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DJ Dizzy
Feb 11, 2009

Real men don't use bolters.
Anyone here who has fooled around with Dungeonographer, who knows how to make the gridlines more pronounced?

Edit: Figured it out; apparently the grid color is a grey, instead of a black. The fix is to go into the configure lines/text, click the miscellaneous border color, and pick black.

DJ Dizzy fucked around with this message at 02:49 on Oct 26, 2018

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AnEdgelord
Dec 12, 2016
So now that I'm in a campaign I've started to get the DnD itch again and our semi-weekly campaigns are not doing enough for me. To that end I've started toying around with running an after work DnD campaign for some coworkers and I wanted to ask if anyone could give me a general overview of the published campaigns as well as let me know which ones are worthwhile and which ones should be avoided. All the reviews for them seem a little too positive and I figure the people here will be a bit more grounded with their takes. Curse of Strahd and Out of the Abyss are two that I'm particularly interested in, but I'll see what people say before making a final decision.

I've run well-received campaigns in other systems (Call of Cthulhu and Mage: the Awakening) so I'm not totally new to DMing but I've never had anything that lasted past two sessions with DnD and the published adventures seem like a great way to explore the system with a little more guidance. I am also currently playing Storm King's Thunder in my other game so I will be avoiding that campaign but I'm still interested on what people's thoughts on it are.

clusterfuck
Feb 6, 2004


Loads of people here will help with Strahd. We’re early days running Abyss but I can say you want a lot of prep and planning for both the survival / pursuit aspects that make up a lot of the first half as well as being sure to understand the more complex areas like Gracklstugh - that chapter in particular is confusing wrt factions and how it’s meant to work until you see it’s a simple macguffin with very broad strokes setting notes glued on. (Par for the 5e course I guess)
I’m running OotA by using it more as a setting and building in my homebrew adventures and sidequests. For example the Society of Brilliance is expanded to a much bigger deal, depending on how the party deal with them. We’re currently in a very Inception style sidequest which is introducing aberrations, psionics and Fey. None of that’s in the book and I’m pretty sure I’ll drop things from the book at some point to make up time.
I’m enjoying running it in that way but you might want to be closer to the book. There’s a couple of Out of the Abyss actual podcasts that are not bad, just search. There’s also some OotA guides on DMs guild that are helpful for planning or more insights, better than going by online reviews. I can post links later if needs be.

Elector_Nerdlingen
Sep 27, 2004



clusterfuck posted:

I do know some players are better at offering creative input than others and I don’t want them to feel steamrolled or sidelined by the other players.

I don’t know if you’ve any thoughts / experiences managing that kind of mismatch but thanks for the very helpful description.

Like, before play? They just need to bring 2 or 3 big ideas that fit the GM's overriding one-sentence Theme/Vibe thing.

Think of it like brainstorming but you get to think about it first. You can be shy as gently caress and still throw your 2-3 single sentence ideas down and mostly watch as others riff on them. It's really similar to writing a paragraph backstory, just together instead of alone, and for the world instead of just your character.

E: and nobody should be steamrolling anyone here, this is as dar as possible from a competition.

clusterfuck
Feb 6, 2004


Yeah that’s a good framework, thanks.

nelson
Apr 12, 2009
College Slice

AnEdgelord posted:

So now that I'm in a campaign I've started to get the DnD itch again and our semi-weekly campaigns are not doing enough for me. To that end I've started toying around with running an after work DnD campaign for some coworkers and I wanted to ask if anyone could give me a general overview of the published campaigns as well as let me know which ones are worthwhile and which ones should be avoided. All the reviews for them seem a little too positive and I figure the people here will be a bit more grounded with their takes. Curse of Strahd and Out of the Abyss are two that I'm particularly interested in, but I'll see what people say before making a final decision.

Our group is finding Waterdeep: Dragon Heist a good heroic feeling starter adventure. Curse of Strahd was pretty gloomy almost the entire way through. I have never played Out of the Abyss so I can't comment on that one.

Elector_Nerdlingen
Sep 27, 2004



clusterfuck posted:

Yeah that’s a good framework, thanks.

No problem. Also though if some players are just immediately jumping on other people's ideas and taking them over, that's not cool and you should probably say so.

Good:

A: "Elves, but no good-guy elves"

B: "Cool, yeah, and maybe the bad guy elves are gonna invade!"

C: "Yeah, and what about if iron keeps them out?"

A: "Yes! But it's also a curse on humanity!"

GM (listening carefully)

Bad:

A: "Elves, but no good-guy elves..."

B: "Yeah and they're gonna invade but are mostly kept out by iron which is also a curse on humanity!"

GM: "Knock it off, B."

clusterfuck
Feb 6, 2004


Or ask the table which one of B’s ideas they like. Repeat as necessary.

Elector_Nerdlingen
Sep 27, 2004



You'll still end up with B setting the tone. Which might be fine, depending on the table.

Hell, if you have one really motivated creative player and everyone else is happy with choosing which of their stuff to use and other minor contributions, that could be really great!

Rockman Reserve
Oct 2, 2007

"Carbons? Purge? What are you talking about?!"

AnEdgelord posted:

So now that I'm in a campaign I've started to get the DnD itch again and our semi-weekly campaigns are not doing enough for me. To that end I've started toying around with running an after work DnD campaign for some coworkers and I wanted to ask if anyone could give me a general overview of the published campaigns as well as let me know which ones are worthwhile and which ones should be avoided. All the reviews for them seem a little too positive and I figure the people here will be a bit more grounded with their takes. Curse of Strahd and Out of the Abyss are two that I'm particularly interested in, but I'll see what people say before making a final decision.

I've run well-received campaigns in other systems (Call of Cthulhu and Mage: the Awakening) so I'm not totally new to DMing but I've never had anything that lasted past two sessions with DnD and the published adventures seem like a great way to explore the system with a little more guidance. I am also currently playing Storm King's Thunder in my other game so I will be avoiding that campaign but I'm still interested on what people's thoughts on it are.

I'm kind of in a similar boat here, I've got a group of pretty much newbies who want to start a bi-weekly game up. For new players I really liked the seige at Greenest or wherever in the first chapter of Hoard of the Dragon Queen (it's really a shame that after the first two chapters that whole adventure path sort of falls apart). Unfortunately one of the players has already been run through it, so I can't just use it wholesale. Are there any adventures/adventure paths that start similarly open-ended, with a big multi-part scene with tons to do?

To answer your question, Out of the Abyss has a really cool concept but I think you need to be really on top of things as a DM to make it work, and you probably need some more experienced players to make the survival aspects have any weight at all - I've never run it. As written it also starts with all the characters captured and without their stuff which can be frustrating for anyone. Strahd is cool but gloomy, my group did the Death House as a crawl over a few sessions around Halloween last year and it was nice and thematic.

clusterfuck
Feb 6, 2004


I've got a bit more time now so I'll expand a little on Out of the Abyss with some links. I really should focus a bit more on the great things about this adventure, for me anyway.

The opening escape slavery scenario is a lot of fun. You have this big cast of 10+ NPC's to play and it's enormous fun seeing which one's gel with the party and why. It's also grimly fun seeing who escapes and who dies - we had a high body count - it was like watching the cast of a disaster movie drop off one by one. Then there's the drow and their dramatic setup is good, I was happy to see the newer player really keying in on the dramas between Ilvara and Jorlan, the betrayed mutilated lover, she had some great moments leveraging that knowledge while secretly gathering material components for spells. Ilvara is a kind of psychotic Zsa Zsa Gabor character, iconic hollywood actresses and the drow matriarchy seem to go together in my mind. So Jorlan helped the party at the crucial moment as per the book with our twists being firstly the fact that our half orc bardbarian is also an interpretive dancer and convinced Ilvara to let him show his talents by putting on an ensemble performance in her honour with the slaves. Second twist in this campaign is I gave the drow magical video tech (using crystals, dancing lights cantrip and hand waving) and so Ilvara turned the performance into a Velkynelves got Talent show with the loser to be sacrificed to demons. (this I thought at the time improved the clunky way the book randomly introduces demons to help with the escape). The party put on an interpretive dance satire to embarrass Ilvara and with Jorlan her betrayed lover on the crystal "camera", it seems clear the video of the performance and subsequent slave escape will go viral in Menzoberranzan, humiliating and better motivating Ilvara to hunt down the party across the underdark. The actual escape was very involved and disaster movie style, lots of NPC's falling off ledges and having their faces bitten off by spiders or dissolved by demons. So yeah as I said our table is running it as kind of dark comedy camp horror tone.

Then it gets into the survival / Wonderland section until the big reveal setpiece at Sloobloodoop.This is where the DM needs to be ready with how they'll handle survival stuff and the sequence of events over days of travel. I wasn't really enjoying this until I threw out the books semi random way of handling this and drew a map. For me the way OotA handles the travel sections gets boring and feels random and inconsequential. It's essentially endless random encounters until you reach the next location. So I stopped, drew a map and started thinking about how the Underdark is reacting to what's going on. That choice then informed everything good that started happening in the campaign and led me to start cooking up sidequests and figuring out how OotA fits into the campaign meta plot. It led me to start reading and researching how 3e / 3.5e / 4e did the Underdark, demons and aberrations, it's been mad immersion because unless you're already well versed OotA alone doesn't quite set you up. So that's now working for me but for a while I was really unclear whether OotA wanted to be a survival horror game or Wonderland - it should be both but I'm not at all convinced running the book vanilla achieves this. I think the random mechanism in travel is to blame, it throws the tone set up in Velkynelve out the window for the sake of faking a vast landscape with some random encounter tables. So if you run it, work out in advance how you want the travel periods to work because that's the actual Underdark the party experiences and they can spend a lot of time doing it. I've found the actual play podcasts kind of skip over a lot of the travel which is telling. Maybe skipping most of travel is the "right" way to run OotA but it seems to me a big sell of the adventure is being lost in a bizarre, alien landscape and I think vanilla OotA loses out on selling that alien Underdark world in favour of some fairly mediocre encounter tables. I don't think this was a great design choice for what should be the capital 'U' Underdark adventure for 5e.

I'd suggest running OotA if there's something you really want to do in the Underdark and if you enjoy throwing in some of your own sidequests and certainly if you like the idea of making up your own Underdark this adventure will let you do it. That's the right way to look at it. It's not a guided encyclopedia tour, more of a hitchhikers guide.

Just gonna spoiler tag most of that. I also got into reading some of the guides to OotA but the actual play podcasts really helped make sense of it for me. Here's some links:

Guides:
https://www.dmsguild.com/product/187716/A-Guide-to-Out-of-the-Abyss...this one's free
https://www.dmsguild.com/product/209757/Out-of-the-Abyss--DM-Guide... 4 bucks.

Podcasts:
https://www.dicecitypodcast.com/... not too bad, they run it pretty vanilla.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNOuQhXaLas... more of an official WotC thing, pretty cheesy.
https://outoftheabyssdnd.wordpress.com/ (only found this one just now but from a quick look this has a lot more homebrew mixed up in it)

3rd Party sidequests:
https://www.dmsguild.com/product/201798/Journeys-Through-the-Center-of-the-Underdark--the-Bundle?src=cab_col...some adventures in between main OotA locations

Maps / VTT utilities:
https://www.dmsguild.com/product/242080/Out-of-The-Abyss-Underdark-Path-Map-Pack-vol01...$2
https://www.dmsguild.com/product/203093/Out-of-the-Abyss-OotA-Random-Encounter-Battle-Maps?src=cab_col...$5 - bit meh tbh

clusterfuck fucked around with this message at 02:42 on Oct 27, 2018

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









Fantastic post, thank you!

Kaysette
Jan 5, 2009

~*Boston makes me*~
~*feel good*~

:wrongcity:

dreadmojo posted:

Fantastic post, thank you!

:agreed:

I really loved playing through OotA and that’s a great post. The slow growth from “oh gently caress” survival to being a confident squad to leading an army was a lot of fun. If you treat it as a fairly linear story with some great set pieces and quirky NPCs you can have a lot of wiggle room with finding hooks your players care about (factions, racial enmity, saving the world, etc.) I’ll admit to never having read a Drizzt book so I can’t speak to that aspect but it was a nice change of pace from overland adventure.

AnEdgelord
Dec 12, 2016
So I just wanted to thank everyone (clusterfuck in particular) for the information. It sounds like Out of the Abyss is a campaign that requires a bit more work from the DM to get running than average which isnt really what im looking for. Id like something that is more or less complete out of the box.

Fortunately after looking into Curse of Strahd and Dragon Heist it sounds like both adventures might be right up my alley. Im used to running more investigative or political games from my time with nWoD and CoC. The gloomy theme of Strahd and the more urban environments of Dragon Heist also appeal to me for the same reason.

The only two adventures I dont really see that much info on are Tomb of Annihilation and Dungeon of the Mad Mage (which I know is a follow up to Dragon Heist). Id be interested to here people's thoughts on them as well.

Kaysette
Jan 5, 2009

~*Boston makes me*~
~*feel good*~

:wrongcity:
ToA is good old fashioned exploration and dungeon fuckery if you can avoid leaning into the Heart of Darkness poo poo and DMM isn’t out yet.

No 5e hardcover will be that easy to run straight as written. There are some great guides for CoS on DMs Guild if you do want to go gothic horror.

AnEdgelord
Dec 12, 2016

Kaysette posted:

ToA is good old fashioned exploration and dungeon fuckery if you can avoid leaning into the Heart of Darkness poo poo and DMM isn’t out yet.

No 5e hardcover will be that easy to run straight as written. There are some great guides for CoS on DMs Guild if you do want to go gothic horror.

I expect some amount of work, its just that im not terribly familiar with the underdark and the spooky horror adventure or the heist movie adventure seem like something a little more familiar and easy to work with to me. I picked up Volo's guide and Im already thinking of adding a Hag as a side villian in Strahd for example.

Elysiume
Aug 13, 2009

Alone, she fights.
After we got through the part in OotA where you steal the grimoire, I asked my DM what happens if you don't have someone who can cast a fifth-level spell to get through the labyrinth. He was like yeah, no, guess the party is just hosed. Was he missing something or are you expected to just hire a spellcaster?

TheGreatEvilKing
Mar 28, 2016





Sion posted:

I am playing in a series of one shots that will take us from level 1 to level 10. We have access to the PHB and Zanathar's. What can people recommend as a fun/weird build?

So far I'm looking Half Elf Bard 1/Hexblade Warlock 1/Paladin 2/ College of Swords Bard 6 critfisher. Elven accuracy and swing two weapons for three attacks that crit on a 19-20 with targets of Hexblade Cruse. Dump smite into enemies when I hit. I'm also looking Crossbow Caster Blaster Human Fighter 2/Bladesinger Wizard or Valor Bard 8. Take sharpshooter at character creation, crossbow expert at 4. Get 3 attacks with 3d6 + 12 dex + 30 sharpshooter power attack. When I hit caster 8 take Greater Invisibility to just get advantage for an entire fight.

Any other recommendations?

I was going to recommend drow/half-drow for first guy but I see you've got bard levels. SLAs might help you at lower levels though.

Deptfordx
Dec 23, 2013

RE: Survival stuff in Out of the Abyss. A party with access to spells like Leomunds Tiny Hut and Create Food and Water etc will trivialise all this of course.

Azhais
Feb 5, 2007
Switchblade Switcharoo

Elysiume posted:

After we got through the part in OotA where you steal the grimoire, I asked my DM what happens if you don't have someone who can cast a fifth-level spell to get through the labyrinth. He was like yeah, no, guess the party is just hosed. Was he missing something or are you expected to just hire a spellcaster?

Just bring a minotaur along

Toplowtech
Aug 31, 2004

Azhais posted:

Just bring a minotaur along
Okay that racial ability had always disturbed me: in the Cretean mythos, the minotaur is TRAPPED in daedalus' Labyrinth, a labyrinth made purposely complex in order to make sure he can't exit so why the gently caress do that race get total labyrinth memory/can't get lost in game?

Strom Cuzewon
Jul 1, 2010

Toplowtech posted:

Okay that racial ability had always disturbed me: in the Cretean mythos, the minotaur is TRAPPED in daedalus' Labyrinth, a labyrinth made purposely complex in order to make sure he can't exit so why the gently caress do that race get total labyrinth memory/can't get lost in game?

Forced evolution - all the minotaurs incapable of navigation are still stuck in labyrinths and are removed from the gene pool. After a few generations all extant minotaurs are descended from maze-proof ones.

Kaysette
Jan 5, 2009

~*Boston makes me*~
~*feel good*~

:wrongcity:

Elysiume posted:

After we got through the part in OotA where you steal the grimoire, I asked my DM what happens if you don't have someone who can cast a fifth-level spell to get through the labyrinth. He was like yeah, no, guess the party is just hosed. Was he missing something or are you expected to just hire a spellcaster?

That’s the only way to get to the inner sanctum. It’s not a great design. I lifted that dude’s chambers for my homebrew campaign recently and changed it so a decent arcana check let anyone proficient figure their way through then they could see the maze in minimus in the next room to guide the others though and avoid other beasties that got trapped in there.

Fair Bear Maiden
Jun 17, 2013

Toplowtech posted:

Okay that racial ability had always disturbed me: in the Cretean mythos, the minotaur is TRAPPED in daedalus' Labyrinth, a labyrinth made purposely complex in order to make sure he can't exit so why the gently caress do that race get total labyrinth memory/can't get lost in game?

Don't think about it that hard. The writers thought that Minotaurs should have something maze-themed because they're strongly tied to them in the popular consciousness and that's all there is to it.

clusterfuck
Feb 6, 2004


Deptfordx posted:

RE: Survival stuff in Out of the Abyss. A party with access to spells like Leomunds Tiny Hut and Create Food and Water etc will trivialise all this of course.

Druids Goodberry and Rangers skills have already mainly trivialised the survival stuff. Which is fine when it makes those players feel they're supporting the party I guess. I did houserule the modified UA Ranger* wilderness ability to not include Underdark until they can choose it as a favoured terrain at 6th level. When that happens they'll begin to travel way faster between locations.

*that Modified UA Ranger is very good by the way, worth a look.

Toplowtech
Aug 31, 2004

Strom Cuzewon posted:

Forced evolution - all the minotaurs incapable of navigation are still stuck in labyrinths and are removed from the gene pool. After a few generations all extant minotaurs are descended from maze-proof ones.
Yeah, sure, I bet they are also super good at killing male greek heroes.

Sion
Oct 16, 2004

"I'm the boss of space. That's plenty."

TheGreatEvilKing posted:

I was going to recommend drow/half-drow for first guy but I see you've got bard levels. SLAs might help you at lower levels though.

SLA?

Toshimo
Aug 23, 2012

He's outta line...

But he's right!

Spell-like ability

Nehru the Damaja
May 20, 2005

If anything Bard makes the cost of Half-Drow nearly free since you'll have a billion skill proficiencies and the ones you don't pick up because of the variant half-elf tradeoff lose only a little more than half because of Jack of All Trades (a little more since it rounds down)

DJ Dizzy
Feb 11, 2009

Real men don't use bolters.
Anyone know of any good ambience music for a city like Sharn?

Arivia
Mar 17, 2011

DJ Dizzy posted:

Anyone know of any good ambience music for a city like Sharn?

The original Sharn: City of Towers 3e rulebook came complete with an ambient CD with a bunch of tracks for various places around Eberron. Here's the one for Sharn itself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VR8dHGMzT0g

The Dregs
Dec 29, 2005

MY TREEEEEEEE!
My son has been playing a dual wielding hand crossbow rogue in our campaign. The thing is, he really doesn't enjoy any of the roguish aspects...scouting, finding traps, etc. He wants to switch to being a warrior.

Can you guys give me some quick tips for making a dual wield crossbow warrior? I am not sure if it is strictly by the rules, but our DM is completely fine with him reloading and firing dual hand crossbows in melee with the crossbow expert feat. He's level 4.

CuddlyZombie
Nov 6, 2005

I wuv your brains.

The Dregs posted:

My son has been playing a dual wielding hand crossbow rogue in our campaign. The thing is, he really doesn't enjoy any of the roguish aspects...scouting, finding traps, etc. He wants to switch to being a warrior.

Can you guys give me some quick tips for making a dual wield crossbow warrior? I am not sure if it is strictly by the rules, but our DM is completely fine with him reloading and firing dual hand crossbows in melee with the crossbow expert feat. He's level 4.

This isn't useful buildwise, but the helpful answer to this post says that while it is not strictly by the rules, there is 0 harm in the DM allowing that https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/124723/can-you-dual-wield-two-hand-crossbows. So that's good to know! :)

Edit: As for the build, I'd probably go variant Human so he could have an extra feat, go with the Ranged fighting style and go battle master for some nice maneuvers, maybe?

CuddlyZombie fucked around with this message at 03:28 on Oct 28, 2018

CeallaSo
May 3, 2013

Wisdom from a Fool

The Dregs posted:

My son has been playing a dual wielding hand crossbow rogue in our campaign. The thing is, he really doesn't enjoy any of the roguish aspects...scouting, finding traps, etc. He wants to switch to being a warrior.

Can you guys give me some quick tips for making a dual wield crossbow warrior? I am not sure if it is strictly by the rules, but our DM is completely fine with him reloading and firing dual hand crossbows in melee with the crossbow expert feat. He's level 4.

Is the DM also okay with him reloading and firing his crossbows for iterative attacks in the same round? This is going to become pretty important if you want him to remain a threat in combat, which is basically all a Fighter has to begin with, beyond 5th level. The dual crossbow Rogue works because you only get one attack action + bonus attack per round, with all of your damage coming from Sneak Attack. Fighters rely on their ability to make multiple attacks per round, up to 5 (4 attacks from the Attack action + one bonus action attack) at 20th level, to deal damage.

He doesn't have to be in charge of the traditional rogue duties just because he's a rogue. All you have to do is shift the focus from "scouting" to "pumping out damage" and you should be fine. Have him put his Expertise into Athletics and Acrobatics, so that he can run, jump and climb around in order to avoid enemies. Then he can leap across the battlefield raining down crossbow bolts to his hearts' delight. If he goes with the Thief archetype, he'll be able to take advantage of the Second Story Work feature to climb much more quickly, and he'll gain access to Use Magic Device at 13th level to take part in some magic item shenanigans (like using any of the magic staves or wands that are normally reserved for spellcasters). Being a Rogue also gives him some pretty nice defensive benefits, including both Dex save proficiency and Evasion.

Of course, if he's allowed by the DM to fire his crossbows multiple times in the same round, fighter should work out fine. Choose Battlemaster, and really lean into those maneuvers; Evasive Footwork is almost an auto-pick for a ranged fighter, since it gives you a lot of breathing room to run around the battlefield and find the correct position each turn. Other than that, anything is game, though make sure to avoid maneuvers that specify a "melee weapon attack" as you won't be able to use them with crossbows. Basically anything other than Commander's Strike, Goading Attack (since he's probably not looking to be the party tank, though as a fighter he probably could be), Lunging Attack, Rally, Riposte, and Sweeping Attack should be fine, which means that by the time he's finished he should have every maneuver that might be useful to him.

Other than that, just grab the Archery fighting style for that +2 attack bonus, pump Dex and Con, and watch out for an opportunity to grab Sharpshooter if the DM allows it (preferably after maxing Dex, some time around 12th maybe?). The amount of damage he'll be able to unload in a single round thanks +5 Dex, Sharpshooter and Action Surge ought to keep him satisfied.

Conspiratiorist
Nov 12, 2015

17th Separate Kryvyi Rih Tank Brigade named after Konstantin Pestushko
Look to my coming on the first light of the fifth sixth some day

The Dregs posted:

My son has been playing a dual wielding hand crossbow rogue in our campaign. The thing is, he really doesn't enjoy any of the roguish aspects...scouting, finding traps, etc. He wants to switch to being a warrior.

Can you guys give me some quick tips for making a dual wield crossbow warrior? I am not sure if it is strictly by the rules, but our DM is completely fine with him reloading and firing dual hand crossbows in melee with the crossbow expert feat. He's level 4.

Well, the first thing to note is that RAW attacking with a Hand Crossbow satisfies it's own requirement to get a Bonus Action attack through Crossbow Expert, so you don't need to dual-wield. So if the DM is okay with letting him do it, sure go for it, at that point it's just flavor, really. Might matter if you run into any magical ones or gets a Magic/Elemental weapon buff cast on him.

As for how to retool into a pure combatant, try Fighter with Battle Master archetype. Takes the Archery Fighting Style, for maneuvers grabs Precision (which is the best) and the rest are rather to taste: Trip, Menacing, Pushing, Disarming are decent ones. In addition to CBE the recommendation would be to grab the Sharpshooter feat since its minor benefits are good (ignore cover and no disadvantage to fire up to the weapon's maximum range) but the gem with it is taking a -5 hit penalty to gain +10 damage for each shot. Suffice to say this is very powerful on a setup that gets multiple attacks, inherent +2 to hit rolls from Archery, and that can turn misses into hits using the Precision maneuver. The rest of the ASIs can go into maxing DEX then whatever else seems nifty if the campaign gets to such high levels.

Proud Rat Mom
Apr 2, 2012

did absolutely fuck all

AnEdgelord posted:

So I just wanted to thank everyone (clusterfuck in particular) for the information. It sounds like Out of the Abyss is a campaign that requires a bit more work from the DM to get running than average which isnt really what im looking for. Id like something that is more or less complete out of the box.

Fortunately after looking into Curse of Strahd and Dragon Heist it sounds like both adventures might be right up my alley. Im used to running more investigative or political games from my time with nWoD and CoC. The gloomy theme of Strahd and the more urban environments of Dragon Heist also appeal to me for the same reason.

The only two adventures I dont really see that much info on are Tomb of Annihilation and Dungeon of the Mad Mage (which I know is a follow up to Dragon Heist). Id be interested to here people's thoughts on them as well.

I'd recommend not running dragon heist. it's a low level city adventure missing any connective tissue or big payoff. Tomb can be really great, but it's more suited for a whole group that has a completed module under their belt.

The Dregs
Dec 29, 2005

MY TREEEEEEEE!
Thanks guys, I was leaning towards warrior/battlemaster anyways, I just wanted to be sure it was the correct approach. I knew that the dual crossbow was just a flavor thing really, since it is OK to do it with one for the same effect. I'll get him built up. I would stick with a rogue and make him a skirmisher or something, but he really wants those beefy warrior HP's for some reason.

Network42
Oct 23, 2002
What character builder do people use? I'm probably never going to play a game of 5e, but I wouldn't mind dicking around making a few characters.
The official one looks smooth, but it looks like my only option is to buy a ton of books or microtransactions?
During 4e I'd subscribe for a month every so often to dick around with the character creator, but that was probably $40 total. Under 5e it seems like that only gets me the PHB options? Am I missing something or is the official character builder very expensive these days?

Toplowtech
Aug 31, 2004

Network42 posted:

The official one looks smooth, but it looks like my only option is to buy a ton of books or microtransactions?
Honestly the player handbook should be enough for most class and feats but yeah it's still 30$ for the whole full book: in piece base race, base subclasses, backgrounds and decent feats would cost more used to cost more last time i checked but it's more fair nowso you just buy the whole book for that price(30$) i think microtransaction should be good (unless you really want the sdr in the builder).
If you don't care that much about extra spells and extra feats, you can buy the other books in pieces, Xanathars is the only other book with tons of Subclasses option(9.9$) and Volo's is mostly races (9.9$ too). Still it's in the 50$ range to have most races and subclasses and you will just miss a few spells and feats. I just wish those idiots would sell you access to full pdfs through their characters builders, it's like a perfect distribution system not reaching it's full potential.

Toplowtech fucked around with this message at 14:47 on Oct 28, 2018

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Ceros_X
Aug 6, 2006

U.S. Marine
Weird question, but what are some of the most M.A.D. build/character concepts out there?

Rolled stats for a backup character and wound up with a crazy good result (18, 17, 16, 16, 15, 13) and it would obviously be good for any character - but I'd like to play something that usually gets shot down because there are too many stat requirements. I.e. like a dex barb or gish or something.

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