/5eg/ 5th Edition General

>The average roll on 4d4 is fucking 5.
mathhelp.com/testimonials/remedial-math/

The bell curve for 4d4 looks like this:
>8: 1/256
>9: 4/256
>10: 10/256
>11: 20/256
>12: 31/256
>13: 40/256
>14: 44/256
>15: 40/256
>16: 31/256
>17: 20/256
>18: 10/256
>19: 4/256
>20: 1/256
Didn't reduce fractions for obvious reasons.
If someone wants to make it look pretty on a graph that's their prerogative but 4d4+4 will give you scores that are VERY clustered around the mean of 14. Higher and more consistent than the standard 4d6k3, to the point of being OP imo.

anydice.com/program/f37f

Is it acceptable to literally just switch stat boxes around for monsters to keep your players on their toes?

I legit just improv combat all the time to make it look like I know what I'm doing. My players seem to love it.

As long as it makes remote sense sure. But tigers don't have poisonous tentacles.

Welp, so my bard died at the end of last session. I figured I want to play a martial, some kind of dirty fighter. Mercenary type, unarmored with a greatsword strapped to his back and a few backup daggers.
We're at level 16 and this is what I came up with:
Barb 2 for unarmored defence rage, and reckless, thief 3 for fast hands, battlemaster 11 with GWF. Feats could be GWM, mobile or healer.
Fast hands and manoeuvres covers the dirty fighting aspect, but I'm unsure if I'm too committed to the character concept and the barb levels take too much from my fighter progression. Thoughts?

Always make little changes so you don't have players memorizing things like AC.

What's your favourite tier of play and why?

If you're gonna be unarmored you need the two Barb levels. Full stop.

Yeah make it seem more natural, I thinking having a wanted poster with a gold reward for a "bounty hunter" then maybe just have it say that people have been disappearing or whatever and leave it that for the rest of it. And if they ask the right people they may learn more about it and can negotiate working for a reward or something?

2. 5e breaks down at 3 and 4 and 1 is just depressingly uninvolved.

3rd, followed by 2nd.
By third, all classes have come into their own and have become powerful, but without too much high level caster BS. Also you get to fight difficult monsters with legendary actions like dragons or beholders. Multiclass concepts are all more or less online.
2nd you start getting abilities, but you're still fairly mundane. 1st is pretty boring, and 4th gets a bit ridiculous.

1 because that's all I've been able to play as a player in

Jumping into 3rd(? the campaign is level 12) wasn't very fun, but also I don't think it's the tier's fault.

>three classes

Your DM is shit

Remove thief and just go Battlemaster 12 / Barbarian X

Been playing from 1st to 3rd, and are on the verge of 4th now. Going all the ways has been a lot of fun, lots of character development and a big sense of excitement when your character gets som kickass class feature.

Then I'd rather go thief 3 or / and the rest of BM. More synergy, and less redundant feature

that does sound fun. I'm playing as a Ancients pally in that campaign and it's pretty fun

What's a good racial feature for a race of Warforged-type people brought to life by Giant runes, other than just spellcasting?

>let me heal you, fighter-sama
>i'm not even injured
>shut up and take your pills

But yes, the Healer feat is pretty useful if you don't have a cleric since you also regain HP with it, meaning that your party members will be able to fight again immediately. It also gives you what's basically a Cure Wounds only a bit stronger at higher levels. It's once per short/long rest for the recipient meaning that you can get a fair amount of mileage out of it.

Have a bulletin board with one or two advertisements on it, but don't just slap all of the local quests on there. Make them poke around town a bit to find all of the information they need.

Take the Healer feat as early as possible, obviously. Also look into the rules for Alchemist's Supplies which are provided in XGtE, which will allow you to create healing potions (which you could fluff as something more realistic if you wanted).

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Built in Shield-like effects? Immune to critical hits?

bonus AC or alt AC formula

>Have you ever been to the Feywild? How was it?

I'm actually curious what my campaigns Feywild is like. Too bad no one comes from or has been to it.

That's crazy strong

The Feywild in my setting is the dream of the last of the old gods, killed by the God of the Hunt.

I feel like this would be a bit too powerful
Not a bad idea, but the base already gets a +1 to AC

Immunity to critical hits isn't insane, you can get it with adamantium armour. It's very front-loaded but with no real pay off at higher levels where you could get it anyway.

>every time someone says the magical command words "ii tsah gunda mu," something explodes.

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>you can get a belt of dwarvenkind so any of the benefits of it mean nothing as a racial

I homebrew/edit a lot of enemies the party faces. How can you make lower level enemies into a harder for a party that has magical weapons?

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>Giant's First Law: A Forged may not, through inaction, allow a person to die. You have proficiency in Medicine. In addition, you learn the Spare The Dying cantrip and can cast it at a range of thirty feet.
>Giant's Second Law: A Forged must obey orders given to it by a person except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. You have advantage on checks made to follow orders given to you by another creature.
>Giant's Third Law: A Forged must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law. You may spend a bonus action to gain one Hit Die's worth of hit points without expending the Hit Die. You cannot do this again until you complete a short or long rest.

Give them multiple health pools.

Use more of them.

I'd cut off the range of Spare the Dying.

Is there any good reason for a cleric not to get scale armor over leather?

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What are some interesting wizard back stories that aren't just grumpy old men? I'm having trouble coming up with something original. I find that race usually contributes to background well, but most of the stereotypical wizard races are very bland. Since a level 1 16 int seems like the only must have for a wizard, I feel pigeonholed.

I think I want to go diviner, should I release the idea that I need a 16 int to start on?

Whatever works for you.

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As a player, naw.

As a DM, been using that shit. Thelanis in an Eberron campaign where the party rumbled with a Formorian and then on the edge of beating him got into a gambling story and tricked him for more loot, as the story goes.

In another campaign, homebrew setting, things happening on the feywd and shadowfell are important to long form plot, and my players earned an invitation to a party, which was effectively a feywild rave, from a Satyr they jammed with after finding him playing panpipes.

Well I'm only saying that because giving it range is only only possible with one subclass. It doesn't naturally have range and there's no inherent reason why the Warforged would be able to cast it at range.

Magic resistance, use more of them, have them set traps, have them accompanied by one more powerful enemy with something like an antimagic field (cultists + beholder works well), ones that use cover and ranged weapons

>be serf
>cleaning out guest house for lord
>find magic book
>keep it secretly
>wolves attack
>use magic book to kill wolves
>take Folk Hero background
Was that so hard?

Go with whatever race you want and pick the Retired Adventurer background. Instead of being a grumpy old man, be a super-enthused old man who gave up trying to run a bar for his retirement days. Hit up the old towns you used to do hero work for and enjoy your golden years with silver hair and more platinum treasure troves than you can shake an arcane staff at.

What's bland about a Human/Half-Elf/Elf Sage Wizard? Tropes are tropes for a reason. Stop ruining your fun by trying to be special and unique.

More of them. You'll players will enjoy cleaving through the enemies but they'll actually have to use some tactics and not get surrounded.

Oh, I'm not judging your assessment or anything. I just slapped together a loose Aasimov reference and thought, "Shit, it'd suck if you had to stop a dude from bleeding out while he's just out of reach."

Dont put everything on there, and don't shove it in your players faces and it's fine

I had a GM which gave out a "newsletter" every session which had rumors that were floating around town with potential plot hooks

Why are wolves in the lord's house?

Because the wizard who forgot his book left them there as well. No sense of right and wrong.

They are the annoying and every present Tudefor Wolves, every adventurer's worst enemy.

It just feels bad to me to play such a hard trope. Part of what I like about character design is making something that is more than "uhhhh my character is like Gandalf".
Im not trying to necessarily create an edge lord special snowflake main character, but rather just something that people might see and say "huh that's neat" or make you think of the class in a different light than you normally would.

For example, one of my long time characters was a half orc "bard barian". He was a tribal war monger badass who would slam a huge drum on his way into combat, buff his allies with non concentration spells, and then either use rage or enlarge on himself to get strength advantage and then run into the fray and grapple the biggest baddie he could find while yelling cutting words at them. That's a bit more fun to me than "my bard is a lecherous halfling who tries to seduce everyone he sees and makes lots of sex jokes and meta out of character references".

Just personal opinion I guess.

When I made a Wizard I actually had him as part of a city watch as a policeman part of a force of city trained Wizards they would bring in if they needed to catch criminals alive or for investigating if there were magical shenanigans going on with items and buildings.

City Watch, Men-at-Charms department

Is it possible to play a controller cleric (Without the obvious 'get close and spirit guardians')
Their list seems very light on hard CC/Group CC

Christ, my party (running a quick minidungeon of just my paladin, a monk, and a bard, all level 1) got mugged by three wolves last session.

The Bard got one-shot immediately, my paladin missed all his swings (with Inspiration) and got double-teamed, and the monk managed to kill 2 before being taken down.

It's fucking hard to feel like an orc-slaying, giant spider-stomping adventurer when the dice are against you.

Anyone else had any bad fortune lately?

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I once played a Dwarf Wizard who saw a Gandalf Wizard save his village once with radical magic and thought he was really cool so wanted to become a Wizard BUT DWARVES AREN'T WIZARDS REEEEEE WHY CAN'T YOU BE A BARBARIAN LIKE YOUR FATHER AND YOUR FATHER'S FATHER I HAVE NO SON so he left to go study to be a Wizard.

It's not that hard.

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Maxing your stats isn't as necessary in 5e as it was in previous editions. It's a little better to have higher numbers than lower ones, for sure, but not really a big deal. If it comes down to it, you can talk to your DM about getting a Headband of Intellect in your next trove or something.

Also, go for the Outlander background. Just say that your spellbook is some family heirloom that's been passed down for generations. It has all kinds of junk in it and you eventually learn enough to figure out more of its pages, thus translating to the spells you get upon leveling up. I base this entirely on a similar book that my family has that ended up in my brother's possession. My grandmother apparently identified some "affinity" with it in him. He's a bit of an odd duck, to say the least, but not Grumpy Old Man odd.

Tempest Cleric and always cast max level Thunderwave and Channel Divinity to deal max damage. The best CC is death.

I'd rather leave that form of CC to the fighter.
Maximized Thunderwave, Failed Save as say a 3rd level slot is 4d8 = 32 Damage.
Fighter just hits something the same turn for 4d6+38.

Maybe I'll just play a CC Land Druid instead. Underdark Dwarf Druid sounds fun.

I can think of some non-gandalfy builds for pretty much any school:

1) Abjuration Wizard Mountain Dwarf- A mystic version of an OSHA safety inspector, always wants to keep everyone as high AC as possible, works to disarm magical traps and writes up dungeon bosses for various workplace safety violations

2) Conjuration Eladarin- Born to a noble family, hates being stuck indoors. He's obsessed with travel and impatient so if there is a way to teleport fast or a dubious shortcut he'll take it, consequences be damned.

3) Divination Halfling- A travelling caravan/circus gypsy who practices Tarot card reading, every time she uses her portent dice she mentions how the cards foretold this event

4) Enhantment Tiefling- A slimy scam artist, he doesn't seduce with sensuality so much as outright scam tactics and high-pressure sales. The type to sell you beachfront property in the Stonelands

5) Evocation Half-Orc- MORE DAKKA DAKA DAKKA, believes the best offense is a better offense and will shoot first, take notes later.

5) Illusion Gnome- An entertainer at heart, wants to use his illusions to tell stories and teach lessons everywhere he travels, like a mobile theater

6) Necromancer Lizardfolk- doesn't believe in wasting carrion and using every part of the animal as it were, doesn't animate for pleasure, only to defend himself

7) Transmutation Half Elf- young and studious, interested in the divine as well as the arcane, sees creating life as the ultimate form of transmutation mastery

8) War Wizard Variant Human- A Lazy commander who would prefer to sit back and let others do the fighting for him as he shapes the battlefield to suit his needs.

So yeah, wizard can take so many forms more than the usual robed old man/elf who really likes to learn.

What druid subclass ideas would you like to see?

My level 1 fighter single-handedly slew an owlbear without taking any damage.

And it pushes people away 10 ft. Also where are you just getting +38 from?

>What's your favourite tier of play and why?
I've only played 1st tier

Less of them

BM 5/Swash 15

One that lets me eat monsters.

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Two GWM attack for 2d6+4(18STR)+10(GWM) each.
Tend to assume that's what everyone does.
If not, 4d6+8/round (4d6+10 if magic +1 weapon) is still pretty darn close to the maximized TW

Anyone got a decent name generator they use in general? Also what would be some good names for a pixie/fairy?

Also it's very disingenuous to have an aoe spell only deal damage to one dude when the will be blowing that load on multiple.

Yeah good point I won't include too much stuff and hints to some other things on it, Thanks.

>Bells
>Whistle
>Kazoo
>Any obnoxious lung-powered musical instrument, short of the bagpipes

name-generator.org.uk/fantasy/
fantasynamegenerators.com/dnd-dragonborn-names.php

The lowest possible roll on 4d4 is 4.

What's this gay shit.

>piccolo

Viol but extremely out of tune.

True, but I rarely find myself able to hit more than two folks with an AoE spell without hitting my teammates or by going first.
Now if you got a raging barbarian that's like 'I got four on me, fuck it, hit me senpai I'll pass the save and take half, halved damage.' then it works out.

One of the reasons I love Slow. No friendly fire.

>Bagpipes

I still wanna get around to playing that Dragonborn Bard with Bagpipes who uses his breath weapon racial through the Bagpipes.

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I made my diviner wizard an astrologist/astronomist. Kind of still falls into the bookish stereotype, but he loves reading the stars for omens and that's where he gets his portent rolls from. Rather than a studious wizard he is kind of a paranoid doomsayer.

>Rolls a 1 on portent

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>4d6+38
Wait, how? 2 attacks with the greatsword, but where are you getting +19 on every attack?

Basically. There's a lot of neat "fortune telling" spins that you can take on diviner that are traditionally seen as hokey pseudo science.

Oh that explains the confusion, I typo'd the 3.
Should be 4d6+28, 2d6+14 each (4STR 10GWM)
My bad.

20STR, +3 weapon, GWM, and something else.

Wolves don't have ranged attacks. How else would they attack?

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what are tiers? I'm new