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Conspiratiorist posted:You're a Vengeance Paladin: Warcaster+Booming Blade. Be a total dick with those reaction attacks. Hexblade with pact of the blade and this is going to be incredibly nasty. That's great. I'll talk to the DM, but I think "...can manifest weird scary weapons" will work really well. FRINGE posted:Hexblade: Generic "I called for help and something answered". Yep, "Something answered" will be great. "No gods" is quite literal in this setting, at least in the sense of D&D gods. "The gods" are a propaganda tool, nothing more, made up to keep the peasants in line. It's recently become obvious that weird extraplanar poo poo is very, very real though. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 09:03 on Jan 15, 2018 |
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Jan 15, 2018 08:59
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I wish the fluff around Hexblade was better. "A magic sword speaks to you from beyond time and gives you the power of swords" isn't something I really dig.
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Jan 15, 2018 10:46
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Natural 20 posted:I wish the fluff around Hexblade was better.
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Jan 15, 2018 12:24
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Toplowtech posted:all the work is on the GM to decide on the narrative nature of the interactions I'll be writing how it works in my game, and the DM will tell me what to change so it fits in with whatever it has to interact with. That's how we handle pretty much all the fiction though. You don't ask "how does my class feature fit in?" you say "my class feature fits in like this", and the DM guides you by saying "(PC name) is mostly right, but they're mistaken about X thing, which needs to work like this".
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Jan 15, 2018 12:37
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Toplowtech posted:Yes, i agree, i translate that as "we have no idea about the fluff behind this power, find something fitting to your setting for your campaign, GM". It's pretty much the same thing for most Warlock types, there is an abyssal lack of lore around the way you interact with your patron, all the work is on the GM to decide on the narrative nature of the interactions. But hey meanwhile you have fluff for 8 different types of human civilizations you can read about before taking alt-human. Most of the well developed stuff is rooted in TSR material to one degree or another, and the warlock didnt exist until WotC/3e. (So theres less to copy from.) At least thats my guess.
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Jan 15, 2018 13:20
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RE: Armor proficiency feats, I actually think moderately armored is a good feat, the problem being that only a few builds both want medium armor (so probably not the Rogue) and can achieve it with just this feat (so not most spellcasters). However, on the Lore Bard or the UA Awakened Mystic who start with light armor proficiency, it's a pretty easy way to turn the ~15 AC you'd get with light armor and Dex as a secondary stat (maybe 16) into 19 with medium armor and shield. If your build fits that narrow use case, I think Moderately Armored is pretty nice for giving a little more survivability to powerful caster classes.
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Jan 15, 2018 17:02
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Nickoten posted:RE: Armor proficiency feats, I actually think moderately armored is a good feat, the problem being that only a few builds both want medium armor (so probably not the Rogue) and can achieve it with just this feat (so not most spellcasters). Problem is, Casters only get 5 ASI's total, and they want to max their stat and probably grab Warcaster and/or Resilient Con if they don't have Con prof somehow. Just not many spare options for something like armor feats. Which is why you see so many builds starting Fighter, Cleric, or Hexblade for one level. 5e's feat situation and making them compete with ASI's is one of the dumbest things they did.
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Jan 15, 2018 18:10
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I've seen Moderately Armored being used for warlocks. Really only for vhumans, but they can start with 13Dex, get to 14 with the feat, and bump from light armor to medium+shield with the max dex bonus.
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Jan 15, 2018 18:23
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It's NBD to just give everyone a free feat to start right?
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Jan 15, 2018 20:57
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The Gate posted:Problem is, Casters only get 5 ASI's total, and they want to max their stat and probably grab Warcaster and/or Resilient Con if they don't have Con prof somehow. Just not many spare options for something like armor feats. Which is why you see so many builds starting Fighter, Cleric, or Hexblade for one level. 5e's feat situation and making them compete with ASI's is one of the dumbest things they did. This is a good point. In my case, I started with it as a variant human and will probably take War Caster at level 12 since I opted to max charisma at level 8. Waiting until level 12 for War Caster may or may not be an option for everyone.
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Jan 15, 2018 21:03
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mango sentinel posted:It's NBD to just give everyone a free feat to start right? The group I'm running for consists of 3 variant humans and a half elf. The half elf only chose such because he wanted to be different and would have totally played a variant human otherwise. Feats are just too good to pass up.
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Jan 15, 2018 21:09
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I have given everyone a free feat at level 1 and can confirm that it does not do anything to disrupt play. Making feats == ASIs is dumbshit and should be revisited by somebody more math-minded than me. They're not easy to decouple because many feats have a +1 Ability Score as a compensating factor and I'm not sure how you would unfuck that.
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Jan 15, 2018 21:17
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I'm considering offering my group (none of which are playing humans, variant or otherwise) a free feat as a milestone in the adventure. Feat talk here makes it sound like this is good & fun. Any way this could gently caress me in the long run?
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Jan 15, 2018 21:19
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Weren't feats originally something you gave out as rewards for doing dope poo poo? Like someone successfully cons their way into the throne room of a kingdom and convinces some advisers that they are the king, stop this war, so you give them the Actor feat permanently from that point on for being so awesome? I like that approach (+ free feats at level 1 + ASI&feats). Feats are cool and good.
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Jan 15, 2018 21:30
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Malpais Legate posted:I'm considering offering my group (none of which are playing humans, variant or otherwise) a free feat as a milestone in the adventure. Feat talk here makes it sound like this is good & fun. Any way this could gently caress me in the long run? It's probably fine, just be aware what each feat does. I sat in on a last session of a campaign with a first time DM. All the players on the table took Lucky, which I had to explain to the DM that A) players could only Lucky against attacks specifically against them on a turn, and B) you could only Lucky a dice once. He didn't know this, so for the entire campaign the players were assholes and had the basically locked down any attempted dice roll by the DM. Pleads posted:Weren't feats originally something you gave out as rewards for doing dope poo poo? Like someone successfully cons their way into the throne room of a kingdom and convinces some advisers that they are the king, stop this war, so you give them the Actor feat permanently from that point on for being so awesome? The current DM I'm playing with handles feats this way, and yeah it's good. Our Half-Orc fighter won a tavern brawl, and got Tavern Brawler 
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Jan 15, 2018 21:30
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Mendrian posted:I have given everyone a free feat at level 1 and can confirm that it does not do anything to disrupt play. Making feats == ASIs is dumbshit and should be revisited by somebody more math-minded than me. They're not easy to decouple because many feats have a +1 Ability Score as a compensating factor and I'm not sure how you would unfuck that. In both my groups, you get ASI + feat, not one or the other. In one group, you don't get a +1stat from the feats that give you that, instead you can talk about some additional benefit with the DM. It's never come up for me, and I haven't noticed it come up for anyone else either. In the other group, the DM said "OK, if anyone notices something that's poo poo because someone can get their ASI and a feat's +1 stat, let me know and we'll revisit it, until then just get both". Nobody's complained yet.
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Jan 15, 2018 21:58
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Pleads posted:Weren't feats originally something you gave out as rewards for doing dope poo poo? Like someone successfully cons their way into the throne room of a kingdom and convinces some advisers that they are the king, stop this war, so you give them the Actor feat permanently from that point on for being so awesome? Maybe they were sold that way at the very beginning of their inception during 3E playtests, but they have always been directly tied to character advancement and by design have been kept to generally small contributions, not anything you might consider a 'feat' And there's a really good reason the book doesn't tell you to hand them out for neat actions, because that is a pit of DM favoritism that is incredibly easy to fall into unless the DM knows better. And D&D is atrocious at letting people know better before they play.
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Jan 15, 2018 22:32
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Malpais Legate posted:I'm considering offering my group (none of which are playing humans, variant or otherwise) a free feat as a milestone in the adventure. Feat talk here makes it sound like this is good & fun. Any way this could gently caress me in the long run? My group did this at level 1 and the DM also let us choose small parts of feats at certain milestones. It hasn't disrupted play, though we are all spellcasters and martials tend to rely on those a bit more for optimization, so YMMV. Worst case scenario, the bonus feats make the Fighter really really good and I'm okay with that.
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Jan 15, 2018 22:40
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AlphaDog posted:In both my groups, you get ASI + feat, not one or the other.
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Jan 15, 2018 22:44
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Toplowtech posted:I still don't know why it isn't the default rule yet at least for the first two asi or feat levels. This goes back to Mearls promising to make a simple fighter for the grognards that would be balanced against the book of nine swords/4e fighters. If this sounds like a pipe dream to you you're not alone.
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Jan 16, 2018 01:19
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What if a party was all fighter with free champion archetype but they were allowed to take both ASIs and feats and all magic was either through eldritch knight or magic items?
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Jan 16, 2018 01:59
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Raar_Im_A_Dinosaur posted:What if a party was all fighter with free champion archetype but they were allowed to take both ASIs and feats and all magic was either through eldritch knight or magic items? If you're throwing away 90% of the content and player options why are you even playing D&D?
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Jan 16, 2018 02:04
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Conspiratiorist posted:If you're throwing away 90% of the content and player options why are you even playing D&D? Because everyone else is a WIZARD
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Jan 16, 2018 02:11
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Conspiratiorist posted:If you're throwing away 90% of the content and player options why are you even playing D&D? At least since I started reading about D&D on the Internet, and probably for much longer, there has been a strong tradition of people stubbornly doing things in D&D that they'd be better off doing in literally any other system.
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Jan 16, 2018 02:26
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tzirean posted:At least since I started reading about D&D on the Internet, and probably for much longer, there has been a strong tradition of people stubbornly doing things in D&D that they'd be better off doing in literally any other system. And let's be fair, it's not only D&D, just D&D has the biggest single brand. An equivalent is stuff like people modding Bethesda games to the breaking point to turn them into entirely different kinds of games.
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Jan 16, 2018 02:30
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Raar_Im_A_Dinosaur posted:What if a party was all fighter with free champion archetype but they were allowed to take both ASIs and feats and all magic was either through eldritch knight or magic items? I'd play that in a heartbeat, I'm not even kidding. Conspiratiorist posted:If you're throwing away 90% of the content and player options why are you even playing D&D? Because the other 90% makes the game worse in a lot of ways. A solution to "spells are so uniformly effective that it makes the skill system a joke" is to force everyone to play with the skill system. The reason you wouldn't or couldn't play an "all Fighter" game in, say, AD&D or 3e is that there just wasn't anything left to do once you stripped out all other classes, but there's arguably enough meat in the Fighter options of 5e if you threw in all the Arcana Unearthed and supplement subclasses.
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Jan 16, 2018 05:13
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I'm playing a half-orc Ranger8/Fighter2 (gloom stalker) in my ongoing 5e game, and I'm planning on taking Eldritch Knight next level. Long-term I'll most likely be shooting for R12/F8. I'd like some opinions on which spells to take and also I have a question about how learning spells for this character will work. A) my int mod is 0, so offensive wizard spells are basically off the table (I have a wand of magic missiles, which is nice and means I don't even have to consider taking magic missile) Currently I'm thinking Shield, Find Familiar, and... ??? B) cantrips: Booming Blade, Green-Flame Blade, or Lightning Lure? I'll probably be taking Message. GFB seems like the obvious choice, since I don't see a reason why I couldn't pair it with War Magic once I get to Fighter7. Question: the way the PHB phrases it, it sounds like I'd be able to choose a level 3 wizard spell at Fighter4, because I'd have a 3rd level spell slot. Is this just poorly written or is the loophole real?
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Jan 16, 2018 05:32
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Walrus Pete posted:I'm playing a half-orc Ranger8/Fighter2 (gloom stalker) in my ongoing 5e game, and I'm planning on taking Eldritch Knight next level. Long-term I'll most likely be shooting for R12/F8. I'd like some opinions on which spells to take and also I have a question about how learning spells for this character will work. Well what are you, a melee ranger? BB and GFB both work, pick one, but it'll be a long time before you get to use it anyway. Other spells to take are Shield, Find Familiar, Absorb Elements, Blur, Protection from Energy. Though I have to question the multiclass. You're not getting anything out of it until level 15, and for that you've missed out on Stalker's Flurry. Also, I guess you're not two-weapon fighting? What are you using, a greatsword? Walrus Pete posted:Question: the way the PHB phrases it, it sounds like I'd be able to choose a level 3 wizard spell at Fighter4, because I'd have a 3rd level spell slot. Is this just poorly written or is the loophole real? Superseded by multiclassing rules: you treat the spells you know and can prepare as if you were a single-classed member of the class.
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Jan 16, 2018 05:50
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Conspiratiorist posted:Well what are you, a melee ranger? BB and GFB both work, pick one, but it'll be a long time before you get to use it anyway. Other spells to take are Shield, Find Familiar, Absorb Elements, Blur, Protection from Energy. Yeah, sorry, should've mentioned I'm using a greatsword. The multiclass is because I valued action surge, great-weapon fighting*, and the Shield spell more than Stalker's Flurry and a meager increase to my Ranger spellcasting. *I took two-weapon fighting early on, but when our party eventually found a magical greatsword too good to pass up, I was the only one well-suited to wield it. As for Blur, I look forward to it if I live to see level 15  . Absorb Elements is a good call though, that one had slipped my mind.quote:Superseded by multiclassing rules: you treat the spells you know and can prepare as if you were a single-classed member of the class. Makes sense, but disappointing nonetheless. Thanks for the answers 
Mr. Baps fucked around with this message at 06:36 on Jan 16, 2018 |
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Jan 16, 2018 06:19
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gradenko_2000 posted:The reason you wouldn't or couldn't play an "all Fighter" game in, say, AD&D or 3e is that there just wasn't anything left to do once you stripped out all other classes, but there's arguably enough meat in the Fighter options of 5e if you threw in all the Arcana Unearthed and supplement subclasses. You're probably right. Might also want to include  . We did a successful all-fighters-and-thieves game in 2nd ed using the core rules and the fighter and thief books. In spite of having nothing much to do with any conan story, the game had that same vibe to it and it was a lot of fun.
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Jan 16, 2018 06:19
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Walrus Pete posted:Yeah, sorry, should've mentioned I'm using a greatsword. The multiclass is because I valued action surge, great-weapon fighting*, and the Shield spell more than Stalker's Flurry and a meager increase to my Ranger spellcasting. Fair enough. Action Surge (which works with Dread Ambusher!) and an additional Fighting Style are good, and Shield/Find Familiar are good additions to your spellcasting. I'm not sure about going much further than that, but I guess that's more a consequence of this sort of multiclass working better the other way around as a Fighter that dips 3-4 levels into Gloom Stalker.
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Jan 16, 2018 07:11
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Conspiratiorist posted:Fair enough. Action Surge (which works with Dread Ambusher!) and an additional Fighting Style are good, and Shield/Find Familiar are good additions to your spellcasting. My thinking is take fighter to 8 for two more feats (Tough (my +1 con mod is starting to sting) and Great Weapon Master) then back to Ranger, if the character lasts that long. Along the way I'd finally get access to level 2 wizard spells, and War Magic.
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Jan 16, 2018 07:37
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AlphaDog posted:You're probably right. Might also want to include All fighter (and rogue) games in 2e were a blast.
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Jan 16, 2018 08:07
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AlphaDog posted:In the other group, the DM said "OK, if anyone notices something that's poo poo because someone can get their ASI and a feat's +1 stat, let me know and we'll revisit it, until then just get both". Nobody's complained yet.  It would allow a Barbarian to cap out at 24/20/24 str/dex/con though, and an eldritch knight to cap out int, str, and one other stat. Viable!It kills my how much multuclassing killed the base fighter getting to be interesting.
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Jan 16, 2018 10:19
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I want a D&D where you start off by choosing Fighter, Cleric, Rogue, or Magic-User. Those go to 5th level or so, then everything else is a multiclass choice that you can pick at some point after 2nd level. Advanced classes have requirements, which are just "before you can take this, you must be X class", creating a branching/mingling decision tree. Capping the "basic classes" at low-mid level should remove the need for a "simple class for new players but for some reason it goes from level 1 to 20", especially if complex options only branched much later on. You're new? Pick anything, they're all "simple" and you can take them to 5th level before you have to pick something that complicates things. For example: 20th level is the maximum possible level. Either a Fighter or Cleric "ends" at 5th level, but can multi Paladin as early as 3rd level. Only a Fighter who has reached 5th (max) level can multi Hero or Warlord. A Hero or Paladin can multi Protector at 10th. Protector caps at 20th level. Paladin ends at 15th, after which you can choose Avatar or Justiciar. Warlock is a totally different path, but at 15th, they can also choose Avatar. For another example: Magic-User pretty much just fires magic bolts at opponents and maybe levitates or something. You can multi "wizard" at 2nd through 5th and "warlock" at 5th. Wizard caps at 10th, then pick your school to take you to 20th. Warlock caps at 15th, choose Avatar or Ascendant for last 5 levels. But yeah, fighters as in generic swordfightmans? Level 5 at most, that's as far as you can take that schtick. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 11:38 on Jan 16, 2018 |
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Jan 16, 2018 11:35
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AlphaDog posted:I want a D&D where you start off by choosing Fighter, Cleric, Rogue, or Magic-User. Those go to 5th level or so, then everything else is a multiclass choice that you can pick at some point after 2nd level. I always figured that this is what "prestige" classes should have been, but they went haywire from the get-go (and had a terrible name).
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Jan 16, 2018 11:37
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AlphaDog posted:I want a D&D where you start off by choosing Fighter, Cleric, Rogue, or Magic-User. Those go to 5th level or so, then everything else is a multiclass choice that you can pick at some point after 2nd level. You just described Shadow of the Demon Lord. FRINGE posted:I always figured that this is what "prestige" classes should have been, but they went haywire from the get-go (and had a terrible name). I agree. Prestige classes would have worked better if base classes topped out at, like, level 5, and then you could only advance with Prestige classes after that, and you couldn't multi-class into different base classes. (and this would require that Prestige classes be rejiggered so that entry requirements would only be "be level 5")
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Jan 16, 2018 11:39
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AlphaDog posted:I want a D&D where you start off by choosing Fighter, Cleric, Rogue, or Magic-User. Those go to 5th level or so, then everything else is a multiclass choice that you can pick at some point after 2nd level.
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Jan 16, 2018 11:54
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AlphaDog posted:I want a D&D where you start off by choosing Fighter, Cleric, Rogue, or Magic-User. Those go to 5th level or so, then everything else is a multiclass choice that you can pick at some point after 2nd level. Classic archetypal classes could be on the Combat/Support/Social: Fighter: War&Combat/Leading Men/Vassility Mage: War Wizardry/Support Spells/Academic Reseach Thief: Duelist or Ranged/Thievery Method/Guild managment Cleric: Wrath of god/Divine Support/Church Management And you could mix that poo poo as your background/gm allow.
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Jan 16, 2018 11:59
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gradenko_2000 posted:and you couldn't multi-class into different base classes. This is good to call out, it didnt even occur to me to say this. I still have some affection for TSR multiclassing, but since it has long been abandoned I agree that the base classes should be walled off from one another (and it makes narrative sense under the assumption that it takes years of study to become a mage, years of training to become a proficient fighter, years of devotion to become an (empowered) priest, etc...).
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Jan 16, 2018 14:09
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