u/Realistic_Swan_6801

how do you feel about them? they occupy kind of a weird space where they were created in 3.5 but much of their lore was 4e. personally other than the Thazidun shoehorned into every setting thing I like their more eldritch and chaotic bent and find them a lot more thematic and scary then regular demons. The fact that they aren’t just corrupted/recycled mortal souls helps. regular demons can definitely feel a bit mundane often, being basically just disposable trash mobs usually outside of the named demon lords. Does anyone know if they’ve even been explicitly name dropped at all in 5e or has the distinction seemingly faded?

house rules - extra feat at first level, extra racial plus 2 to a stat not already boosted by race (pathfinder 1e stat total equivalent), 32 point buy. Pathfinder rules for cross class skills. LA buy off at 3 handwaived. Pathfinder rules for feats (every odd numbered level). Pathfinder 1e wealth by level. Can retrain 1 feat per level.

one shot build

Psionic Duergar stats 18 14 14 14 14 4

1st lvl feats magic in the blood (expansion and invisible 3x per day instead of 1) and psionic weapon

3 - psionic meditation

5 deep impact + war blade bonus (combat reflexes)

maneuvers readied

1st steel wind, moment of perfect mind or maybe wall of blades

2nd battle leaders charge, rabid wolf strike (maybe replace with mountain hammer for no AC penalty and ignore DR/hardness, but no plus 4 to hit)

3rd white raven tactics (crown of white raven least)

stances

1st leading the charge

2nd - leaping dragon stance

skills jump, concentration, balance, tumble, autohypnosis, UMD maybe swap for move silently to use with invisibility

Self white raven tactics allowed but only 1 per round allowed

deep crystal greatsword

Nova - use psionic expansion before fight 10 min per level, first round charge with battle leaders charge, deep impact and lead the charge stance for 3d6 plus 15 plus 7 str damage as a touch attack, self white raven tactics then move action Re concentrate dc 20 (plus 8 ranks, 2 master work tool, 2 con) pass on a 8 or higher, then rabid wolf strike 3d6 plus 2d6 plus 7 str at plus 4 to hit. If 2 targets maybe use steel wind instead. Second turn means still have immediate action after. can spend 2 PowerPoint for free Action 2d6 extra once per day. second round attack normally preferable deep impact by move action restore focus and spend swift action to refresh maneuvers. so can do this every other round. Can use psionic weapon instead of deep impact if low AC.

left out gear, but if have recommendations for anything please let me know.

medium armor, expansion and charging/rabid wolf means bad AC but can use wall of blades for one attack per round. Can UMD a shield wand or eternal wand of shield I guess but is really bad at UMD with 4 cha, might switch skill

after so many starts and stops it’s been radio silence on netflix for a year? think it’s gonna ever get released?

we have a number of feats that in 5e were designed to be weaker than a normal feat because they were half feats, but for some bizzare reason (I assume time crunch), were ported directly to 5.5 and expected to compete with GWM, Dual wielder, defensive duelist, mage slayer etc all great new feats buffed in 5.5 AND now everything is a half feat. We also have a bunch of extremely powerful general feats coming In arcana unleashed that further dumpster many of the already bad general feats in the PHB. I mean let’s break them down

Chef - a cute feat that would be ok but not great if it was an origin feat, instead left a general feat where it’s not even vaguely competitive

Telekinetic - actually a decent if not amazing feat, it doesn’t really compete with the best ones but that’s fine, it’s letting you do something interesting at will. I’d say a tad underpowered in 5.5 but not bad.

Telepathic - situational but similar to telekinetic still fine, it’s at least thematic, reasonably useful in social situations and stealth, this one is fine-ish too. maybe could have given a cantrip or something like message.

Crusher/piercer/slasher - generally pretty weak? Slasher and crusher do however have builds that can make them strong (push up then push out for crusher or slow stacking for slasher) maybe they are fine but only on gimmick builds using those interactions. Piecer is terrible.

Poisoner - terrible

fey touched - was pretty good, but seems like the new conjuration adept feat will give a lot more to full casters, maybe still worth it on half or third casters due to free casts? but also obsoleted with the new upgraded magic initiate feat (pick 1 1st and second level spell and get a use each)

* I’ll give you fey touched I’d still fine, it was always the best Tasha’s half feat so of course it’s still competitive, it it has a lot more competition now.

shadow touched - already was pretty mediocre and almost entirely obsoleted by the new feats in arcana unleashed

Skill expert - was never great but increasingly obsoleted by more feats granting expertise.

overall they weren’t great even on release and pretty much every single one is beaten by a new feat is arcana unleashed. obviously some power creep is normal but many of these feats were already power creeped by stuff In the PHB.

feels like these were just a lazy copy paste to save time and their already on their way to obsolete only 2 years in.

I’m rereading the Icewind dale trilogy, and I’m pretty immediately struck by the realization that by d&d‘s own moral standards I can’t see how all or the majority of the Uthgardt weren‘t considered generally chaotic evil. I mean they choose to raid not because they have to, but because they desire glory and wealth. Hell it’s all but stated they plan to slaughter most of the men and rape/enslave the women. They don’t raid because they need to, they do it because they want to and they enjoy it. In fact if you compare the Uthgardt to orcs they are nearly identical in many ways. Both are Viking inspired barbarian caricatures (Gruumush being basically green Odin), but due double standards just because they are human Uthgardt are somehow generally neutral or even sometimes good. you could have replaced the entire barbarian horde with generic orcs and seemingly nothing would have changed.

I guess part of this is that d&d couldn’t always decide what counted as lawful or chaotic vs evil or good. Many times near slavery due magical compulsion are considered lawful but not strictly evil (like the old mark of justice spell), and warfare or killing gets a pass somehow as chaotic not evil. Despite theoretically having objective morality most human societies in d&d are full of capital punishment, trials without real protections for defendants, legal torture, and mutilation and exile still commonly being used as punishments etc but there is also a massive double standard where humans are allowed to constantly engage in evil behavior without being officially evil.

i guess part of this to accommodate the “barbarian“ fantasy as a player concept but ignore that it’s explicitly tied to murder, theft, and sexual violence. I mean really if part of your backstory is “raiding“ how the hell are you NOT chaotic evil. thoughts?

*even when
right now being huge is situational and potentially disruptive, it’s nice as an option but all of its abilities should still work even if you only have room to turn large. that would make it much easier to use and less gimped by low ceilings.

if you agree please mention it if you do the UA survey.

* and just to clarify the feature doesn’t let you turn huge unless You have room when you transform.

I’ve noticed a bizarre trend where even grammatically and word choice correct spanish is poorly understood by most hispanics I Interact with. it always strikes me as odd, English speakers are generally really good at dealing with highly accented or broken English no problem, but as an American who admittably is terrible at Spanish even simple attempts to communicate in Spanish seem to fail due to them not understanding heavily accented Spanish. like simple things like ordering in a restaurant fail even? I even have a friend who’s conversational in Spanish and more so in Portuguese but has the exact same complaint, all the Spanish speakers she interacts with can’t even understand her Portuguese accented Spanish very well. I find this very odd as an American since we deal with heavily accented English all the time and can deal with it no problem generally. Like I know my accent is terrible, but they can’t even figure out simple words usually.