/5eg/ - Fifth Edition General

Party is getting harassed by self-reviving flameskulls, I'm a Cleric. What do?

Try praying above them after their defeat? If that doesn't work, you can try Funeral from Ceremony and see if that does the trick.

If they're strong/able to be equipped with enough gear then yes.
Having more than 2 bogs down combat MASSIVELY.

I only have one as my dedicated servant, other than that I only raise undead to perform tasks for us out of combat and then allow the paladin to destroy them.

It's a weird party dynamic, but it keeps the pally off my back and keeps us all from doing unnecessary labor. The battlemaster and my armed servant help keep me protected in-combat.

Can you grind them into dust once they're "dead"?

I like it, I've always wanted to play a skeleton necromancer, but all the complaints about their rolling gave me pause.

Ask for Bag of Devouring, or Giant Hyena.

I enjoy it, though I frequently wonder if I should have gone Death Domain Cleric instead of Necromancer Wizard.

How do you track conflicts between two factions parties are involved with? The Red Hand of Doom sort of answers this question with victory points but is there another way?

That's the alternative I was considering. Being some god's servant just isn't as cool as studying the great art for your own sake, though.

Yeah because even mecahnical differences aside, I did prefer the idea of being a studious mage over a priest of some kind.

Mostly because most of my previous 5e characters have been paladins.

Paladin isn't my style, but it could be fun for a change.

Oh for sure having an army is fun AF.
But the complaints about rolling are not without cause.
Same goes for Conjure Animals/Woodland/Elementals/Demons.
Going for the low CR/High amounts gets a bit tedious.

This may have been the case for my DM banning my summoning of bears after we did LMoP

I actually bashed their skulls (bodies?) into pieces for vaporizing the Ranger's body beyond revival (she lost her sheet) and completely wrecking my half elf asshole with a chain of fireballs. I bashed their heads and collected some of their teeth for my kill necklace. An hour later they materialized again, teeth disappeared and blew my ass up with fireballs again.

I delivered several killing blows with Destructive Wave which deals radiant damage so that's not going to work.

I think you need to destroy their gem or something.

Hm, summoning undead bears, now there's an idea. A shame 5e only allows humanoid undead minions. Older versions have templates to skellify almost anything.

Just kill the DM, then you wouldn't have this problem.

Remove Curse

Separate them into several different airtight jars so they can't reform?

>Then have whatever ones remaining in a pocket dimension/your base doing menial tasks.
Don't forget, your control wears off after 24 hours. That's bitten us in the ass before.

What do you mean by tracking them? Can you elaborate?

So, I'm starting to write up a new campaign for my friends back home for the summer. I've built up most of the country that they'll be starting in and have a good idea for the rest of the world and stuff.

I was going to start them in a small town at level 2 and have them go through a quick quest to save a small child from a group of goblins. Along the way they also save a caravan that takes them to a much bigger city. On the trip there will be hints that the goblin encounter isn't necessarily over.

My plan for that was that a Green Hag had managed to convince a bunch of the goblinoids in the nearby forests to do something for her. I'm not sure what and I don't know what I'm going to do after that, but I want them to end the Hag encounter at around the second tier of play.

Any suggestions for the Hag arc or an arc to do after that part would be very nice

If it helps, I can answer any question people have about it. I will take any chance I can to talk about my setting and I've found that the people here tend to be smarter than I am when it comes to this stuff.

I'm sorry if my thoughts come off scattered or nonsensical, but it would be very helpful if anyone could offer up anything

Don't worry about the second arc. Your players should be able to come up with things they want to get into. Just lay out a bunch of potential hooks for them.

I really like Danse Macabre for exactly that reason.

Use up to 5 undead to do what you need them to do and them boom, they're simply corpses again.

Can't wait to use this myself.

Why do people say that sorcerers suck (at least in 5e)?

As a wizard without multiclassing is there any way to get access to the Speak With Dead spell? Seems an odd choice to make it Bard/Cleric exclusive. Any magic items that grant usage of the spell?

They buy into the "wizard superiority" meme because they identify with the autistic shut-in class. Problem is, the people who make the game act on this, too.

How useful would this be in game? With the character being thrown as a cleric at level 3 with 18 ac instead of Loki.

Everything they can do, wiz can do better. Wiz can do anything better than them.

I've wanted to do something like this ever since I played the first Mario RPG, where one of Bowser's equippable weapons is a pair of gloves that he uses to pick up and hurl Mario at enemies.

Dwarf or non-dwarf?

They get very little spells known so you have to pick wisely what you choose. This often leads to limited-use spells or generic spells that get repeated extremely often. The one thing that saves them is Metamagic but after that there is no point so everyone just dips three levels to get the Metamagic options

Dwarf

There's two main reasons, but one of the reasons tangets off into subsections. The first reason (the non-tangent one) is that they are the class with fewest spells known as a full spellcaster. And no, Warlock doesn't count because they aren't a "normal" full spellcaster based upon Mystic Arcanum and how they get back all their slots on a short rest.

The second main reason (the one with several tangents in it) all relate to the Sorcerer's spell list. By in large, it's too small compared to Wizard, no good unique spells that are Sorcerer-only, and the "good" spells that the Sorcerer can get, the Wizard also can.

The most reasonable solution I've seen (and used) is to give them "Sorcerous Origin" spells similar to the Cleric's Domain Spells. This means that even by level 20 they only know 20 spells, but they have at least SOME wiggle room for their spells known so they can grab the blaster spells and still have 1 or 2 utility ones (Invisibility, Alter Self, Haste, Fly, Counterspell, Polymorph, etc.)

>My plan for that was that a Green Hag had managed to convince a bunch of the goblinoids in the nearby forests to do something for her. I'm not sure what
Hags want to eat little children to make more hags to form a coven. The goblins steal the children. Hobgoblins made deal with the hag, that as long as they bring her children she'll help them conquer with her magic. The hags likely lied about why they needed the children but the goblins likely didn't care so they order occasional raids on various small towns across the countryside to steal children.

Extremely useful.

There's not enough that is special about them. They're just worse wizards.
Meta-magic has only 2 good choices (subtle and quickened). Twinned would be better but nothing can really beat a quickened fireball or lightning bolt.
The only good thing about them is that you can cast a fuckton of lower level spells, but even that isn't as worthwhile as it should feel.
I love the flavor of sorcerer but they're just not very good. Maybe it would be better if WotC hadn't taken away what made sorcerers unique (flexible spell slot use) but they did.
For fucks sake a bard learns more spells than them. It's just a bad joke that is further salted by the fact that WotC keeps pushing a wizard class that does sorcerer shit in their UA (Lore and Invention wizards).

>allowing multiclassing
>ever

Yeah, they really need to give Sorceror a clear purpose.
It's not that they aren't powerful, it's just they're not really able to compete against other casters.

Spell known number, even DS played as cleric only know six spells at 5th level. Far too few for variable situation, while crappy Cleric with 16 Wis can prepared eight spell and ability to switch all of them per long rest, not one per level.

Ah, that brings me back. I just like the idea of being hurled at enemies as a useful tactic.

Nice, thanks. Just gotta involve a fellow pc to cooperate.

I didn't say that I do, or that I allow it. I said that people do it. I've only heard of people gaming the system here (and one dude in our play group but that was when we were told to build strong characters for a level 20 campaign, and even then it wasn't very good)

Because if you want to play a charismatic caster you play a bard and if you want to play a powerful spell caster you play a wizard.

Lv20 campaign.
Where is the character progression?

>It's just a bad joke that is further salted by the fact that WotC keeps pushing a wizard class that does sorcerer shit in their UA (Lore and Invention wizards).
Why are they like this?

Crew is currently fucking the snow in Spine of the World. We have like 30+ rations each, Paladin just remembered he has create food, we all have snow doges and sleds and we all have warm clothes. Anything we're missing in order to travel in the snow better?

It sounds like you're fine?

One of the devs has a hate-boner for Sorcerors and thinks they need to go in the trash.
He's the reason OG Sorcerors were worse than current ones.

How childish.

Listen bud, I wasn't a big fan of it either but it turned out to be pretty fun. The "progression" was milestones that gave us 5 levels at a time. Shit was wild

Good. I'm a Sorcerer so I can maintain fire spells if we need heat.

I do not know, but it is stupid. Just to make Sorcerers more viable I give them 'Domain spells' and allow them to change around metamagic freely at level up.

Because sorcerers represent prom queens, and fighters are jocks, while wizard is a nerd power fantasy. Take a guess who designs role playing games?

Large Saddle. Polar Bear.

So a funny thing happened in Out of the Abyss today...

In Gracklstugh, it is possible to get a red dragon egg that is close to hatching. You can give it to either the Keepers of the Flame (who will keep it), or a big fat dragon (who will eat it). OR your party can take a third option and keep the dragon egg. As long as it's kept in a (very) hot environment, the book says that it will eventually hatch and the resultant Red Dragon wyrmling will bond with the first creature it sees.

Please note I did not make this up, it's an explicit option in the book itself.

My players took this third option, kept the egg, eventually found a lava pool while traveling, stuck the egg near the pool and camped out with it, and long story short after about 3 weeks the dragon hatched. Her name is Scrylia, she's actually a reincarnation of an NPC from a previous campaign. All it really means is that she's Lawful Evil instead of Chaotic Evil, and that she has a personality and some memories and stuff already rather than being a total blank slate. Apart from the alignment change, she's identical to a standard red dragon wyrmling, which put her slightly ahead of the average party level (5th) when they got her, but not a ton, and things have evened out by 7th level (current). But that's not what's important.

No, what's important is that when the party reached Blingdenstone and went a-questing, they encountered a ghost who the book says starts off by using its Horrid Visage action. This requires a DC 13 Wisdom saving throw for all creatures within 30 feet. Failure means that the creature is Frightened for 1 minute...and if you fail by 5 or more, it ages you 1d4 x 10 years. This effect does not end except by magic.

(cont'd)

How to fix Sorcerer:
>switch the effects of Careful Spell and the Evoker's Sculpt Spell
>give them extra Sorcery Points
>subtract one point from the cost of each sorcery point to spell slot conversion
>give them extra spells known
>give them more Metamagic options, preferably balanced ones so we don't see the same 3 get picked every single time
>let them learn extra Metamagics so they can actually branch out in their options
>give them an ability similar to the Bard's Magical Secrets so they can pad their list with some more fitting spells, it makes sense that the class that's supposed to be the naturally talented caster should be able to pick up shit like that
Easy.

Agreed except for reducing point cost.
You'd be making EB sam so much worse.

Anyone have that PDF that's been floating around? That one's pretty good, even if it does lock you into using Mana bucket instead of spell slots

Boots of the Winterlands for nearly-naked snowball fights. Other than that, remember that Prestidigitation is a free electric blanket that works on your clothes.

Spam*

One idea I had that I'd love to see happen is introduction of sorcerer only spells that have built in metamagic options, basically a second version of the spell with a more or less specific utility. Imagine a poison damage gunk spell that can instead turn into a binding effect against something immune to poison damage.

(cont'd)

For the record I rolled a 3 (30 years), but even had I rolled a 1 that would still be enough to push a Wyrmling Red Dragon to a Young Red Dragon. Scrylia got a 6 total on her Wisdom saving throw (4 + proficiency)...so long story short my players now have a Young Red Dragon NPC in the party, who is overwhelmingly the strongest member of said party and in fact overwhelmingly the strongest being in Blingdenstone, even without the fact that I had already decided to make her an innate spellcaster as per the variant rule in the Monster Manual (it wasn't something I thought would be relevant in this campaign).

More to the point she can easily trounce the drow that were pursuing the party and were supposed to be the climactic fight of Part I (or would have, had said drow not already been dealt with back in Gracklstugh).

I've already worked out how this whole situation is going to wind up and have resolved it. Just...just wanted to state what happened today, and inform DMs to be careful about letting wyrmling dragons near ghosts.

Just ban Warlock multiclassing and make EB an exclusive spell that can't be learned by other classes. I do the same with Ranger and Paladin exclusive spells.

You basically use Mana Bucket anyway as a sorcerer.

Also you reminded me of another point there's a variant rule that basically takes out any reason to be a sorcerer if it's in effect for all classes in your game. Mana points for everyone makes a sorcerer irrelevant.

Mana bucket is and always will be the best magic system

What about those who go warlock first?
After all, they get better proficiencies to start with.

That whole mechanic is bullshit though, why wouldn't everyone dragon go out picking fights with ghosts? Dragons being immune (or rather, getting no benefit) from magical aging should be core rules.

>Boots of the Winterlands for nearly-naked snowball fights
Why do I get a boner from something stupid every time I come to this board?

I've got that! I'll be using it. I can cast it up to three times, each affecting a 1 cubic foot area. I guess I'll have to use all instances on myself though

Don't they get stronger as they age? Surely they'd purposely go and get aged.

What class is the universe's awesomest evildoer?

Druid.

I think it's rather funny, and well-done by both you and the players to add your own unique flavor/twist to the adventure.

I've had a similar thing occur in my homegame.

> Weird magic happens while they explore the countryside and drops a large slab of Adamantium and a Small-sized Earth Elemental in front of the PCs
> Earth Elemental begins to shit-talk the PCs and challenge them for the slab, none of which know Terran Primordial.
> Bard decides to cast Tongues and talk the creature down
> One very high Persuasion check later, they befriend the Earth Elemental and have some minor adventures with it
> It eventually leaves them to return to the slab (as they could not carry this large, Easter Island-sized head of metal around even in a Bag of Holding), having the idea that if it eats more of the metal it'll grow faster

I've already planned out what's going to happen to the Elemental in terms of stats (ie., what would happen to a "young" elemental when it's primary diet during it's formative years is a super-rare, super-dense metal), and what it'll end up looking like (imagine pic related, only jet black with a green sheen).

Very interesting! I hadn't considered that.

But did your players have fun?

How do you deal with Eyes of the Rune Keeper? Is being able to read something the same as understanding it?
I know that Δ, Θ, and Ω are Delta, Theta, and Omega. So I can read those symbols, but that doesn't mean I understand Greek.

Does anyone have Schleyscapes PNG Suite to share?
prints.mikeschley.com/p153402849

The normal consequence with forced aging is the lack of knowledge/wisdom that you earn when you go about it "the normal way."

However, being that this is a reincarnated NPC with some of its memories of that former life intact, that probably provides enough of a basis to allow the Wyrmling to get to Young Dragon mental status. But past that you need literal centuries of time to pass before the dragon hits Adult, and another few centuries before hitting Ancient.

>each affecting a 1 cubic foot area.
Nah, it's "one cubic foot of material," not "material contained in one cubic foot." Most shirts are made up of less than that, and you could probably cover the entirety of a halfling's clothes.
Prestidigitation is literally the best cantrip.

An Elf Druid can live for millenia. Become an Tzeench-level manipulator.
Add on the fact they have some badass spells, can have a near limitless health pool and summon minions.

Banning Warlock multiclassing goes both ways. No multiclassing in or out.

Well, among other things, ghosts might not be that common.

For the record, what happened was Scrylia briefly considered taking over Blingdenstone, but then decided that her kingdom was not going to be a dark cave miles beneath the earth, so instead she and the Player Characters wrapped up their current business (looking for the skeletal remains of a deep gnome), went back to Blingdenstone with the remains as a sign of good will (and made a group Persuasion to improve the Deep Gnomes' collective attitude, in this case to Friendly), and then Scrylia told the Diggermattocks that one of two things was going to happen:

1) The deep gnomes were going to give the party maps to the surface, and she and the party would then leave without a fuss, having improved the svirfneblin city somewhat for having visited it; or
2) SOMETHING BAD.

The Diggermattocks chose option (1), so now the party is just skipping to the surface since there's no reason to have them fight anything else. And thus Part I of OotA ends.

Like, I COULD have them fight something that takes Scrylia's power into account, but I don't like the idea of unnaturally jacking the challenges that much and that obviously to deal with something that frankly shouldn't have happened (but did and is in fact a risk built into the book, albeit not one, I think, that the designers considered)

On a side note, the party has left Blingdenstone without having dealt with Ogrémoch's Bane (though they encountered it), the Pudding King (who they heard of but don't know much about), or even hearing about the Goldwhiskers at all (beyond knowing that there's at least one wererat somewhere thanks to Topsy & Turvy), so overall haven't really helped the svirfneblin that much. They did kill a medusa, at least.

All in all...most unexpected. But kind of fun. It's sort of a microcosm of what I love about D&D - weird shit can happen if the dice go the right way, but that weird shit can have consequences down the line.

Pls

Ask your GM.

That's fantastic.

How wouldni go about running an evil dead type game in d&d?

Absolutely.

>Is being able to read something the same as understanding it?

Read a James Joyce novel. Then you tell me.

LITERAL necromancy isn't a necromancer spell
I can't fucking believe