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DMing for the first time as well. A player pretty much wants to make the Macho Man as his character. Busting promos and dropping elbows on enemies. What do I roll this as? Bard for magical promos? A monk for unarmed fighting?
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Jan 5, 2018 14:58
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I'm running a fairly low fantasy campaign loosely based on Glen Cooks' Black Company books. My players have decided to settle down in one of the largest cities and I'm sorely lacking in inspiration/adventure hooks for running a game in an urban setting. I know of Lankhmar - a former group of mine owned the box for AD&D, but that was ages ago - but not much more at the top of my head. Does any of you have suggestions for (preferably) free and online resources I could seek out? I'm not looking for scans or pirated material. EDIT to add: so far I've been using the sewers in lieu of caves for a dungeon crawl, but I'd rather be using the city proper. Not much point in letting them move to the big city if all they're going to see is a shop, a tavern and manholes leading to the most generic type of adventuring in D&D history. Runaway Legs fucked around with this message at 15:33 on Jan 5, 2018 |
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Jan 5, 2018 15:00
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Nash posted:DMing for the first time as well. A player pretty much wants to make the Macho Man as his character. Busting promos and dropping elbows on enemies. What do I roll this as? Bard for magical promos? A monk for unarmed fighting? You can make a pretty drat effective grappler with a Barbarian/Bard combo, using rage to gain advantage on all strength checks (grappling and shoving) and cutting words from bard to give enemies trying to wiggle out a penalty to escaping. Grappling doesn't work as one might expect in this edition, but with some creative wrangling it can be pretty useful. Bard helps out by being able to cast Silence on an area and then keep a mage in the area - I'd flavor this as some kind of "I'm just going to shout over you talking so your magic doesn't work" field. The important bit is to really carefully read the rules on grappling (they are weird), suggest using the turn after a victim is grappled to throw them prone, and don't take the grappler feat, it's worthless. Consider instead Mage Slayer or Tavern Brawler or something.
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Jan 5, 2018 15:36
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The great manual of grappling for 5e: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?468737-The-Grappler-s-Manual-(2-0)-Grappling-in-5th-Edition
Soylent Pudding fucked around with this message at 16:52 on Jan 5, 2018 |
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Jan 5, 2018 16:49
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Short version of being a good grappler: get expertise in Athletics, and ideally also get advantage on strength. Rogue or Bard are easy sources of the Athletics expertise, Barb rage can give you the advantage, but also so can Enlarge or Enhance Ability spells. Once you grapple someone, knock them down and they can't stand up since being grappled puts their move to 0. Shield master is good for this thanks to the bonus action shove attack. Monks are actually pretty bad grapplers since they don't use Strength to attack and so have bad Athletics checks.
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Jan 5, 2018 18:42
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I've previously mentioned how I'll be running my first campaign starting tomorrow with the party consisting of what will be a Scout Rogue, Eldritch Knight Fighter, and probably Evoker Wizard. I've solved the lack of healing by having a magical Clippy pop up and offer healing if they're getting wrecked and I don't want them to die (which I don't, yet) and I've also decided to let them all take a feat that is thematically appropriate for their intended build. My question is, should I also load them up with magic items? I intend to follow the rarity chart in Xanathar's Guide, so they aren't getting a Robe of the Archmagi at like level 2, but all the games I've played the DM has been stingy as hell with magic items so I don't really know how much of an impact they have. Edit: I should mention these magic items will be found during the campaign, they still start with nothing, as a level 1 should.
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Jan 5, 2018 18:49
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You might want to focus on defensive magic items to make up for lack of healing. Just be careful of them stacking on a single character - you will have one invulnerable tank and several soft targets.
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Jan 5, 2018 19:09
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I might be playing this accursed game soon, so what's a good build for a Warlock? It seems weak compared to the Wizard.
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Jan 5, 2018 19:20
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Kruller posted:I've previously mentioned how I'll be running my first campaign starting tomorrow with the party consisting of what will be a Scout Rogue, Eldritch Knight Fighter, and probably Evoker Wizard. You can just give them ubiquitous access to healing potions; combat healing in 5e isn't a thing, not really, beyond picking people back up which a healing potion or goodberry can do (if not as efficiently as Healing Word). So, just give them the healing resources and let them manage them - if they're running dry on the ability to top themselves off between fights before they do on their other abilities then provide more potions, and if the opposite then give them less, adjusted for whatever pace works best for your game. Not that any of this matters much levels 1-3 since you're only a hit or two away from going down always.
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Jan 5, 2018 19:30
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SunAndSpring posted:I might be playing this accursed game soon, so what's a good build for a Warlock? It seems weak compared to the Wizard. Get the Agonizing Blast invocation and max Charisma. You plop down Hex and Eldritch Blast the rest of the fight - that's core Warlock, with occasional use of your limited spell slots for one-off effects or out-of-combat utility. Pact of the Tome gives you more cantrips and an invocation that lets you steal rituals from other classes spell lists (very useful). Fiend Patron gives you some blasting, and Hexblade from Xanathar's Guide gives you medium armor and shield proficiency plus a very strong short-rest buff (which works even if you're just Eldritch Blasting instead of gishing). In essence, Warlock works like a martial: you get your main attack ability that you'll be using 90% of the time, access to a whole lot of invocations of varying utility but realistically you want to be good at combat to contribute so you only pick one or two for flavor and the rest go to improving your performance (just like fighters and their extra feats  ), you have spellcasting but very limited number of slots so you cast only one spell per fight maybe, but you do get a whole bunch of cantrips if you go Tome and a scout buddy if Chain so that at least is way better than martials on the out-of-combat scene.Now there is also a warlock alternative in going the gish route with Pact of the Blade, and which you want Hexblade patron for because otherwise it's a bitch to make work. But of course, this just doubles down on playing like a martial (now in melee!) and all your magic is turned into utility, combat buffs, and eldritch smite fuel. But no Wizard, no definitely Warlock doesn't play like a Wizard or any other full caster for that matter. You're a basic attack damage dealer first and spellcaster rather distant second. You also want a DM that is really amenable with short rests - if the party isn't getting at least 2 short rests per long rest, then the Warlock gets hosed over. Lastly, I think bears mentioning that with how frontloaded the Warlock class is, it's very popular as a multiclass dip for Charisma based classes - Bards and Sorcerers can delay their progression a couple levels for a big offense boost, while Paladins can greatly value access to some additional spellcasting to round themselves out or set up some cheese.
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Jan 5, 2018 19:56
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ritorix posted:You might want to focus on defensive magic items to make up for lack of healing. Just be careful of them stacking on a single character - you will have one invulnerable tank and several soft targets. I definitely want to give the fighter some Armor of Doffing without him knowing what it is, just knowing that it has a magic word associated with it, just to hear his reaction when he says it and is suddenly naked.
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Jan 5, 2018 19:58
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Kruller posted:I definitely want to give the fighter some Armor of Doffing without him knowing what it is, just knowing that it has a magic word associated with it, just to hear his reaction when he says it and is suddenly naked. In one campaign I played my cleric found a magic crystal. When you used an action to speak its command word it encased you in a set of crystalline plate armor. From then on I couldn't stop myself from yelling "It's Morphing Time" everytime I needed to armor up.
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Jan 5, 2018 20:30
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SunAndSpring posted:I might be playing this accursed game soon, so what's a good build for a Warlock? It seems weak compared to the Wizard.
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Jan 5, 2018 20:49
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SunAndSpring posted:I might be playing this accursed game soon, so what's a good build for a Warlock? It seems weak compared to the Wizard. I have seen a few multiclass wizard/warlock builds where you use the warlock's spell slots to raise legions of skeletons. No idea what it does before then though.
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Jan 5, 2018 21:22
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:I have seen a few multiclass wizard/warlock builds where you use the warlock's spell slots to raise legions of skeletons.
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Jan 5, 2018 21:29
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HatJudge posted:I'm running a fairly low fantasy campaign loosely based on Glen Cooks' Black Company books. My players have decided to settle down in one of the largest cities and I'm sorely lacking in inspiration/adventure hooks for running a game in an urban setting. Cities are great because you have lots of NPCs right there, an excuse for them to come up to your PCs and ask them for things, and it's harder for your PCs to just murder all the ones they disagree with. It's also much easier to take advantage of your PCs individually rather than as a fully operational adventuring party deathstar - in a city adventure, without the 'we are in a horrible place and have to work together to not die', the game doesn't fall apart if PCs disagree about how to achieve something. What worked best for me was trying to overload the PCs with opportunities, ranging from small to large, and get them to debate them and decide what to do, while meanwhile other factions and NPCs are taking advantage of the ones the PCs don't. You can also push a lot of rewards that you don't get in dungeons - status, property, titles, henchmen, allies, favours are all very attractive hooks. You can play up how annoying it is to be without all of the above too - cheap accommodation sucks. * I got a lot of city adventure inspiration from Fallen London, particularly around ideas for social rewards and small adventures * http://soogagames.blogspot.co.nz is a blog with a lot of weird big city resources
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Jan 5, 2018 21:30
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If the party didn't want to deal with noisy neighbours, they shouldn't have checked in to the Hotel Earle.
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Jan 6, 2018 01:08
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SunAndSpring posted:I might be playing this accursed game soon, so what's a good build for a Warlock? It seems weak compared to the Wizard. This is a tough question to answer, because Warlocks can be built in a ton of different ways that generally amount to "roughly as good of an archer as any martial (outside of some optimized Sharpshooter builds)", plus at least one other area of specialization on top of that. What would you like your character to be good at? We could point you to a patron/pact combo, spell picks, and invocations to accomplish it. But basically, so long as you don't pick the Pact of the Blade at level 3 without also choosing the Hexblade Patron from the recently released Xanathar's Guide to Everything, you're probably golden. Here are a few things that players unfamiliar with the class might miss on a quick read through it: -Their Pact Magic spell slots refresh after finishing a short rest, unlike every other caster who's dependent on long rests. This (and a solid at-will attack in Eldritch Blast) makes them ideal for longer adventuring days and dungeon crawls. If your DM runs an adventure where every day has only two fights and no short rests, of course a Wizard (or any traditional full-spellcaster) will be stronger. However, the game's designed around 6-8 encounters and two short rests per day, so by design, your endurance should allow you to shine most of the time. -Many spells have "When cast at higher levels" clauses. Because Pact Magic will often have you casting a spell at higher than its base level, keep an eye out for these. They range from additional damage dice (Shatter, Fireball, etc.), to additional targets (Hold Person, Invisibility, Fly), to extended duration (Hex). -You're not locked into any of your spell or invocation picks. If you find yourself with one that's been made obsolete, you can swap it with another the next time you level. There's an invocation that lets you cast False Life for free, basically giving you 8 temp HP. This is very strong at level 2 when you can first get it, as that's effectively +50% of your max HP at that point. At level 10, however, you might want to exchange it for something better. -Familiar talk. Most Warlocks (tome & chain pact) can access the Find Familiar spell, and it's really strong, but to newer players, it's not readily apparent why. The normal one can provide the Help action to anyone in your party (including you), imparting advantage on the first attack roll the helpee makes, and provides some limited scouting/safety features. The souped-up Chain pact familiar on top of this can go invisible for free, has enough HP that they might be able to survive if something hits them, has the anatomy to do things like use items (read: force-feed potions to downed party members) and open doors, and with the help of an invocation, you can speak through it (so you can attend meetings with sketchy contacts at no risk), and the range limit on sense-sharing is removed (so you can ask the DM for the dungeon map).
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Jan 6, 2018 21:13
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clusterfuck posted:Not quite but I just put this up. It uses a tiered table to expand martial maneuvers from Battlemaster to all classes (casters get less). Magil Zeal was cool enough to let me adapt a bunch of his maneuvers and exploits and I added a bunch of others from 5e playtests. Applying superiority dice as a resource that multiple classes can utilize for maneuvers is a good first step, I think. I like it as a concept. I do think, as a criticism however, it'd be better if the maneuvers were more linked to specific classes, or at least there were more unique maneuvers sprinkled in there. That's something the early Next playtests had a fair amount of. That'd be my suggestion for the future direction to take it, if you plan on building on this. All efforts to help make 5E better are appreciated and I do like what you've built here.
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Jan 7, 2018 06:58
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Yeah looks like it needs some more distinctive maneuvers specifically added for various classes. Someone else pointed out it could make the classes feel too samey, similar point. I spent some time on it today developing in the direction of ability restrictions in lieu of class restrictions (mixed success - it felt a bit assholish to restrict too much so instead I'll make the ability restrictions soft at lower tiers but more stringent as we go up in tier, so characters start more general and then focus on their suite of maneuvers); also adding a prof. bonus to sup.dice if you have certain skill proficiencies exploitable in the maneuver; then bringing in some weapon advantage so some maneuvers perform better with certain weapons. There's a little more I want to add on top of that so I'll plug away and hopefully get there soon. Thanks for the feedback and again thanks for the set of maneuvers to begin working with, they're really excellent.
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Jan 7, 2018 12:34
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So the guy that DMs a lot of the games I play in with my cities local thing invited me to his Roll20 campaign. I didn't know what I wanted to play so he rolled up three sets of stats and let me pick. In the end I went with a Goliath Sorcerer with these stats: 15 STR 12 DEX 12 CON 10 INT 15 WIS 15 CHA I'm just kind of at a loss for what to go for build-wise. He's Wild Magic so that's already settled but not sure from beyond that.
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Jan 7, 2018 13:30
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Arthil posted:So the guy that DMs a lot of the games I play in with my cities local thing invited me to his Roll20 campaign. I didn't know what I wanted to play so he rolled up three sets of stats and let me pick. In the end I went with a Goliath Sorcerer with these stats:
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Jan 7, 2018 15:21
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Not a direct answer to Arthil, but how would a Goliath Stone Soul Sorcerer 1/Barbarian whatever multiclass fair? Dump-stat Dex, start every morning spending an action to look slightly rockier than usual for 16 dex unarmoured.
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Jan 7, 2018 16:06
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Arthil posted:So the guy that DMs a lot of the games I play in with my cities local thing invited me to his Roll20 campaign. I didn't know what I wanted to play so he rolled up three sets of stats and let me pick. In the end I went with a Goliath Sorcerer with these stats: There's no build for this. Put your ASIs in CHA and be "DM may I?" in archetype form. Splicer posted:Not a direct answer to Arthil, but how would a Goliath Stone Soul Sorcerer 1/Barbarian whatever multiclass fair? Dump-stat Dex, start every morning spending an action to look slightly rockier than usual for 16 dex unarmoured. It's not exactly terrible, but there's dubious benefit to it in light of its downsides. You get to dump DEX but need 13 CHA for the multiclass so it's not like you meaningfully earn stat points to distribute elsewhere, furthermore CHA is a safer dump than DEX, and all you get in return for this trade is at best matching breastplate AC and limited spellcasting you can't use in combat. Is that worth delaying your Barbarian progression for?
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Jan 7, 2018 19:53
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Splicer posted:Are those pre or post racial mods? Post the +2 STR and +1 CON. I was thinking of dipping Hexblade to get martial weapons/medium armor/shields and stuff.
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Jan 7, 2018 23:52
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I'm finally running a 5e game in the near future (no experience DMing or playing 5e). I have three D&D newcomers and two people with much more experience. I was planning to start with the Yawning Portal version of Sunless Citadel; is there anything I should know about running that?
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Jan 8, 2018 01:43
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Be thinking about how you want to play Meepo. A lot of stories I've read about Sunless Citadel have players remembering Meepo fondly and as a big part of the experience, so make sure you really have that character down and become him. Unless of course they murder him in the first room.
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Jan 8, 2018 01:46
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Arthil posted:Post the +2 STR and +1 CON. I was thinking of dipping Hexblade to get martial weapons/medium armor/shields and stuff. The last thing a d6 class with 12 CON wants to do is get in melee.
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Jan 8, 2018 01:46
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I'm putting together player binders for my first big campaign next week and so far I have the following in each: Full character sheets Card pages with cards for prepared spells/abilities Card pages with cards for known, unprepared spells Card pages with cards for items in inventory Full text from all three books for the players race and class Anything else you think the players will need to have in their binders to reference quickly? I'm thinking I may put a world map in there as well.
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Jan 8, 2018 01:49
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CubeTheory posted:Be thinking about how you want to play Meepo. A lot of stories I've read about Sunless Citadel have players remembering Meepo fondly and as a big part of the experience, so make sure you really have that character down and become him. Unless of course they murder him in the first room. I've been giving this more thought than maybe anything else (not necessarily a good thing, this seems a complex dungeon). I'm hoping to make him compelling, obviously, but I'm not sure how much I should be putting into him; they may just want to help him recapture the wyrmling and then leave him behind (or, alternately, they may be willing to use him as dragon fodder). It does seem like he turned into a campaign regular for a lot of people.
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Jan 8, 2018 01:59
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Meepo likely would have turned into a Campaign Regular for me. But the Dragon hit him with a crit on it's bite attack. And that was the end of poor Meepo.
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Jan 8, 2018 02:19
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tzirean posted:I'm finally running a 5e game in the near future (no experience DMing or playing 5e). I have three D&D newcomers and two people with much more experience. I was planning to start with the Yawning Portal version of Sunless Citadel; is there anything I should know about running that? I played through this a few months ago with almost the exact same group (three newbies, me, and one other veteran) and had a pretty good time with it. Most of the enemies the party encounters while still fragile level 1's are weak enough that there's little to no risk of an insta-down or death. On the other hand, I thought how traps were run/written was a little silly, but that's 5e in general for you I guess. The highest passive perception anyone in the group had was something like 1 short of the DC, so nobody auto-spotted anything. Making the same mistake over and over gets a bit frustrating, so you might do well to kludge together a way the party can work around that. Each time a trap is triggered, call for some kind of check to lower the DC of all similar traps dungeon-wide would be how I'd do it. The DM told me afterward that the adventure doesn't say much about what to do with the dragon wyrmling, so maybe come up with some stuff there other than "it just attacks you guys" if your players keep Meepo parked out of sight a room or two back. We wanted to negotiate with it, and the DM was willing to entertain that option. We ended up convincing it that we could help it overthrow the kobold leadership so it could take over. That's when we started the battle where I'm told the adventure text says words to the effect of "if the party starts a fight here, they'll probably all die".
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Jan 8, 2018 02:21
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My Party managed to subdue the Dragon and are currently bringing it back to the Kobolds.
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Jan 8, 2018 02:23
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CubeTheory posted:I'm putting together player binders for my first big campaign next week and so far I have the following in each: A list of common status effects/conditions. I might also include a combat reference sheet, with quick descriptions of the various actions you can take and other things that can come up during combat (cover, concentration, what gives advantage/disadvantage, etc) Mostly to save some time looking up little things when somebody asks "Does cover give disadvantage or AC?" Something neat related to the character or world: identification papers, trader's registration, wizardy diploma, pet license, half of a wanted poster with the character's name on it.
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Jan 8, 2018 03:58
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Conspiratiorist posted:The last thing a d6 class with 12 CON wants to do is get in melee. Well I wasn't entirely sure what your response to my original post was meant to be. Actual advice, or just trying to be snarky?
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Jan 8, 2018 04:40
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CubeTheory posted:I'm putting together player binders for my first big campaign next week and so far I have the following in each: Arthil posted:Well I wasn't entirely sure what your response to my original post was meant to be. Actual advice, or just trying to be snarky? mango sentinel fucked around with this message at 04:53 on Jan 8, 2018 |
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Jan 8, 2018 04:44
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Arthil posted:Well I wasn't entirely sure what your response to my original post was meant to be. Actual advice, or just trying to be snarky? No, it was an actual response. A 5e character wants to begin the game with 16+ on their main stat, so with 15 CHA we're already off on the wrong foot with a relative -1 to all your attack rolls and DCs. A character also wants decent CON because it's the "do not die" tax stat. It determines your HP, CON saves are the most common in the system, and for spellcasters like Sorcerer it affects your Concentration checks too. You really want at least 14 there so 12 is yeah... with non-draconic sorc's d6 hit die, definitely not a character you want taking any hits. And the tertiary stat for a Sorcerer is DEX, which is the second most common save in the system and affects your AC. Like CON above you'd like to have at least 14 on it. So you're playing with bad stats. But you know what? That's okay, it's a small penalty on every single one of your numbers that matters, but it's just numbers and it's small. More troubling is you're playing a Wild Sorcerer, which is the archetype second only to Assassin Rogue in needing DM collaboration to function at all. It's key feature is literally "ask your DM." But with A Good DM it can work, so sure. So what's my recommendation here? Well if you want to play this character then you just gotta suck it up and deal - you put your ASIs into Charisma for levels 4, 8 and 12, try and stay away from the thick of it and be a Sorcerer. Since you've already 15 STR and WIS, maybe dip a level in Cleric for heavy armor and shield proficiency to shore up your AC, but that's pretty much it: there's no build. Quickened and Twinned Metamagic like most Sorcs, buff your allies with Twinned Haste or something, and shoot Fire Bolts.
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Jan 8, 2018 05:10
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tzirean posted:I've been giving this more thought than maybe anything else (not necessarily a good thing, this seems a complex dungeon). I'm hoping to make him compelling, obviously, but I'm not sure how much I should be putting into him; they may just want to help him recapture the wyrmling and then leave him behind (or, alternately, they may be willing to use him as dragon fodder). It does seem like he turned into a campaign regular for a lot of people. My DM just gave him a goofy Elmo-like voice and everyone kept insisting he stick around so our DM would have to keep making the voice. Goofy voices are usually how I get my players to get attached to my NPCs nowdays too. We TPKed at the final boss but we definitely would have kept him as a regular if we all didn't die.
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Jan 8, 2018 05:14
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Arthil posted:Well I wasn't entirely sure what your response to my original post was meant to be. Actual advice, or just trying to be snarky? So, your actual rolled stats were 15, 15, 13, 12, 11, 10 it looks like? I'd suggest a swap from Goliath to anything with Cha as a racial stat if you like Sorceror. If you get that Cha to 16, you're golden, especially if you want to go Hexblade later. Half-Elf is excellent. With Hexblade, you want to get 14 Dex to use with your medium armor, have max Cha, then do whatever (more Con is always good). But really, any race that gets you +1 or +2 Cha would go a lot better with a Sorceror. If you're dead set on going Goliath Sorceror, I'd at least swap your stats around to put the 15 from Wis to Con instead, so you start with a 16 Con score, and then at level 4 you'd probably want to bump Cha to 16 and the 11 you'd have in Wis to 12. You'll gain a solid amount of survivability that way, and it will help with Concentration checks.
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Jan 8, 2018 05:22
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The Gate posted:So, your actual rolled stats were 15, 15, 13, 12, 11, 10 it looks like? I'd suggest a swap from Goliath to anything with Cha as a racial stat if you like Sorceror. If you get that Cha to 16, you're golden, especially if you want to go Hexblade later. Half-Elf is excellent. With Hexblade, you want to get 14 Dex to use with your medium armor, have max Cha, then do whatever (more Con is always good). But really, any race that gets you +1 or +2 Cha would go a lot better with a Sorceror. I can't swap my stats around, these were rolled in order of the stats. So the STR got a 13, the DEX got a 12 etc etc so it looked like: 13 STR 12 DEX 11 CON 10 INT 15 WIS 15 CHA before adding my Goliath stats. Didn't know what I wanted to play, DM rolled up three sets of stats and this one had the highest CHA out of them all with none having particularly high CON. Think that dipping into Cleric is going to have the same benefit for me as going into Hexblade though, sans the Martial Weapons I suppose. Arthil fucked around with this message at 05:55 on Jan 8, 2018 |
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Jan 8, 2018 05:49
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