet.

>there's nothing stopping you mechanically

Guidance has a verbal component of praying to your deity of choice for assistance. If the guard you're trying to Persuade to look the other way doesn't notice the cleric chanting "Oh please Pelor, make the lies of this mortal more convincing", your DM is an idiot.

In eight years of playing I don't think I've ever seen more than two human PCs, one monk and one rogue.

Next character I make will be a human fighter, which will probably make me the odd one out since I think I'm the only person in my groups who has ever had human-centric campaign settings.

That's a specific situation. Guidance mechancially has nothing stopping it from being used, outside sources who might have an issue with it might.
In a dungeon where you're less likely to be persuading people and more likely to be doing checks to jump over/disarm traps, jump over obstacles, search for hidden doors, roll Arcana to figure out magical properties, etc, there's nothing stopping you. You can even spam Guidance to make sure you have a bonus to your initiative for when you eventually get into combat.
Even in the guard example, if you know you'll be speaking to a guard, person, whatever, you can cast it on yourself or someone else. If you've got a Familiar, you can cast it on the person through that while being safely out of range.

It doesn't actually say anything about praying or asking a deity or god for help.
Couldn't it then just be my unnervingly happy Halfling Warlock just whispering advice?
"Psst. This guy looks like a virgin, just act like a chad and say it with confidence, he'll eat it."

That's not what a verbal component is

>Even in the guard example [...]

Right, that's how you responsibly and correctly use the cantrip. You don't just say, "I CAST GUIDANCE" every minute with no risk and all reward.

Depend on party composition, but recently i have really fun with Inquisitive Rogue. In dungeon you are a very good scout and with insightful fighting you can sneak attack almost anything.
It's also very fun during during down time activity, keep in mind though your DM have patience when you keep pestering about those rapid skill check.

What are component pouches? Oh, that's right, they let unarmed wizards still cast magic.

It's not on the player to balance a spell. If the DM wants to apply that logic that's cool, but my character would know that's how it works if he has the spell so I don't want any "gotcha" bullshit pulled on me.

Except in my original post that has absolutely nothing to do what I said. You picked a specific situation in which there might be an issue, but there is absolutely nothing stopping you from considering Guidance as a permanent +1d4 to every single action the party does. The only instances where it's not considered a permanent passive, and this is a specific situation so the spell is still mechanically able to do /exactly/ what I originally said, is when your party is forced to do a skill check with multiple people at a time (in which one person still has Guidance), or when you're talking to someone who might recognize it as you're casting it.

It's usually only on the Cleric/Druid list, which is why I added the deity/god bit.

If you want to play it that way, sure. Though I've always ruled that verbal components have to be spoken at "normal room volume" to avoid conflicts with Subtle Spell.

Xanathars

>talking about balance
>"But in my game I houseruled-"
Shut the fuck up

My house rule is that a spell with a verbal component (leaving aside metamagic) has to be spoken loud enough that the target(s) could hear it, assuming their normal hearing ability.

>verbal components exist
>metamagic to reduce verbal components exist
>making a ruling so both exist when the rulebook doesn't give specifics on verbal components is bad house-ruling

Grow up. Not all the answers are in the PHB.

I made a Paladin oath, I'm not all that attached to any of the features, this is simply a first pass at it.

What do you guys think? Any good?

Also does anyone have a good Death Knight picture with transparency that isn't Arthas? I swear to god that's the only death knight I can find at a decent quality.

Too bad the most important rule in the PHB is Rule 0, what the DM says goes.

5E was built on a philosophy of "Rulings, not rules." Go play 4e with the rest of the 4rries if you want some utterly sterile mechanics wank where there are precise rules and exploits for everything. Nobody wants your "system mastery" wanking here, RAW faggot.

If verbal components were that obvious the arcane trickster feature that makes enies have disadvantage on saving throws while unaware would be fucking useless

Subtle spell isn't for casting stealthily, its for casting while silenced/bound/gagged and to cast without being counterspelled.

>wear ear plugs
>immune to all magic

>A component pouch is a small, watertight leather belt pouch that has compartments to hold all the material components and other special items you need to cast your spells, except for those components that have a specific cost (as indicated in a spell's description).
Tl;dr: pouch contains all those weird items you see in a spell's description right under the word "Components". It doesn't contain the really expensive items, but it saves you the trouble of trying to find ostrich feathers or red colored sand.
The arcane focus functions in much the same way.

My idea is: You still need an arcane focus to cast any spell, but you need any listed components. Where do you get them? Maybe travel to the not!savanna and pluck some ostriches? Or find a merchant who'll totally not scam you with dyed and enlargened chicken feathers?

I'm not saying to make the game hell for the players. I'm saying that anons who find that spellcasters are OP in their game could be made to go back to their roots of scrounging for exotic spell components

But if you do that you validate PF players and GMs, and you can't have that!

Seriously, this is the logic behind the no-houserules nonsense.

I wouldn't say "absolutely nothing". Guidance has a casting time of 1 action and a range, so it's not entirely impossible you wouldn't be there or fast enough. But skill checks are almost never unexpected, so that's kind of pedantic.

It's shit

Those aren't proper lifepaths. They are just "this is your background expanded, and a bunch of random events". Compare that to those in the MechWarrior 3 or Burning Wheel games - where you chose the background, then how you grew up in the childhood, then which path(s) you took from there. They are largely incompatible with class systems, unless you start at something like level 5 and make the levels 1-4 into the lifepath parts.

>assuming their normal hearing ability.
The house rule still has its problems, but they don't lie where you think they do. It has mostly to do with creatures which never had any ability to hear in the first place - those need exceptions.

Absolutely insane.
That Channel Divinity is easily the best I've seen in the out of any class with Channel Divinity. It's an effective 32 eHP with +3 Charisma that is used on a reaction. At level 3 that might as well be the equivalent of doubling someone's health, especially since most Channel Divinities have a decent cost (using a full Action, or a bonus action which only works on a single enemy).
The level 7 feature is pretty damn strong as well.
Anything after that I don't even bother looking at, as level 15 and up stuff is more just a case of 'what feels decent enough to fight a Lich Beholder or five', so balancing them is insanely subjective.

No it wouldn't.

>enemies don't know I'm here
>Within 6 seconds I cast a spell, including the verbal components
>they're at disadvantage unless they have a feature that lets them use a reaction
>spell effects trigger
>now they know where I am

Is how the action economy should work, no?

>blindfold self
>immune to medusa and basilisks
>forget they have teeth and claws and poison
Expect similar problems

>having a discussion about legitimate balance and what the wording of something says
>but [insert subjective reason] makes it fine
No. The DM can houserule literally anything they want, but that doesn't mean the original usage of a feature isn't exactly what it says on the tin. If you don't like someone spamming Guidance you can have their deity get pissed off with all the paperwork, which is what my DM does, but it doesn't change what something does.
Also, before you get angsty over me pointing out that DM fiat is DM fiat, I'm not him so I didn't tell anyone to shut the fuck up.

Yes, we totally don't recognize you and your anti-homebrew crusade that you've spammed every single 5eg thread for the past week.

So I made a 5e homebrew and I want to know, how badly would this fuck up the balance of the game.

>spend six seconds shouting oogly boogly abra cadabra
>magic occurs
>enemies totally weren't expecting it despite you speaking audibly
Makes sense

What would be a reasonable amount to heal? I tried to compare it to Turn the Tide which heals 1d6 across all allies below half, since this only heals one person when they drop to dying. Maybe I should take away the damage resistance?

The 7th level feature is similar to the Tempest Barbarian tundra feature (which takes a bonus action to use) but goes off Charisma instead of Proficiency. So it maxes out at +5 and I didn't think most Paladins are actually going to get that +5 anytime soon. Should I put it back to using a bonus action? I wanted something passive to stay in line with the other paladin auras.

thank

>born deaf
>immune to magic

But it lasts for a minute. There is absolutely nothing stopping me from casting Guidance on myself every 40 seconds or so to guarantee I'm able to use it in response to something that affects me. I also don't see how most skill checks are unexpected, either. Maybe in your games they are, but in my games, and the games I play in - traps don't trigger for no reason so you always have a chance to find them with a check, boulders are stagnant until you want to move them, magic doesn't just randomly lash out until something makes it do so (whether it's the original caster making it do so, or you triggering something) so you have time to make an arcana, investigation and perception is usually done at the party's leisure so you have plenty of time to guidance, etc.
Yes, there are very specific instances when you might have difficulty having it perpetually affect everyone, but unless you're having characters run a marathon and never have an instance to take their time to decide on something, Guidance is usually able to be used.

Infinitely.

Bounded accuracy is bad.

I am the guy who said shut the fuck up and we're not the same person you pillock.

Theres more than one person who thinks your homebrew is shit.

>point out flaw in someone's reasoning
>you are this person and thus I can ignore your post and logic
So you admit to using false logic to justify a flawed view of what balance is?

Can you be more specific? What does it break and how does it break it?

Oh Oh OH! Wait! Had an idea!

What if it said that after the targeted creature ends their next turn they immediately fall unconscious? Or drop to 0? So it's not like a big heal, it's just a stay up for one more turn ability?

Or I could make it like the Barbarian feature and have them stay at 0 but conscious, making deaths saves as normal for 1 turn. Man that's flavorful as fuck.

I think you need another copy of the PHB to read. That's how turn-based combat works, user.

That's exactly what I meant with "it needs exceptions for creatures which never had any ability to hear in the first place". Someone born deaf is one such creature.

I'd consider the first option fine. The equivalent of a Revenant coming back to life to finish a goal, or at least that's what it's similar to. It uses a resource that can otherwise be used for something else, so it's fine if it's a bit better than the Barbarian's passive in terms of immediate value (the main difference between the two being that Barbarians can be healed and not actually go down, but the Channel Divinity means you can generally guarantee another turn).

Like clockwork. When you spam the exact same arguments in the exact same style even between your own posts, for like a week straight, it's pretty obvious it's you. You're not fooling anyone, kiddo.

So what does this shit have to do with you have a flawed view of what balance is? Are you just going to derail the thread with 'haha fuck you' instead of actually addressing the conversation?