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 Credit to Gunshow Comics
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Feb 20, 2015 06:38
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Not sure if it is still in, but the Thug background used to let you commit minor crimes without punishment. This included things like stealing the silverware and breaking down the door of every tavern you visit.
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Feb 20, 2015 07:37
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Mr. Bitterness posted:I'm starting one of my first D&D games as a wizard noble of modest morality and would appreciate advice on how to best fleece the decent people of Neverwinter of their burdensome coin (one big coin I'd hope, but I'll work with what the DM throws) You could chop off a bunch of lizardman penises and then try to pass them as bonerpills, but as a thread we haven't settled on how to adjudicate it with the DM.
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Feb 20, 2015 08:22
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Really Pants posted:Golems were intended to be anti-magic, but wound up being anti-melee with huge glaring magic weaknesses. What weakness is that? I'm kinda new to D&D. I've read some of the forgotten realms books and played a little of the Baldur's gate games. Nothing is jumping out out me. I gave a wizard (abj.) in AL and a bard (lore) in homebrew. Lvls 6 and 3 respectively. I know I might not encounter these for awhile/ever, but would like to know what I'm missing. Nothing is jumping out at me so I'm gonna throw out "optimal' attacks I guess. Golems start on 187 of the DMG. All have ADV on sv. throws vs. magic (magic resistance). All have immunity to (b/p/s) from non-magic/adam. Flesh has a -2 int. The rest have -4. Possibly phantasmal force will work. I'm low level so I'm not fluent in all the options available at higher levels for the golem's CR range. Is the weakness Grease? All have a 30" Speed besides Clay (20"). So maybe ray of frost kiting (which is vs. AC) on the lower AC ones. Flesh (CR5): 9ac/93hp. No: lightning(heals)/pois/ Yes: Fire dam. (disadv on atk rolls until eont); Clay (CR9): 14ac/133hp No: acid(heals)/pois/psy/. Yes: Stone(CR10): 17ac/178hp No: pois/psy/ Iron (CR16): 20ac/210hp No: fire/pois/ *gave=have odinson fucked around with this message at 11:52 on Feb 20, 2015 |
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Feb 20, 2015 10:23
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odinson posted:All have immunity to (b/p/s) from non-magic/adam. Flesh has a -2 int. The rest have -4. It's mostly that. Advantage doesn't mean anything with that sort of penalty.
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Feb 20, 2015 13:01
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My understanding of why golems aren't actually "anti-casters" is that there's a distinction between "I shoot a bolt of fire at the golem" and "I summon/manifest/conjure a flaming arrow that flies towards the golem". The golem might be immune to the first, but he's still vulnerable to the second, because it's an actual physical thing that hit it, even if the thing was created via magical means. Or something. I think things like Grease also falls into this distinction: the golem can still be affected by it because it's actual grease, even if the grease was created by magic. And things like summoning a gigantic iron wall to simply crush the golem. I don't know if this particular creative reinterpretation is specific to D&D or not.
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Feb 20, 2015 14:02
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Yeah he only has advantage for saving throws, there are a ton of magic abilities that use standard attack rolls so if you're sitting on spells that don't use saving throws and aren't of a type he has resistances to, it's no better or worse than a magic crossbow except that it's probably better and also your martials might not have a magic crossbow.
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Feb 20, 2015 14:17
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Speaking of which, here's some advice: please get magic weapons into the hands of your martials ASAP.
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Feb 20, 2015 14:18
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gradenko_2000 posted:My understanding of why golems aren't actually "anti-casters" is that there's a distinction between "I shoot a bolt of fire at the golem" and "I summon/manifest/conjure a flaming arrow that flies towards the golem". Not D&D specific, but Wheel of Time goes into this in detail. This is actually in D&D terms a change that was made between 3.0 and 3.5; in 3.0 they were magically immune to magic whereas in 3.5 they are just immune to anything that offers spell resistance (and good casters often prepare conjurations anyway).
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Feb 20, 2015 14:31
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I was just looking at some MC options, and it says you basically combine all your slots together from your spellcasting classes. So, the Paladin's Divine Smite says you expend one "paladin spell slot" but if you MC with, say, Bard/Warlock/Sorcerer after taking 2 levels of Paladin, would you then end up with a ton more slots you could smite away all the time? There doesn't seem to be any distinction w/r/t slots by class.
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Feb 21, 2015 01:15
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P.d0t posted:I was just looking at some MC options, and it says you basically combine all your slots together from your spellcasting classes. Like in many cases multiclassing Warlock is nice for this, because then you have a couple slots that you can use for low level smiting every short rest. Hmm still not sure what spells to pick for my Chaos Sorcerer that is level 2 in a group of level 3 and 4s, and who has already found that sleep puts only one thing to sleep now. Also I may be joining a 1e game in a week and a half and I have no idea what to expect.
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Feb 21, 2015 01:21
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P.d0t posted:I was just looking at some MC options, and it says you basically combine all your slots together from your spellcasting classes. Lots of rule elements aren't strictly defined anywhere, so a lot of 5e ends up being dictated by your table's interpretation of RAI rather than strict RAW. Spell slots especially seem to be something you're expected to understand are segregated by class for features like that, and even then you still end up with really poorly written RAW in certain places (like warlock's Pact Magic stating you "regain all spell slots" after a short or long rest...you're more or less supposed to assume it means Warlock slots specifically). So to answer your question, I'd say yea, you could use the slots for Smite, but if I'm being honest it's unclear by what's written in the multiclass rules. Frankly a lot of classes read like they were written before the multiclass rules, which were then kinda stapled on and made to fit, but that's my own speculation.
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Feb 21, 2015 01:34
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With regard to distinctions between spell slots while multiclassing, it's probably important that that the Warlock's class ability that lets it cast spells is called "Pact Magic" and not "Spellcasting" (like every other spell casting class), and that the multiclassing rules specifically mention Spellcasting in some places and Pact Magic in others.
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Feb 21, 2015 01:51
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P.d0t posted:I was just looking at some MC options, and it says you basically combine all your slots together from your spellcasting classes. Reading the PHB very carefully, spell slots are totally agnostic, but when you multiclass the calculation for spell slots changes. Here's what the Player's Handbook has to say regarding spell slots and multiclassing quote:You determine your available spell slots by adding together all your levels in the bard, cleric, druid, sorcerer, and wizard classes, half your levels (rounded down) in the paladin and ranger classes, and a third of your fighter or rogue levels (rounded down) if you have the Eldritch Knight or the Arcane Trickster feature. Use this total to determine your spell slots by consulting the Multiclass Spellcaster table. They have a table for spell slots as a function of spellcasting level. If you went Paladin 2 / Sorcerer 1, you would only have 2 levels worth of "multiclass spellcaster" slots, which is enough slots for 3 first level spells. But a Paladin 3 also has enough slots for 3 first level spells, so you didn't actually gain any additional Smite casts by multiclassing. At 10th level, you could be Paladin 10 with 9 (4/3/2) spell slots or you could be Paladin 2 Sorcerer 8 with 14 (4/3/3/3/1) spell slots, so you would technically have more Smite casting opportunities... but poo poo, by that point you may as well just be a Sorcerer. Regarding pact magic, the book says this: quote:Pact Magic. If you have both the Spellcasting class feature and the Pact Magic class feature from the warlock class, you can use the spell slots you gain from the Pact Magic feature to cast spells you know or have prepared from classes with the Spellcasting class feature, and you can use the spell slots you gain from the Spellcasting class feature to cast w arlock spells you know. So if you go Warlock/Sorcerer, it really doesn't matter which slots you're using for which spells, according to the rules. Conspicuously absent is the rule for determining the number of spellcasting slots for a multiclass Warlock. So I guess you just add your Warlock slots to your <spellcasting class> slots, with the knowledge that warlocks gain spellcasting slots pretty slowly (they only have 1 slot at level 1 and then 2 slots until level 11, but the slots themselves become stronger). QuarkJets fucked around with this message at 03:25 on Feb 21, 2015 |
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Feb 21, 2015 02:56
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QuarkJets posted:The wording leads me to believe that the slot you're using for Smite has to hold a spell from the Paladin spells list, which is fine if you're careful about choosing which Sorcerer spells to slot (since there is overlap) Not sure what you mean by a spell slot "holding" a spell.
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Feb 21, 2015 02:59
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Generic Octopus posted:Not sure what you mean by a spell slot "holding" a spell. Sorry, I was thinking in 3e spell preparation terms; just ignore that I said that.
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Feb 21, 2015 03:22
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So, I played my first rpg/ dnd game in several years last week. DM is running the published adventure for levels 1-7. I rolled a monk. He died in the very first combat. I quickly rerolled a half orc barbarian. It was really fun. I like my character, but reading the class I'm not super interested in playing it. So, I thought I'd just multiclass into moon druid, and it'd be fine. Looking that over though it seems really good? DM has given me free rein to play whatever I want next session, since I didn't have a lot of time to make a new character. My question is will my barbarian moon druid over shadow the rest of the party (warlock, paladin, bard)? Should I just go straight druid? This is assuming I get the barbarian's unarmored defense ability in wild shape?
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Feb 21, 2015 07:27
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Gareth Gobulcoque posted:So, I played my first rpg/ dnd game in several years last week. DM is running the published adventure for levels 1-7. I rolled a monk. He died in the very first combat. I quickly rerolled a half orc barbarian. It was really fun. I like my character, but reading the class I'm not super interested in playing it. So, I thought I'd just multiclass into moon druid, and it'd be fine. I've started a barbarian, too, and the class looks really rad to me. But I wouldn't worry about the other members of your party; I don't think that any class is significantly more powerful than the others. Warlock starts off incredibly strong, for instance. Paladin and Bard are pretty well-rounded and great all around, with Bard having a ton of great features Others in this thread have said that a Moon Druid is basically the best thing in the game right now, although I'm not really convinced. Only getting 2 wild shapes between short rests is pretty restrictive, but those wild shapes do seem pretty amazing. I think you might be right about the Moon Druid / Barbarian synergy... unarmored defense would be a class feature, right? So at level 6 you can turn into one of those dinosaurs in the DMG and add your new shape's Constitution modifier to its AC? QuarkJets fucked around with this message at 10:17 on Feb 21, 2015 |
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Feb 21, 2015 10:14
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QuarkJets posted:I think you might be right about the Moon Druid / Barbarian synergy... unarmored defense would be a class feature, right? So at level 6 you can turn into one of those dinosaurs in the DMG and add your new shape's Constitution modifier to its AC? It's still pretty good, since you're still likely going to come out ahead. And it saves a spell slot/concentration because you're not having to fix your animal form AC with Barkskin (which you'd probably lose once in a while until you get Warcaster, since you're up at the front lines taking hits). You're just delaying a bunch of stuff by a level for it, which isn't really that bad in the long run. And nobody plays to 20 anyway, so you're not likely missing out on the capstone (which is actually really good for a moon druid). @GG: With that party, I don't think you're going to overshadow anybody regardless of what you pick. Bards are amazing, paladins hit like trucks when they want to, and warlocks have a lot of utility. The moon druid's claim to fame is basically "doesn't die". They often get to roll a lot of attacks in wild shape, but their to hit numbers are generally pretty low. If you were going to reroll completely and want to keep the AC fixer, you might also look at monk/druid. There's a lot of synergy there since you'll likely want a high WIS, and not all animals have good CON. Or else there's nothing wrong with going straight druid.
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Feb 21, 2015 16:58
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Awesome. I'll probably just stick with the 1 level in barbarian going to druid. I like the theme of the wild raging entity of nature. Thanks, newbie thread.
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Feb 21, 2015 17:39
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QuarkJets posted:Others in this thread have said that a Moon Druid is basically the best thing in the game right now, although I'm not really convinced. Only getting 2 wild shapes between short rests is pretty restrictive, but those wild shapes do seem pretty amazing. Moon Druids are considered so strong because they are enormous damage sponges. At level 3 they can turn into a Brown Bear twice per fight, functionally giving them an extra 68 HP (albeit with slightly lower AC). On top of that, in Brown Bear form they have access to muti-attack two whole levels before fighters do. Plus, they're full casters! Moon Druids are absolutely nuts.
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Feb 21, 2015 17:46
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Jimmeeee posted:Moon Druids are considered so strong because they are enormous damage sponges. At level 3 they can turn into a Brown Bear twice per fight, functionally giving them an extra 68 HP (albeit with slightly lower AC). On top of that, in Brown Bear form they have access to muti-attack two whole levels before fighters do. Plus, they're full casters! Moon Druids are absolutely nuts. If by "twice you fight" you mean "twice between short rests" then yes. But yeah, those forms are pretty insane. And at later levels you can stay in the form for so long that you probably only need to use it once before you wind up taking a short rest. I guess that the only downside is that a Brown Bear can't really wear any equipment (unless maybe if you have a really awesome DM who will at least let you wear a cloak as a bear), so any magic items and the like won't be usable. Still pretty awesome though QuarkJets fucked around with this message at 19:33 on Feb 21, 2015 |
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Feb 21, 2015 19:29
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Is there a way to somehow get more than one bonus action per turn?
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Feb 21, 2015 22:38
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Not yet.
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Feb 21, 2015 22:54
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So soon I may be running a 5E campaign to see if it's in general a better fit than 3E or 4E for our group. Since we almost exclusively play with homebrewed campaigns and monsters, I'd like to use gradenko_2000's modified monster math and just steal neat, thematic abilities from the Monster Manual. So I've got a few questions... First, has anyone tried to handle 4E minions in 5E? I've gotten to use to just throwing them in for flavor in 4E and not caring about the XP value for encounter math. Does anyone have tips on how to effectively use hoards of weak mooks in 5E? Or how influential they'd be on encounter difficulty and building budgets? Second, I know tons of people have been saying the XP\CR stuff is as broken as in 3E. Has anyone played with gradenko's changes or the 5E microlite monster creation rules that were posted a while ago and have opinions on if decent math fixes things? Finally, about half of my group are (unintentional) character optimizers and the other half are either too new to know the trap options or intentionally choose them for flavor. We don't have problem with the magic/martial divide so much as "Wow, that guy's monk is hitting for 3 times as much as my monk and the rogue has +10 more in all the social and sneaky skills I wanted to specialize in." Does anyone have tips for what I should watch for to keep characters from being stupidly overshadowed? Any tips for "fixing" stuff like Champion and Assassin just in case my players want to take them, or anything else I should watch out for?
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Feb 22, 2015 17:32
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In theory, minions work by using creatures of significantly lower level than the party - because defenses and attacks scale a LOT slower than in 4e, whilst HP scales broadly similarly, you wind up with creatures with so few hit points that basically a single hit from anyone kills them. But for better or worse, you don't wind up with a great many large/huge minions for big epic encounters. Shouldn't be a problem to come up with them if you want them though.
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Feb 22, 2015 18:00
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Basically, because cantrips don't add an ability mod to their damage, they don't always reliably kill "monsters that are supposed to die in one hit"; if you instead use minions that expressly have 1 HP, cantrips become more reliable. Although once you hit level 5 and they all scale up, it becomes less of an issue to use "monsters that are supposed to die in one hit" (presumably, those will be below-level.)
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Feb 22, 2015 18:16
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Our DM was using older edition monsters and modifying them to 5e. We ran into some issues where a large swarm of lower level mobs could overwhelm a party due to 5e hps and damage. It's something he had to work on balancing. So it is certainly something to keep in mind.
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Feb 22, 2015 20:16
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I've been loving 5e, it feels like a more balanced version of 3.5 so far but is mechanically very similar. The CR stuff isn't as bad as you may have heard; there are many noteworthy examples where a creature's CR is outright wrong, but there are also a lot of monsters with appropriate CR values. We're not even using gradenko's changes, most of the lower tier CR stuff has been just fine for our group (but we didn't fight a Centaur, which is way too powerful for CR 2). As a DM, you just have to review the choices carefully rather than pulling monsters out of a hat I also wouldn't worry too much about poorly-chosen proficiencies: 1) Under the "Working Together" rules, two characters with the same proficiency can help each other in accomplishing a single task. One character gives the other advantage on the roll, or just +5 if that character takes a Help action during combat. This means that a Rogue with Arcana could help the party's Wizard by giving him advantage on Arcana checks. Being able to help does not require that the helping character roll anything; in the previous example, the Rogue could have -3 Intelligence modifier, but it wouldn't matter for helping purposes. 2) Proficiency bonuses are pretty small, for a low level D&D campaign it will probably never go above +3. It's not really a deal breaker. If you think that this group is going to go into higher levels, offer some coaching if the skill choices are truly bizarre 3) Most of the important proficiency choices are done for you anyway! Armor and Weapon proficiencies are tied to your class choice, and you can usually only choose from a subset of relevant skills for class proficiencies (noteworthy exception: Bards). That at least gives the players a solid position to start from. Yeah, if they choose a bunch of "gaming" tool proficiencies they're probably hindering themselves for no reason, so maybe point that out if they decide to do this.
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Feb 22, 2015 20:47
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I finally took Find Familiar with my wizard, originally envisioning it as a surveillance drone that doesn't cost me a spell slot. In practice, it seems ridiculously more versatile than that, and I now feel like a complete idiot for waiting until level 11 to take it. Just how much other stuff can a familiar do? In combat: -Does communicating orders to a familiar require any sort of action or bonus action? I don't see any in the spell description, but the 7th level ranger/beastmaster ability specifies that a bonus action is required for them to do the same thing with their animal companion. One would assume that a level 1 spell shouldn't be strictly better than a level 7 class feature, but wizard supremacy... -The spell description says a familiar can't attack, but it can take other actions as normal. This includes "help", correct? -On the "help" action in combat, does the creature taking that action have to end its turn within 5 feet of the target? Or could I command my owl to swoop in on an enemy, use "help" to give our paladin advantage on his next swing, and then fly to safety while avoiding opportunity attacks via "flyby"? Outside of combat: -Given the "Working Together" rules, my familiar could theoretically assist on some skill checks, right? I could command my owl to hoot if it notices anything, and that'd be effectively asking for permanent advantage on perception checks. It wouldn't make sense for a familiar to help with most other skills (what does an owl know about history, for example), but considering how often perception checks seem to come up, that's still really powerful.
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Feb 23, 2015 00:27
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Here's some arrays I came up with a while back, if you're like me and always want even numbers in your ability scores: (+2s can go onto any number you want, but you usually want to make sure your primary ability score for your class gets to 16) Races that get +2 to one, +1 to another: 15(+1)/14/14/12/8/8 14/14/13(+1)/12/12/8 Half-Elf or Variant Human (+1 to two): 15(+1)/14/13(+1)/12/10/8 15(+1)/14/12/12/11(+1)/8 15(+1)/15(+1)/14//10/8/8 14/14/14/11(+1)/11(+1)/8 Mountain Dwarf (+2 STR, +2 CON): 14/14/14/12/10/8 14/14/14/10/10/10
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Feb 23, 2015 01:25
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Slippery42 posted:I finally took Find Familiar with my wizard, originally envisioning it as a surveillance drone that doesn't cost me a spell slot. In practice, it seems ridiculously more versatile than that, and I now feel like a complete idiot for waiting until level 11 to take it. Just how much other stuff can a familiar do? Since your communication is telepathic, and the Familiar is actually some kind of celestial or whatever, I don't think that it would require a bonus action or an action. I have no idea why the Ranger's beast companion requires a full action just to command it to do something other than move; that makes it a pretty dumb class feature, in my opinion. quote:-The spell description says a familiar can't attack, but it can take other actions as normal. This includes "help", correct? I think so, yes. But since that requires being adjacent to an enemy, that puts the familiar at risk. quote:-On the "help" action in combat, does the creature taking that action have to end its turn within 5 feet of the target? Or could I command my owl to swoop in on an enemy, use "help" to give our paladin advantage on his next swing, and then fly to safety while avoiding opportunity attacks via "flyby"? The Help action: "Alternatively, you can aid a friendly creature in attacking a creature within 5 feet of you. You feint, distract the target, or in some other way team up to make your ally’s attack more effective. If your ally attacks the target before your next turn, the first attack roll is made with advantage." This strongly implies that moving away from the creature ends the Help action. quote:Outside of combat: You can only "Work Together" or "Help" with actions if you both have that proficiency, and it only applies for completing tasks. So you can't use it to boost a Perception check, and you can't use it to simply help someone else move stealthily, but you can use it conceal something with a sleight of hand check. An owl does have Perception proficiency, but it doesn't provide you with a Perception advantage. That said, you can set the Owl on watch, and if it passes a Perception check then it can hoot. No problem there. An Owl only has Perception and Stealth proficiency, nothing else, so it can't help you with a History check
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Feb 23, 2015 01:48
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What happens if you hit a creature with both compelled duel and abjure enemy (frighten)?
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Feb 23, 2015 02:08
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Elendil004 posted:What happens if you hit a creature with both compelled duel and abjure enemy (frighten)? Um not much of anything? Compelled Duel basically gives it penalties when it moves away from you, and Abjure Enemy makes it not able to move 
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Feb 23, 2015 02:21
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But if you back off to just outside its range, but within 30 feet it's pretty much screwed (or at least, taking disadvantage on everything) right?
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Feb 23, 2015 02:36
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well let's see: Compelled Duel:
Abjure Enemy:
Soooo it seems like Abjure Enemy is the same but better..? I mean, unless it only has thrown weapons for ranged attacks (or none), it can still hit you from 25ft away.
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Feb 23, 2015 02:48
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Not really seeing an issue there. Compelled duel says it needs to make a check to move away from you. It doesn't say there's any negative effect if you move away from it.
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Feb 23, 2015 03:41
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overseer07 posted:Not really seeing an issue there. Compelled duel says it needs to make a check to move away from you. It doesn't say there's any negative effect if you move away from it. Yeah you can do both... there just won't be much point, since Abjure Enemy covers everything that Compelled Duel covers plus a lot more
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Feb 23, 2015 04:21
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QuarkJets posted:Yeah you can do both... there just won't be much point, since Abjure Enemy covers everything that Compelled Duel covers plus a lot more The only benefit I see now is with duel, you can pull someone out of an area, potentially separating a leader from a healer or something.
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Feb 23, 2015 05:34
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Elendil004 posted:The only benefit I see now is with duel, you can pull someone out of an area, potentially separating a leader from a healer or something. compelled duel doesn't necessarily do that, though. The creature can keep standing right next to the healer, unless the healer moves to be more than 30 feet from you. The opponent may move toward you, since you're the only one that it won't have disadvantage against, but that's not guaranteed. And nothing stops the healer from moving with the leader
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Feb 23, 2015 06:03
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