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Dungeons and Dragons Megathread

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KingseekerFreyr said:
I want to revise fighting styles for 5e to be less pedestrian and grow with the PC. How do I do this?
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Adventures in Middle Earth's Weaponmaster Warrior (fighter equivalent) specialises in a fighting style - defense gets to ignore disadvantage to stealth from armour, dueling can turn the +2 damage into +2 to hit, protection can shield bash, etc. It gets this at level 3 when you take the archetype, but you could probably the idea into an 'advanced fighting style' feat.
 
New Unearthed Arcana for 5e : Subclasses Part 1

It gives us the Path of the Beast Barbarian (hit your foes with a stegosaurus tail!), Way of Mercy Monk (Flurry of Blows with a little healing), Oath of the Watchewrs Paladin (protect your plane from alien extraplanar invaders) and the Noble Genie Warlock patron (tether an ally to a magic lamp to cast your spells through them).

They all look pretty fun and there's good odds my replacement character this Sunday will be a path of the beast dragonborn who runs around with only the Shield of the Hidden Lord and relies on his natural weapons and armour in combat.
 
Phyrexia Unbound said:
I assume that this can be done with Eldritch Invocations that allow you to cast spells on yourself without spell slot as way to to buff other people.
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No, it lets you tether someone to your lamp or ring or whatever and then cast fireball or burning hands or whatever from their space.

I guess you could buff them with a touch spell from it, I'd have to go reread the wording.
 
shepsquared said:
New Unearthed Arcana for 5e : Subclasses Part 1

It gives us the Path of the Beast Barbarian (hit your foes with a stegosaurus tail!), Way of Mercy Monk (Flurry of Blows with a little healing), Oath of the Watchewrs Paladin (protect your plane from alien extraplanar invaders) and the Noble Genie Warlock patron (tether an ally to a magic lamp to cast your spells through them).

They all look pretty fun and there's good odds my replacement character this Sunday will be a path of the beast dragonborn who runs around with only the Shield of the Hidden Lord and relies on his natural weapons and armour in combat.
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Barbarian looks cool, although I'm still having a lot of trouble wrapping my head around their balance assumptions. Is anyone really familiar with 5e class design who can help with that?

Mercy Monk is probably plague doctor, but the mask thing also reminds me of AnBU. Or it could be something else - Doctor Blackjack? I didn't look too hard.
 
HoratioVonBecker said:
Barbarian looks cool, although I'm still having a lot of trouble wrapping my head around their balance assumptions. Is anyone really familiar with 5e class design who can help with that?

Mercy Monk is probably plague doctor, but the mask thing also reminds me of AnBU. Or it could be something else - Doctor Blackjack? I didn't look too hard.
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I'll be honest, the Bite attack granted by PAth of the Beast looks overpowered to me. Barbarians already take very little damage and have lots of hp. Healing their con mod every round is amazing for them.
 
Segev said:
I'll be honest, the Bite attack granted by PAth of the Beast looks overpowered to me. Barbarians already take very little damage and have lots of hp. Healing their con mod every round is amazing for them.
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Eh, it's nice, but still can't compare to Bearbarian. Assuming combat lasts 5 rounds that feature grants an extra 25 effective HP (assuming the bite lands every turn). Nothing to scoff at, but if there's any sources of non-weapon damage odds are the Bear's resistance is going to count for more.
 
Speaking of balance discussion, if I posted some homebrew I was editing with help from some friends of mine who GM would anyone be able to help give me some further suggestions on what to change? Saw some stuff I liked the concept of but its kinda stupid balance wise.
 
shepsquared said:
I'll give it a look.
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Alright thanks. Really like the concept of it because of it being dragon based but its a little...uh...as it exists. :confused:

Here's a link to it on GM binder. I'll put the changes I was suggested below in a spoiler box. If the link doesn't work I'll just copy and paste it behind spoiler tags. The only subclass I'm bothering with adjusting is Master Shapeshifter and only the stuff up to level 10 since we're only going that far, with a line BW instead of a cone BW in mind when changing things.

Frightful Presence - Wisdom save instead of Charisma.

Superior Species - Changed to 2 uses a long rest.

Favored Form - Change level restrictions to match Druid Wild Shape on flying and swimming.

Blindsight - 10 feet instead of 15.

Breath Weapon - Either make it come back on short rests and the recharge roll a once per long rest ability. Or make it cost a Draconic Power Point to be able to roll for recharge.
 
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Nobody said:
Alright thanks. Really like the concept of it because of it being dragon based but its a little...uh...as it exists. :confused:

Here's a link to it on GM binder. I'll put the changes I was suggested below in a spoiler box. If the link doesn't work I'll just copy and paste it behind spoiler tags. The only subclass I'm bothering with adjusting is Master Shapeshifter and only the stuff up to level 10 since we're only going that far, with a line BW instead of a cone BW in mind when changing things.

Frightful Presence - Wisdom save instead of Charisma.

Superior Species - Changed to 2 uses a long rest.

Favored Form - Change level restrictions to match Druid Wild Shape on flying and swimming.

Blindsight - 10 feet instead of 15.

Breath Weapon - Either make it come back on short rests and the recharge roll a once per long rest ability. Or make it cost a Draconic Power Point to be able to roll for recharge.
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Man, that's a heck of a concept for a class. In general it looks way overtuned with too many features, most of its features being either op or super niche and tto match other 5e classes probably needs to be rebuilt from the ground up with a similar chassis to an existing class - especially since two of the 3 subclasses give extra attack, which basically means extra attack should be a class feature. (Okay, one subclass gives multiattack, but whatever, semantics)

Anyway, your suggested changes look fine.
  • Frightful Presence should be a Wisdom save because that's what it is on actual dragons.
  • Probably more balanced, but Superior Species seems both too strong and not enough to be worth having alone at both once or thrice a day.
  • Personally the druid's restrictions were always dumb to me since it isn't remotely op to turn into an owl at 3rd level, but matching that restriction is good sense.
  • Blinsight 10ft is more balanced since nothing else in 5e gives players blindsight (except maybe some polymorph options?)
 
shepsquared said:
Huh.

Never been in a game that high level with a rogue. Didn't remember that feature at all.
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Have never seen it either, just got it pointed out while changing stuff for it.

Superior Species I'd been suggested to just swap it to being a duplicate of Indomitable but available sooner.
, most of its features being either op or super niche
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Don't really disagree there. Frightful Presence in it seems so bad I'd just straight cut it out becuase I'd never even consider using it when I could use the point for something else. For reducing some of the stuff, Draconic power wise anyway, could probably rip off metamagic in a way, make it a pick 2 and then 1 more at higher levels. But that feels more a surface level fix since then you just only take the really good ones. :V
 
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shepsquared said:
What don't you get about it?
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The math is nonobvious. This is probably in part because I don't have a super good grasp of HP/DPR tuning, but a lot of it is because of the following:
-Rages are, for no clear reason, a long rest resource. They also gate half to three quarters of the class features. There's no clear equivalent to another subsystem, like there is between Battlemaster and Monk, so that means of analysis is out.
(Of course, I think they then made Battlemaster scale like Bard, which is kind of dumb. But I don't have the PHB so I can't doublecheck that.)
-Damage scales really, really strangely. Starts out a little stronger than the Fighter but weaker than the Monk, but is gated behind Rage. Reckless Attack arguably makes up for this, multiplying their average DPA by 1.5, but... actually, I think that's the in I was looking for. Reckless Attack multiplies your expected damage expense (hereafter EDE) by 1.5, Rage halves it. If one considers EDE and DPR multipliers equivalent, that might do something?
-That still runs headlong into the problem that 5E isn't clear about what ability scores it expects PCs to have at what level. Are (pre-level-4) Barbarians expected to have 18 Strength, or 17? Do they just assume 20 for the whole run, because it makes the math easier? +2 damage doesn't seem like a whole lot, but it is roughly equivalent to 2 extra Strength - or a +1 weapon - if you have a d8 weapon and 20 in your attack stat. It's half a point worse than 1d4, and just under a third as good as the Monk's free bonus attack.

There's also the fact that their armor situation is really inelegant, but that's a system-wide problem. The softban on multiclassing feels like creative cowardice, but perhaps Raging spellcasters really were a big issue? The inability to wear Heavy Armor is honestly bizarre, though.

Basically, I'm not convinced the Barbarian actually is well-balanced against any other class, but I don't know quite enough of the system to be able to prove it. A lot like the Druid in that respect, really.
 
HoratioVonBecker said:
The math is nonobvious. This is probably in part because I don't have a super good grasp of HP/DPR tuning, but a lot of it is because of the following:
-Rages are, for no clear reason, a long rest resource. They also gate half to three quarters of the class features. There's no clear equivalent to another subsystem, like there is between Battlemaster and Monk, so that means of analysis is out.
(Of course, I think they then made Battlemaster scale like Bard, which is kind of dumb. But I don't have the PHB so I can't doublecheck that.)
-Damage scales really, really strangely. Starts out a little stronger than the Fighter but weaker than the Monk, but is gated behind Rage. Reckless Attack arguably makes up for this, multiplying their average DPA by 1.5, but... actually, I think that's the in I was looking for. Reckless Attack multiplies your expected damage expense (hereafter EDE) by 1.5, Rage halves it. If one considers EDE and DPR multipliers equivalent, that might do something?
-That still runs headlong into the problem that 5E isn't clear about what ability scores it expects PCs to have at what level. Are (pre-level-4) Barbarians expected to have 18 Strength, or 17? Do they just assume 20 for the whole run, because it makes the math easier? +2 damage doesn't seem like a whole lot, but it is roughly equivalent to 2 extra Strength - or a +1 weapon - if you have a d8 weapon and 20 in your attack stat. It's half a point worse than 1d4, and just under a third as good as the Monk's free bonus attack.

There's also the fact that their armor situation is really inelegant, but that's a system-wide problem. The softban on multiclassing feels like creative cowardice, but perhaps Raging spellcasters really were a big issue? The inability to wear Heavy Armor is honestly bizarre, though.

Basically, I'm not convinced the Barbarian actually is well-balanced against any other class, but I don't know quite enough of the system to be able to prove it. A lot like the Druid in that respect, really.
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Okay, not really capable of answering all your questions but I'll try:
  • For whatever reason 5e went in on making some classes short rest dependent for resource recovery (fighter, warlock, monk), some classes long rest dependent (barbarian & all other spellcasters) and some classes not really needing to recover resources (rangers, paladins & rogues to varying extents). I can't explain why they did this or why the non-spellcasting classes are short or long rest dependent.
  • Rages are a long lasting buff you can pop with a bonus action. It encourages everything barbarian wants to do, discourages stuff that isn't part of the 'class fantasy' (berserk mages are a rarity in fiction & D&D has never really gone in on raging spell casters) and is the core of the class. My assumption is that rage recovers on a long rest because the devs wanted you to not do this every fight, which is a very real possibility with short rest resources.
  • A barbarian's rage defines the class such that every subclass is about interacting with your rage. Despite this, only the 11th & 15th level barbarian features require you to be raging to use them.
  • I can't tell how you calculated damage output and I don't really bother with this sort of optimisation, so all I can do is point you to this. But I am pretty confident barbarians keep up with other martial classes in sustained output, but ultimately can't really compete with the paladin's nova ability.
  • It kinda is though. Using point buy you can't have a str higher than 17 at level 1. So its expected a barbarian who wants to max their ability scores (and isn't multiclassing) will max their strength at level 8.
Ultimately the barbarian class design is emblematic of how 5e designs classes - the devs looked at what barbarians have been before and what players say they expect of barbarians and made a class that matches that. And they did that pretty well.
 
StellarSeeker said:
So I just discovered that someone had converted a bunch of Darkest Dungeon enemies into 5e monsters, and (after checking to see if someone hadn't already posted it,) I thought that it would be up this thread's alley.


Can't say anything on the quality of these conversions, or the ones this guy did for Bloodborne monsters, bu even so.
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The Darkest Dungeon stuff looks probably-balanced, but the Bloodborne stuff - or at least it's implementation of The One Reborn - looks way too lethal for a system with as much of a death penalty as 5E has.
 
Sydonai said:
That's the point of Bloodborne enemies, you don't fight them without getting killed.
That's why the Good Hunter gets free reapawn.
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So they shouldn't have been ported to 5e then. If anyone wanted to use this they'd either have to make it so death ins't a penalty (not generally a great idea in D&D I've found) or nerf the monsters.
 
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