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ProfessorCirno posted:Fighters are governed by COURAGE Rogues are governed by  .
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Nov 21, 2019 21:03
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Valor Cunning Gumption Chutzpah
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Nov 21, 2019 21:05
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Sodomy Hussein posted:Wrote a game where I merged Str/Con (Might) and Wis/Int (Wit). Probably single best thing I came up with. Makes writing and balancing the material so much easier. Now that you mention it INT/WIS does seem to be in a similar situation to STR/CON. Perception should just be removed as a skill, insight (spotting lies), medicine (previously didn't have anything to do with anatomy/drugs), and survival all make sense as intelligence skills (could probably just be made one skill with nature given how rarely it's taken), and animal handling could just be moved to charisma (animal handling versus nature's animal facts)
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Nov 21, 2019 21:14
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Charm Understanding Nimbleness Toughness
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Nov 21, 2019 21:15
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Demonstrate Value Engage Physically Nurture Dependence Neglect Emotionally Inspire Hope Separate Entirely
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Nov 21, 2019 21:28
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Dungeons: Governs investigations, exploration, puzzle solving Dragons: Action, combat ability to fight, interactions with creatures.
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Nov 21, 2019 22:12
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Mendrian posted:
Vampires are generally corrupted by becoming Vampires, even if they were good people in life, they normally lose all of their positive feelings. Also the desire to live makes them hunger for blood. Most good vamps would probably kill themselves to avoid eating people, but many can't do that and become evil vampires.
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Nov 21, 2019 22:26
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Microcline posted:Fighters can choose to focus on strength or dexterity Dexo posted:Dungeons: Governs investigations, exploration, puzzle solving
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Nov 21, 2019 22:39
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Mendrian posted:Hmmmm. If they're mindless, surely the deault behaviour is to stand there and do loving nothing unless they're commanded? It requires a mind to actively pursue a specific agenda (in this case, for instance, eating the living, but ignoring other dead things). The whole concept of something being mindless but also actively malicious is just weird.
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Nov 21, 2019 22:53
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thespaceinvader posted:If they're mindless, surely the deault behaviour is to stand there and do loving nothing unless they're commanded? A lot of life get by perfectly fine without brains, with basic imprinted drives to do what's needed to make more living things. Undead are like that but with a drive to make more dead things.
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Nov 21, 2019 23:04
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I dunno the explanation is supposed to be that the very energy that animates most undead is itself evil so it just makes zombies and skeletons just... violent and hostile without cause. Kind of like how zombies in most media are considered mindless despite clearly being motivated to eat people. They're not hungry and they don't have any cause to, they just do that. So skeletons are mindless but they are possessed by an urge to murder things that they see. Because evil. RPG monsters don't always make sense they just want some cool, scary things that wanna murder you so you can murder them back. Like slimes don't make much sense. The idea of a mobile, amoeba creature that eats things isn't so weird but like, they're so slow and stupid that you would think that they're be more likely to be just eating moss off of rocks and eating plants and bugs rather than trying to attack grown humans, but here we are. Glagha fucked around with this message at 23:09 on Nov 21, 2019 |
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Nov 21, 2019 23:06
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Skeletons are good people
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Nov 21, 2019 23:09
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Splicer posted:Not if you merge strength and con! Your dex fighters want brawn for the HP and your brawn fighters want dex for the initiative (and aren't starved of ability score points from having to double-spend into str and con). Both also want the other for the saving throws. I think one of the best things for merging STR and CON is that it allows it to be entirely disassociated with HP gain, which is why CON is currently "the stat everyone has 14 in". It'd be better to use a system like 6 + level * HDmax (so a wizard would start with 12 hitpoints and end with 126, a fighter would start with 16 and end with 206, and a barbarian would start with 18 and end with 246*). There'd be less instant death for everyone (especially squishy classes) at level 1, it'd be easier to calculate/keep track of, and everyone would be able to take the amount of punishment their class is expected to take without having to explain why the party is composed entirely of bodybuilders. The tough feat would still be available if a character wants to be extra-ordinarily strong for their class. My philosophy is that there shouldn't be any stats that are always 8 or never 8. *this is slightly less than usual due to losing the effect of primal champion, but it'd be easy to remedy with something like "gain 2*barbarian level temp hit points whenever you rage")
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Nov 21, 2019 23:33
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Microcline posted:I think one of the best things for merging STR and CON is that it allows it to be entirely disassociated with HP gain, which is why CON is currently "the stat everyone has 14 in". It'd be better to use a system like 6 + level * HDmax (so a wizard would start with 12 hitpoints and end with 126, a fighter would start with 16 and end with 206, and a barbarian would start with 18 and end with 246*). There'd be less instant death for everyone (especially squishy classes) at level 1, it'd be easier to calculate/keep track of, and everyone would be able to take the amount of punishment their class is expected to take without having to explain why the party is composed entirely of bodybuilders. The tough feat would still be available if a character wants to be extra-ordinarily strong for their class.
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Nov 22, 2019 00:42
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Masiakasaurus posted:I love when this thread reinvents 4e. ??? Same, but 4e used con in its hp calculations.
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Nov 22, 2019 01:32
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Glagha posted:??? Same, but 4e used con in its hp calculations.
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Nov 22, 2019 02:01
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It basically made constitution a dump stat unless you were in certain classes that had it as a major stat that affected abilities (like the artificer). I mostly remember this because many grognards were very angry that constitution wasn't the end all be all for HP pools now.
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Nov 22, 2019 03:01
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Read through the finalized version of Artificer. It's pretty strong.
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Nov 22, 2019 03:03
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Microcline posted:Now that you mention it INT/WIS does seem to be in a similar situation to STR/CON. Perception should just be removed as a skill, insight (spotting lies), medicine (previously didn't have anything to do with anatomy/drugs), and survival all make sense as intelligence skills (could probably just be made one skill with nature given how rarely it's taken), and animal handling could just be moved to charisma (animal handling versus nature's animal facts) Then how are nerdy children going to learn the difference between being smart and being wise? ON THE STREET?
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Nov 22, 2019 03:32
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With the current pirate campaign I’m in, an artificer with the infusion that eliminates reloading and ammo on a flintlock pistol would turn me into a murder machine, but I’ve grown attached to the character concept of him having a returning spear. At the reduction of damage I have a weapon that I can use one handed, two handed, or at range. A repulsor shield, and a cloak of the manta ray are my other two infusions. Also, I can tinker my iron dog to replay a recorded message, or serve as a walking lantern, and I have a character concept I’m very happy with. Anybody else want to share characters that are suboptimal for the sake of just being more fun?
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Nov 22, 2019 07:15
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Not a full character concept but one day I want to play a Drunken Master Monk who instead of an Eastern monk is a Franciscan friar.
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Nov 22, 2019 07:22
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So I promised the thread some class guides. I'm going to start with wizard, because that's the class I know best. Making the magic happen - a 5e wizard's guide So you're going to play a wizard. Maybe you like the pointy hat, or maybe you just want to make cracks about your magical staff with a knob on the end. Whatever. Now you're stuck with puny numeric defenses, some spell slots, and a sense of confusion over which of these spells, feats, and subclasses you should put together to make a character who can functionally contribute to overcoming challenges instead of wasting people's time flailing around and demanding a share of the loot because you used ray of frost once. We're going to go over some core principles and assumptions of this guide before we begin. Only numeric, well-defined effects: I could tell you to load up on illusions to disable people. At many tables it's even a viable strategy. The problem is, of course, that these effects have never been clearly defined, and 5e is the edition of not writing rules in the guise of DM empowerment. If you're showing up at a table you don't know, all bets are off as to how illusions or charms actually work. We'll discuss them when we get there, but I would advise avoiding them unless you're really, really good at bullshitting. This, incidentally, is why I'm avoiding recommending most summons - the DM chooses what you get apparently, so good luck getting anything good! You are the crowd control: There are two roles in D&D for the most part - damage, and crowd control, and the optimal strategy is ensuring that the enemies never get a turn so you don't take damage. People like to talk about healer and skill monkey, but the latter is an out of combat role (and completely indefensible in 5e's argue-with-the-DM "skill system), and healing doesn't undo enough damage to keep the team going. You could cast some buffs if you wanted to, except most of them require concentration and mean you can't cast hypnotic pattern or fear. So don't do that. Your job is to stop the intellect devourers from getting a turn and eating the fighter, and the fighter's job is to chop up the intellect devourers so they stay dead and you win. We should probably talk about evocation spells, and why focusing on them is a waste of time. You're probably going to want to prepare fireball or something for when you get jumped by 20 kobolds, but most of the time evocation doesn't keep up with the wonderful feeling of hit point inflation that permeates 5e. Just don't do it. If you really want to do damage, animate objects and animate dead are right over there. Cast something to grant the squad advantage (web or drow/half-drow faerie fire) and have them go to town. This is compounded by the fact that the DMG and Monster Manual's encounter guidelines and challenge ratings are bat gently caress insane, so I can't actually tell you how much spell damage you need to bring down an encounter at a given level. But this guy can.. It's not a pretty picture. Then we take into account the delayed DMG retconned it so you use XP thresholds, and....yeah. Clusterfuck. The other major consideration is there really aren't any great combos to buff spell damage. You can go and build an unholy pile of feats and whatnot and build a great weapon fighter who can do more damage. As a wizard, you get...the evocation school. which doesn't give you any kind of spell damage bonus (to non-cantrips) until...10th level. If you start at level 1, you may never see that before the game ends. Meanwhile the diviner is making people automatically fail saves against her spells at level 2. You can try multiclassing but most of the multiclass casters are written in such a way that their damage boosts don't stack with yours (empower spell not working with Tempest Cleric/Overchannel) and delay your spell levels. Just don't do it. Your fighter will thank you for preventing incoming HP damage, and your cleric will thank you for not wasting their spell slots healing people. I know, it sucks and blasting people with fire is iconic. It just hasn't been worth doing for the last three editions. People are going to come after you: You are a squishy person in a bathrobe throwing around flashy effects, there are very few abilities that let a heavily armored warrior lock down an area so that enemies can't get through, and at higher levels your opposition is crap like flying dragons that can strafe you from the air. You don't do anybody any good if you get ganked by archers round 1, so we're going to have to discuss some defensive stuff as well. Anyway, let's get to it! Abilities: Int>Con>Dex>who gives a gently caress. Intelligence powers your abilities so you max it out ASAP. Constitution and Dexterity help you not die when the people you've cursed inevitably try stabbing you. Wisdom powers your perception, but you also get that as a good saving throw. Strength is useless until you need it for a saving throw. Charisma is also kinda useless for you as if you really have to act as the party face you have actual mind control spells that last for just enough time to escape. Race: For the purposes of optimization, do you have an intelligence bonus? Seriously, that's it. That's all you need. As point buy caps out at 15 for some reason (racial determinism cough cough) you need that +1 to put you over the edge. That said, you arguably lose the least out of the classes as your damage isn't linked to your intelligence and 5e is swingy enough that a 5% chance to make saves isn't that crippling, so if you want to be a dwarf or something go for it. That said, variant human is probably the best race in the book so you can get that sweet feat which in many campaigns will be the only feat you ever get. High elves are iconic but don't actually do anything interesting, but they don't do anything wrong either. Drow get faerie fire if you want to be a necromancer, but you can also get that as a half-drow who gets an int bonus. Dwarves get armor if you want to save some spell slots, but no int bonus. Dragonborn don't do anything you care about and it's not their fault. Gnomes get a +2 int, which means you can think about grabbing a +1 int feat at fourth level and still be up to par. Half-elves get an int bonus and nothing else you care about. Half orcs get no intelligence but can avoid collapsing once per day - which really isn't worth it because you have defensive spells and you should use them. Tieflings have an int bonus and nothing that boosts wizardry. If you're noticing a theme here, it's that aside from the intelligence bonus and the feat there's not much you can actually use to synergize with your wizard. Just take variant human. Class Features: All wizards get Arcane Recovery (recover spell slots with a total level of half your level, rounded up on a short rest 1/day), Ritual Casting (you can arbitrarily cast any ritual you know sans preparation), and Signature Spells as a 20th level capstone (you do not care, because the game will be over long before you hit level 20, but you get 2 third level spells usable as a short rest. I recommend Fear and Hypnotic Pattern for that sweet, sweet scaling crowd control, but you could make a case for Animate Dead). These are pretty self explanatory. Use Arcane Recovery and Signature Spell to conserve spell uses, and learn as many rituals as you can so you can arbitrarily bust them out to solve problems super hard. Where things get interesting are the wizard specializations, and we'll cover them below. We're sticking to the PHB plus Xanathars - bladesinger does exist but I don't care, and we're not covering the UA archetypes because no sane DM is going to let you cast Hypnotic Pattern against the save of your choice as that's batfuck insane and those rules are explicitly optional. Abjuration: You can fiddle with temporary HP that's not quite temporary HP so it stacks and you can build a little cushion that surrounds you and your teammates. The amount of total not-HP you can store is capped at twice your wizard level + your int mod which can tank a few hits. At higher levels you get bonuses to counterspelling and you personally take less damage from spells. It's not awful, but none of this actually helps you defeat enemies, so into the "meh" pile it goes. Conjuration: At second level you can summon 10 pound inanimate objects that glow with magic. This is a weird one, because you can get nearly any mundane tool you need and then argue with the DM that "I conjure the key to this lock" is totally a legitimate use of this power and drink a lot of beer and go on Jeremy Crawford's Twitter and stay up till 3 am trying to find a FAQ that's not contradictory. At 6th level you can teleport 30 feet as a standard action or swap places with an ally in 30 feet, and this recharges every time you cast a conjuration spell or long rest. You can use anywhere you can see so you can get through keyholes and crap. 10th level feature is that your concentration can't be broken by damage if you're concentrating on a conjuration spell, which can be really useful if you're going all in on battlefield control effects, and at 14th level you get the wet fart that your summons get 30 additional hit points, which is terrible unless your DM attacks your summons for some reason. Area effects, teleportation, and flight are present in monsters at level 14, so the most likely outcome is that they ignore the meatshield and come after you. Divination: This is the power and the glory. 2-3 times per day, depending on level, you can force a target to use a pre-rolled die for an attack, save, or ability check. This means that you can roll a 2 and force some loser to fail their save against a powerful crowd control spell and just never get a turn again. There's some other stuff here, but who cares? No save or be incapacitated for the rest of your short life is amazing. Edit: In the event you don't roll good portent rolls, you can just...not adventure that day until you can reroll again. If you're not on a timer offering the rest of the party free booze until the stars align is fair, you can gloss over the time, and from an RP perspective you are telling them that the omens aren't great for adventuring. Enchantment: You get a 1/day attack where you can hypnotize one target at the cost of your standard action, which isn't...terrible exactly, but your spell list is full of stuff that does the same thing. At 6th level you can attempt to redirect attacks in attack range - including spell attacks, incidentally - to a third target that isn't you or the attacker. Cute but situational. The real powerful stuff comes online at 10th level, where all your enchantments that target one target can arbitrarily target a second - so you get two mindslaves for the price of one - and 14th where you can charm people and they don't remember they've been charmed and you can mindwipe them for the duration of the spell. The capstone is much more useful in social encounters, but you have actual hardcoded rules for solving social situations and can bypass arguing with your DM altogther. The problem is that you need to be high level for this to come into its own. Evocation: This school has one purpose, and it's to be a giant trap that lulls people who think they're going to do awesome DPS into sucking. You don't actually get any bonus damage until 10th level, and then that's just int mod (so +5 when you get it) which is nowhere near the damage needed to make people care. At 14th level you can auto-maximize all your spells (as though you'd rolled max damage) but you take necrotic damage that bypasses immunities (gently caress you). A CR 14 critter has an average of 273 HP. If you burn your one seventh-level spell slot on delayed blast fireball, you get to deal 77 whole points of damage with the 10th and 14th level features. That's not even enough to kill a CR 2 creature on average. You get to go sit in the corner of shame and think about your life, because you suck. EDIT: Toshimo points out the overchannel feature doesn't even work with spell slots higher than level 5, so the damage is fixed forever. God, what a pile of trash. Illusion: This is a weird one. The 2nd and 6th level features power up illusions that are entirely dependent on arguing with your DM over whether orcs would really cross a flame wall or whatever. The 10th level ability lets you negate 1 attack per short rest, which is fairly useful. The 14th level one is just weird. You can spend a bonus action to temporarily make an object in one of your illusions real whenever the hell you want, which means that you can cast illusionary walls of adamantine out of a first level spell slot and just trap enemies in there so they don't get turns anymore. The illusions can't "directly harm anyone" so if you want you can try to argue with your DM that making the airtight adamantine sphere isn't "directly hurting" your enemies because the lack of air is doing that, but honestly, you don't really need to. Trap all your enemies but one in the adamantine sphere, have the party focus-fire the guy outside, reshape the sphere with the 6th-level feature, repeat. This feature basically wins you the game. It's nuts. Necromancy: Do you like skeletons? The features of this school consist of amassing a giant undead army and making them deal more damage. You are also immune to max HP drain, so you can have hot makeout sessions with Fall-from-Grace and only take regular, healable damage. The 14th level ability lets you command one undead indefinitely if it has an intelligence of 11 or lower. People recommend mummy lords because they can also animate undead. This is a good school. Transmutation: You get a magic rock and questionably useful shapechanging abilities. What if you got a worse polymorph in addition to regular polymorph? Hilariously, you can also become the world's best scam artist with the alchemy feature that lets you turn wood to silver for an hour and then nope the gently caress out before your Cellini original becomes a random piece of driftwood. None of this actually helps you defeat enemies, but you can cast raise dead at 14th level and full heal people, so...  . Remember, you're giving up Illusionary Reality for this! Edit: The magic rock does give you con save proficiency, among other things, so it's not bad if you're looking to not die.War WIzard: What if you were an evoker with more pointless fiddly poo poo, a passive bonus to initiative, and required your enemies to use magic to employ your damage bonus? No? You do less damage than evoker, an anemic failure? The real thing you're taking this for is that intelligence to initiative which you can stack with alert to pretty much always go first. I suppose if you were dedicated you could do a bunch of rituals and dispel them so you can set third level slots on fire for a spell damage bonus of...wait for it...half your wizard level. It's poo poo. This specialization is hot garbage designed to fool innocent people into thinking blaster wizards are useful party members. Shame on you WotC, shame! Edit: The thread schooled my rear end on this one. You arbitrarily can get +6 on a save when concentrating, which is incredibly good for not losing concentration and letting a gang of assholes out of a hypnotic pattern. The AC bonuses aren't bad either. This is a pretty defensible lifestyle choice. Bladesinger: This is a class where you have to be an elf, because as we all know humans have historically never used swords and sung songs. There is a small aside that if you argue with your DM really, really hard you can be a musically inclined orc but whatever. I'll assume you're some variant of int-having elf. The actual gish variant of bladesinger requires a separate guide as you become more of a DPS person desperately looking for buffs that don't require concentration. You're basically using this for the little pile of defensive buffs it gives you and presumably not for the melee attacks as if you followed this guide you maxed Int instead of Dex. That said, you get light armor proficiency and a buff mode that gives you, among other things, int to AC and Con save for concentration, 10 feet more of movement speed (for kiting), and the ability to burn spell slots to negate damage against you. This looks suspiciously like you want to gently caress around with warlock multiclassing for gish shenanigans, but as a straight wizard it's a defensible choice for running around with a decent AC. Note that you have to keep light armor for bladesong to work. You do get an extra attack but it's for one-handed weapons only. No actual bonuses to forcing people to fail their saves. Basically, be a diviner, necromancer, war mage, or illusionist. Enchanter is OK. Bladesinger is OK. The rest are pretty meh, but you're still a wizard with (hopefully) good spells so you can muddle through. Evoker is straight trash and you should never take it. Skills and Backgrounds: These don't do anything you want them to do, and it's not their fault. Most of the backgrounds are extremely silly abilities where the DM can arbitrarily decide they don't work that day, and the skill system is about arguing with your DM that the number you came up with is a high enough number to "find bin Laden's cave" or "convince the princess that adultery is cool and she should let me help her with it". I recommend honing your IRL bullshitting skills instead. Feats: Real talk. Most games that aren't using houserules you get one of these until level 12, because you need to max your intelligence for those sweet, sweet spell save DCs. That's only if you're variant human, too. The other problem you run into is that there are very few feats that make you better at wizarding - there are no feats that increase spell DCs, the feats that increase spell damage are laughably bad and don't work with evoker overchannel, and there are a lot of trash feats you don't want to take (weapon master, skilled). So without further ado, here are some feats you should consider and some that look useful but are actually traps. Alert: +5 initiative is pretty great to try to get the first turn and hypnotic pattern some band of losers. You cant be surprised either, meaning that you can turn an ambush into a collection of idiots starting at bright lights. Defensive Duelist: If you have nothing better to do and you like holding rapiers and knives and poo poo I suppose you could do worse. It only works on melee attacks and only once per round so I'm not really sold on it. It also eats your reaction that you could be using to counterspell or do literally anything else...it's poo poo. Elemental Adept: The damage boost is mediocre, it doesn't bypass immunities, you don't actually get any benefit as a wizard for sticking to one element, it doesn't work with overchannel, and blasting is still poo poo. Toss into the dumpster. Inspiring Leader: Do you like skeletons? Do you like giving speeches about how the weak will be crushed under the mass fire of your legions? For 10 minutes per 6 skeletons, you can hand out temporary HP equal to your level + your Charisma modifier, which stacks with the bullshit HP bonus necromancers hand out for existing. Normally I would ask who cares about your HP, but this might let them survive an aoe and fire one more volley of arrows/bullets/whatever. Oh, you can buff the party too I guess. Armor Proficiency feats: If you're a dwarf you can be Full Plate Wizard, and also dump Dex if that helps you at all for 1 feat. Which you won't get for a long time as your int needs help. Otherwise you can...save a first level spell slot with light armor. I guess if you can talk your party into giving you magic armor it's worth it for light? Maybe? I'm not keen on these. Lucky: Reroll three random dice? Unfortunately you cannot use this on portent to guarantee a gently caress you, but you can screw with attacks, saves, ability checks, and enemy attack rolls. This feat owns and stacks with advantage/disadvantage. loving get it! Magic Initiate: Don't take this for wizard, obviously. Really the big draw is being able to poach a first level spell...which isn't that great. I suppose you could grab bane to try to lower saves/get legendary creatures to burn resistance attempts, but that's running off your wisdom and you could just hit them with something that targeted Charisma in the first place. Someone, somewhere, has grabbed hex to try to make spell damage less poo poo. Don't do this. In fact, don't take this feat at all. Resilient: Grab this to not die to Con save effects or hang on to concentration like it's your money and the IRS is trying to take it. Spell Sniper: Most of the effects you want to use cause saves instead of relying on spell attacks. A lot of fights are done at the ranges where the range increase isn't a big deal. Tough: More hit points. If you have a bunch of feats lying around you could do worse, but you could do a lot better. False life is also on your spell list. War Caster: Getting advantage on concentration saving throws is pretty great and prevents you from dropping the concentration holding back a bunch of dudes who want to kill you. A good feat. The rest of the stuff in the PHB is either trash or not for you. Xanathar's racial feats: Hilariously, most of these are for races that don't get a free feat. None of them actually make you better at wizarding with the possible exception of Elven Accuracy, and even then your big effects aren't relying on attack rolls and your cantrips don't do enough damage to justify the investment. The tiefling fire feat might actually be kinda OK for a blaster but it again doesn't stack with overchannel, empower spell, or anything you'd want to use and blasters are still trash. Spells: Look, this is the part we've all been waiting for. There are a lot of spells in this game. Before I get into recommending any, I want to talk about evaluating attack spells. You want attack spells that completely incapacitate people on one failed save. You want to have spells that hit all six ability scores. Constitution modifiers are going to be nuts in the late game, so don't rely on people failing these unless you're a diviner with a portented one. Because monsters are made out of arbitrarium and don't follow any rules, I can't actually give you advice about what saves to target on what enemy, but obviously don't try int saves on wizards or strength or con saves on big beefy dudes like trolls. Save every round spells are passable in an emergency, but remember 5e is swingy as hell and your DCs aren't nearly as high as you want them so there's a fair chance they break out. It does buy you a turn to kill them at least. Anyway, let's go through some spells! Cantrips: You're probably taking the cantrip that does the most damage and a pile of utility. This is going to be either fire bolt or toll the dead (though I have a fondness for chill touch). Frostbite and ray of frost let you provide minor control effects until enemies scale up and move faster or have higher con saves. Poison spray, thunderclap and shocking touch put you too close to melee for your average wizard to be comfortable. I tend to take 2 damage cantrips in case one doesn't work, so pick two of: toll the dead, firebolt, frostbite, ray of frost, or create bonfire. It really doesn't matter. Than load the rest of your slots up with cool utility poo poo. I like gust because you can knock dudes off ledges if they fail a strength save while making gratuitous Chrono Trigger references, but friends and minor illusion are pretty sweet too. Level 1: I'm not going to lie, level 1 attack spells are a vast wasteland of feeling bad and fantasizing about being level 3. You have sleep, which is good at the first 2 levels but is fuckawful if you're playing AL because you can be matched with level 4 players and stuck fighting things with more than 40 HP. Silent image is good if you can argue the DM into letting you do cool stuff. The old standbys of color spray and grease got nerfed into oblivion. Hideous laughter can buy you time if the target's Wisdom is low enough, but that relies on the DM not rolling high every round so good luck with that! Charm person could maybe be used in combat if your DM buys your argument that the guy in the corner no one is attacking is "not being fought by you" but charm is such an unreliable effect in this edition it's a waste of time. You're probably going to grab mage armor, shield, magic missile for stupid-rear end puzzle bosses and plinking away at AL's crazy town monsters, alarm, detect magic, and comprehend languages because they're rituals and free to cast, find familiar to hand out help actions on melee attacks for the crew until the DM wastes a turn killing it (at which point you throw 10 gp down the hole again and repeat), and maybe longstrider and false life for when you're at higher levels and want buffs. I'm not gonna lie, this isn't a great level. Xanathar's gives us absorb elements, which you will take and never look back, cause fear which is kinda trash but you can use if your entire crew has ranged attacks, and snare, which is a save or be captured trap that takes a minute to cast that you will never use in an offensive battle. You could use it to prepare an ambush, I suppose. Level 2: Now you actually get your hands on some spells that don't suck. Suggestion and levitate can take a single target out of the fight completely if they fail a single save, so if you're a diviner you should be all over that poo poo. Mirror Image and Misty Step can help you not die and get away from bad guys, so you should take them. Crown of Madness and Blindness/Deafness are single target save or dies that give a save every turn and you won't take because suggestion and levitate hit the same saves. Magic Weapon might be mandatory if your DM is following the "only three magic items ever" rule, which kinda fucks you as your good spells require concentration. Oh well! Hold Person has questionable targeting but will take away actions and hand out critical hits to everyone within range, say, if you have a giant pile of skeletons spring attacking into combat. Or other PCs I guess. Maximillian's Earthen Grasp and Phantasmal Force both do the same thing - save every round against str/or int, and make people take damage whilst incapacitated. Rope Trick guarantees a short rest, and then there's a little pile of utility spells such as invisibility, detect thoughts, and locate object you can use to get out of adventures. It should be noted see invisibility is at this level too. Lastly, web deserves a mention as it goes over an area, fucks up movement, restrains targets, and grants advantage to any PCs or skeletons firing into the area to kill dudes. Focus the strong guys first! Level 3: People are going to tell you to take fireball and lightning bolt. People are idiots. Take Hypnotic Pattern and Fear, two spells that take out entire groups of guys if they fail 1 save. Note that if feared characters get out of sight of you, they can start making saving throws, so you need to position yourself so they run into a corner or something. Then you and your team can shoot them all to death. If you are going the necromancy route, animate dead is also at this level (though that really deserves a mini guide). Raise a pile of skeletons and outfit them with the best weapons you can find, then have them all focus fire a single target. You can hand out advantage with the web spell, which is a second level spell so you won't need it for the legions. Per tweet of Mearls you can outfit the little guys with the best armor and weapons money can buy, and you don't really need money for anything else, so go nuts! (It's polite to offer the other players their own skeleton squads to order on their turn, or bring a dice roller app.). Blink is a defensive buff that doesn't eat concentration and helps you not die, magic circle is an absolute necessity if you're planning on planar binding, stinking cloud is an aoe save-every-round or be boned, counterspell is mandatory against enemy mages, dispel magic helps with the buff brigade, glyph of warding lets you cheese concentration at higher levels, and major image is useful as any illusion. Bestow curse can be combod with command undead to keep powerful enemies under control. Sleet storm could probably keep a group of melee enemies with good wisdom saves locked down if needed. Lastly, glyph of warding lets you bypass concentration on all sorts of buffs like fly. Xanathars gives us some questionable spells. Enemies abound is kind of OK. Summon lesser devils is not worth it because the DM determines what you summon and everyone has to stand in the derp circle to not get attacked. Minute meteors is a waste of time. The wall spells don't actually stop people from getting through, thunder step is cute but not great, and the rest are pretty meh. Level 4: Banishment, Polymorph, Evard's Black Tentacles, and Resilient Sphere are all perfectly good spells for locking down enemies and taking them out of the game. You can probably figure out some dumb polymorph combo where you turn the target into a squirrel, put them in a bag, and throw them into the ocean or something, or you can just leave because the polymorph lasts an hour. Whatever. The point is that they don't get to take turns anymore. Sickening radiance is a weird spell from Xanathars that as far as I can tell is the only way to hit people with exhaustion as a PC. It's still not great, because they have to fail six constitution saves for the automatic death at which point you probably could have just killed them anyway. Charm monster can be pressed into service as a save or die if you argue hard enough. Summon greater demon is going to get you beaten by your own party unless you use planar binding and the duration is fucky anyway. (Get a simulacrum). There are some utility spells you can grab I guess (though Polymorph is fairly utilitarian when cast on PCs to fly around or dig holes or whatever) such as Greater Invisibility, Dimension Door, Fabricate, and Locate Creature but overall there are a few spells that are good and piles of chaff. Welcome to D&D. Level 5 This is the level where we start to get into stupid, stupid shenanigans. Planar Binding lets you pick up minions you summon into a magic circle which is kind of OK. You can use the conjure elemental spells for this and I'm not actually sure if this is better than just raising more skeletons. Animate Objects craps out a bunch of summons that are fairly good at shredding things, wall of force wins fights by trapping people inside, and hold monster, and telekinesis are acceptable save or dies. Contagion used to be awesome before it was cruelly nerfed. I have no idea once again how to interpret the "if you and your companions are fighting it" part of Dominate Person, so it's probably not worth using in combat. Xanathars gives us Danse Macabre, which not only animates a pile of skeletons temporarily but debones corpses for you, another "argue with the summon" spell for devils, some useless blast spells, and a hilarious spell that gives skill expertise in a skill the target is proficient with. Remember children, you can bullshit any skill into doing anything because this is 5e! You also get some moderately useful utility like scrying, I guess. Level 6: Magic Jar lets you swap bodies on a Cha save, so you can go find a werewolf and steal his weapon immunity forever. Eyebite and mass suggestion are dope save or dies, create undead will eventually get you wights who can raise their own undead, contingency is great as an emergency defensive buff cast or whatever, Programmed Illusion lets you WIN if you're an illusionist, and you'll probably want true seeing prepared in case you get jumped by invisible assassins or something. Xanathar's gives us the Create Homunculus spell, which is weird but not good (though if you are a necromancer and know false life, you can not take damage from the casting and just donate all your HP to the homunculus losing nothing), those stupid investiture spells, a mental prison spell that ends when the DM decides it does (i.e. immediately), a nifty spell that lets you trap a dude's soul for saving throw bonuses that you will never cast because it eats your only 6th level slot for 8 hours, and...that's it, really. Slim pickings. Level 7: Plane Shift sends people to actual, literal Hell if they fail a Charisma save and you hit them with a melee spell attack. I guess there was a use for that Elven Accuracy feat after all, huh. Reverse Gravity owns all melee enemies, no save and you can shoot them all to death. Forcecage got buffed to block teleportation. Seriously. They actually buffed this spell from 3.5. Take this poo poo. It only lasts for an hour, but you know the drill: shoot people inside to death. Simulacrum exists and is cheesy as hell. Do you want a clone of yourself with one shot of every spell you can cast? Yes? Good. Sure, it costs 1500 gp, but you're a high level wizard, you don't care! Magnificent Mansion gets you a guaranteed safe long rest for the most part. Finally, Teleport is great for getting places and is a personal favorite of mine. Xanathars gets us...Whirlwind, which you can have fly around the battlefield restraining people until, once again, your team shoots them to death. Unfortunately it is save every round, but you can move it around and stack people and crap. Level 8: Maze is the real standout, banishing one target until you end the spell or it makes a DC 20 intelligence check. This is not a save and bypasses legendary resistance, allowing you to take out some awful boss monster, clean up the minions, and then go back to beating up the boss. Dominate Monster once again has that "fighting" clause that makes it kinda weird to use. Feeblemind seems situationally useful against wisdom and charisma based casters. Demiplane is weird and if you can cast it with the door open on the floor you can trap people in the demiplane of suck forever as an auto win. It sure is great that we have natural language to clarify this. You could probably do some dumb strategy with this spell and gust or something but I assume it's an action to open the door? I was going to say gently caress this spell, but then I realized you could poo poo up the floor with glyph of wardings full of buff spells and go into a crazy insane powerup where you can be literally immune to damage and crap. High level D&D: Not even once. Clone is a downtime spell that makes you not die. Not dying is pretty great. Illusory Darkness is a tolerable fear attack. Level 9: Astral Projection does what it always does and makes the team invulnerable. The problem is that planar travel is significantly more difficult so you can't easily plane shift off the Astral and go attack people whereever. True Polymorph and Shapechange let you loot the monster manual for actually good attack abilities. True Polymorph can be used to permanently transform a target as well if you concentrate on it for an hour. Wish is weird and not great and I hate it. Imprisonment would be awesome if it weren't for the 1 minute casting time for...reasons. Time Stop would be great for buffing up if Demiplane didn't exist. Xanathars gives a mass polymorph spell and a spell that provides complete damage immunity. Weird and psychic scream would be a lot better if they weren't save every round. For the most part, that's wizarding! You want magic items that increase your intelligence (tomes) and your save DCs (robe of the archmagi) and that's it, really. Go out and ensure people don't get any more turns. What class should I try next? Edit: Shout out to gradenko_2000 for the HP chart. TheGreatEvilKing fucked around with this message at 01:55 on Nov 23, 2019 |
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Nov 22, 2019 08:13
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On the topic of stats, I like how Shadow of the Demon Lord handled it - four attributes: Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, Willpower. That's it. Strength governs melee attacks and hit points, dexterity handles ranged attacks and defense, intelligence handles half the magic schools and Perception (which is a sort of weird pseudo-attribute in this case) and Willpower handles the other half of the magic school plus your mental resolve. Almost all social actions use either Willpower or Intelligence.
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Nov 22, 2019 08:42
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Great writeup! Despite being out for like 5 years there still seems to be a serious shortage of comprehensive class guides for this edition, at least as far as I've looked. I know the conventional wisdom of crowd control being good, but I also haven't had a lot of chances to personally play an arcane caster, so I really appreciate seeing someone do the legwork and list out the big winners on the spell list.
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Nov 22, 2019 08:51
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:But this guy can.. It's not a pretty picture. Then we take into account the delayed DMG retconned it so you use XP thresholds, and....yeah. Clusterfuck. The argument that crowd control is superior to blasting stands but the average HP estimates seem to be way off. The highest HP of any CR1 monster in the MM is the Kuo-toa Whip at 65 (next up being the Giant Octopus at 52) and the highest HP of any CR14 monster in the MM is the Adult Black Dragon at 195 (next up being the Adult Copper Dragon at 184).
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Nov 22, 2019 08:52
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:So I promised the thread some class guides. I'm going to start with wizard, because that's the class I know best. I'm also sticking to PHB and Xanathars for right now, because I can and you can't stop me. Comments from glancing through it: - While War Wizard's Power Surge is terribad, Arcane Deflection and Durable Magic are both very potent defensive abilities that keep you from getting disabled or losing concentration. - Evocation's Potent Cantrip interacts with Toll the Dead in a way that turns it into an "always deal damage" basic ability. Empowered Evocation also adds your INT mod to every missile in Magic Missile, so your 3d4+3 autohit turns into 3d4+18 autohit, which is pretty decent. You still mainly want to do control, but once you drop your big control spell you can contribute meaningfully to damage while keeping concentration on it. - And speaking of concentration, you seem to have completely forgotten about the Resilient (Constitution) feat. Conspiratiorist fucked around with this message at 09:53 on Nov 22, 2019 |
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Nov 22, 2019 09:48
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Conspiratiorist posted:Comments from glancing through it:
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Nov 22, 2019 10:27
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The Group Patrons content in Rising From The Last War is really good. It's the kind of stuff that a great DM will already be thinking about and running, but for a good DM looking to improve it's an excellent resource and for a beginner/competent but time pressed DM it provides a lot of valuable inspiration and some handy and interesting tables to roll on to get things going in a fun direction. I like how it's quite focused on how to think about the game you and your players want to run and gives hard concepts to bounce around. Rather than the usual splatbook style "here are some dudes and evil warlords and devil monsters that exist, here's where they live, here's what happened four hundred years ago, you figure it out".
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Nov 22, 2019 14:06
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Remember when they originally printed Potent Cantrip and forgot to print more than 2 spells that work with it? That was funny.
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Nov 22, 2019 14:51
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drat that was great, do warlock next please
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Nov 22, 2019 16:59
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Or Paladin! That was so well done I’m already planning my next character!
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Nov 22, 2019 17:01
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I can give a good warlock handbook: take 2 levels, pick another charisma class, look at that one's guide. (but I would like a single class warlock guide because I just love warlocks)
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Nov 22, 2019 17:08
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RPGBot has excellent single class guides for 5e, just in case people are interested. They're great because they hit all the important things without getting bogged down in details. https://rpgbot.net/dnd5/characters/classes/warlock/ Kaal fucked around with this message at 17:42 on Nov 22, 2019 |
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Nov 22, 2019 17:29
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Conspiratiorist posted:Comments from glancing through it: I gotta go back and update the guide for resilient, true. I still don't see the value in evoker because I'd rather take one of the Big Three and get firepower that meaningly contributes to my control abilities instead of minor boosts to sustained DPS. I guess that might put it ahead of transmutation? I'll take another look at War Wizard, but I'm not sold on defensive specializations over illusory reality, portent, or Bigger Skeletons.
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Nov 22, 2019 18:29
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Evoker is fine it just brings the class power down to that of mere mortals like other classes.
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Nov 22, 2019 18:43
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You are criminally undervaluing +6 to a Save. Also, the transmuter gets proficiency in Con saves, which is A Big Deal. Overchannel can't be used with Delayed Blast Fireball . Half-drow aren't PHB/XGE. You are vastly underselling gnomes. Ignoring skills altogether is a bad take.
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Nov 22, 2019 18:46
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Illusory Reality is a 14th level ability so it barely should even factor into archetype analysis - odds are, whatever you could accomplish with it, you have a spell that can do the same thing at that level. Transmuter's philosopher's stone has proficiency in constitution saving throws as one of its effects, so that's good. The better Wizard you are the more the DM is going to go after you, so the better you need to be at concentration checks so you didn't just waste a high level slot. I get that Portent is fun, because loving with other people's dice results is fun, and it can be clutch when it works but it's actually a very limited ability: two times per day, there's a chance your rolls will be mediocre so limiting where you can apply them to that'd be practical, and it doesn't help all that much against the control wizard's bane that is big dick enemies with Legendary Resistance. Also I'm really taking offense at a guide recommending Animate Dead as a strategy. That poo poo is strong, yes, but it's also loving cancerous.
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Nov 22, 2019 18:52
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:I gotta go back and update the guide for resilient, true. I still don't see the value in evoker because I'd rather take one of the Big Three and get firepower that meaningly contributes to my control abilities instead of minor boosts to sustained DPS. The bonus to initiative and the bonus to defenses with the War Wizard is huge. Being able to nearly always get the drop on opponents (because of your high initiative) and start the fight with hypnotic pattern or whatever before the bad guys can act is ridiculous. This combined with the difficulty in actually disrupting the war wizards concentration makes it very hard to disrupt. One bad ability (the power surges) doesn't negate how awesome the rest of the abilities are. Otherwise a great write up, I really like the style and I concur with most of your evaluations. Evoker is trash though, it is just a nice little trap option for people who want to cast fireball every round.
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Nov 22, 2019 18:59
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I appreciate how even a class guide has to be like "half this poo poo probably doesn't work or the language makes no sense, ask your DM."
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Nov 22, 2019 19:01
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Arivia posted:I appreciate how even a class guide has to be like "half this poo poo probably doesn't work or the language makes no sense, ask your DM." I mean, that's why it's not a very good "guide".
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Nov 22, 2019 19:04
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