u/S1mp1y

I'm gearing up to play an unarmed Battle Master Fighter. I'm taking the Unarmed Fighting Style and also want to take the Tavern Brawler origin feat (primarily for the improvised weapons proficiency because it sounds extremely fun).

I have, however, been stuck on reading and re-reading the "Damage Rerolls" part of Tavern Brawler.

>Damage Rerolls. Whenever you roll a damage die for your Unarmed Strike, you can reroll the die if it rolls a 1, and you must use the new roll.

I can't understand whether that would include additional damage riders like Divine Smite, Berserker Barbarian's Frenzy or Battle Master Maneuvers.

I asked my GM and he thinks that it should work the same way that Great Weapon Fighting does, and that has been confirmed by Sage Advice to only work on "weapon attacks", but he isn't entirely sure himself, so I want to make doubly sure.

Does anyone have a good RAW source to get an answer? Or may tell me what I'm missing?

I'm starting to think that if it DID work the way I'm thinking, I'd have seen a couple of Tavern Brawling Paladins rerolling their 1s from Smites or something like that, so I'm leaning towards "no".

I'm gearing up for a Temple of Elemental Evil campaign my friend is going to GM. He wants to readapt the old (1e or 2e, I can't tell rly) module for 5.5e.

From what I've seen, it's a combat-heavy mega-dungeon, and we are going to be 3 players only (my friend said it'll be fine, he wants to have a lighter campaign with fewer players).

I'm quite certain I'll play either a Shadow Sorcerer or a Ranger of some sort, and I'd really like to try a melee-focused Ranger.

So here I am, asking you for build suggestions based on my initial preferences:

I'd like to play a melee frontliner with some crowd control \ support capabilities, hopefully without multiclassing at all (I MIGHT consider a 1 lvl dip, although I really don't want to). I know that this sounds like "just pick Paladin", but I just generally prefer the Ranger more, so would like to hear your ideas on that front. Ability score allocation, subclass choice, spell selection, general tactics advice: lay it on me and thanks in advance!

There are several feats that give Blindsight: Skulker, Blindsight Fighting Style, for example.

But are there ways of gaining Darkvision (yes, the meme sense) at least semi-permanently via a feat or something similar?

The only thing that comes to my mind is the Tasha's Eldritch Adept feat that can (I think?) give you Devil Sight. And perhaps the Goggles of Night, a non-Attunement magic item.

And is that it? Feels sort of barebones. Almost like WotC said something like: "You got like 80% species with Darkvision, we're sure you'll manage!"

I'm playing a Human Rogue, and the lack of Darkvision seems like a serious problem, lol. I'm looking at crafting the Goggles of Night already, was just curious about other potential avenues.

One of my friends just told me the other day that he's planning to run Temple of Elemental Evil as a 5.5e game. The module he's using is the one from 2e, but he's going to adapt it (fingers crossed it goes well!)

My D&D experience is contained strictly to Faerun (5e's key core setting) and the many-many homebrew worlds I and my GMs ran, so I'm entirely new to Greyhawk. Ironic, since it's "the" world of D&D, and Faerun came later, as far as I can tell from skimming lore on the wiki.

5e had a lot of flavor text in its races' description, which were Faerun-based, so I could use that for a hypothetical scenario of "my friends wants to run a Faerun game by the book with minimal homebrew". 5.5e is said to be the same with Greyhawk, but Melf's Guide to Greyhawk is still not out, and the species' descriptions in the Player's Handbook are barebones at best ("this species is really honorable and cool all across the multiverse" is the best one can hope for).

There is another subreddit, r/Eberron, where people have stickied a post with all the books within the setting, both rulebooks, setting glossaries and novels, so that newcomers like me can easily find information on anything they need lore-wise.

Is there a resource just like that for Greyhawk? I went through this sub and its stickied posts, couldn't find anything like that, I might be blind tho.

For reference:

>Savage Attacker, Origin feat*. You've trained to deal particularly damaging strikes. Once per turn when you hit a target with a weapon, you can roll the weapon's damage dice twice and use either roll against the target.*

So yes, Savage Attacker only lets you reroll weapon's damage dice, so no rerolling Smites or Sneak Attack.

That got me thinking, though: IF it did reroll all of the dice included in a weapon attack (important part here: only weapon attacks, so things like Smites, Hunter's Mark and Sneak Attack still work, because they are a part of an attack. But spells like Chromatic Orb don't work. Even if I failed the wording here, I'm sure it's fixable), would it be even close to "good"?

I'm not that well-versed in math, but I'm sure someone will comment a formula down below to answer my question.

And before you ask, there is the Zhentarim Ruffian feat, which lets you reroll all the dice associated with an attack, so my proposal isn't even that far-fetched or isn't even "new" in the 5.5e ruleset.

>Zhentarim Ruffian, Origin feat. Exploit Opening. When you roll damage for an Opportunity Attack, you can roll the damage dice twice and use either roll against the target

EDIT: I forgot to say why I think it would still be very "mid" at best. With Savage Attacker you have what is basically Advantage on one attack damage roll; you don't get to pick and choose to reroll certain dice like you do with the Empowered Spell Metamagic or the Piercer feat. So I suppose rolling an attack with 5d6 of Sneak Attack damage would average out to practically the same amount of damage in the end? Again, not a math person, I'm speaking based on vibes here.

When it comes to spellcaster magic items, I'm quite in the know when it comes to what I want: wands, rings, Staff of Power (If possible \ reachable).

But with melee martials I'm at a loss, can't think of anything besides a simple +X weapon to make sure my attacks hit (as opposed to getting a Vicious weapon on my Fighter, those 4-6 attacks per turn sound spicy).

Per the title, I'm playing a TWF SoT Zhentarim Tactics Rogue in a WM 5.5e campaign. DMG magic item crafting is allowed (just as is Manifold tool; I already have Tinker's tools from my backstory, just need to buy materials for Manifold tool and a couple of workdays :) )

I'd like to hear ideas on what Attunement-requiring magic items might be a good fit for my build: either make it stronger in combat or more versatile outside of it. I'm probably missing a lot of stuff, but I only came up with a Headband of Intellect for more SoT Bloodthirst teleports.

Build for reference:

Abilities 8-17-14-14-12-10

Human Scion of the Three Rogue

Feats:

Lvl 1 = Tough + Zhentarim Ruffian

Lvl 4 = Zhentarim Tactics

Lvl 8 = plan to take Fairy Trickster for more support capabilities + synergy with Cunning Strike.

Lvls 10+ = no clue, might die before that.

So far this Rogue looks a little bit like a Dodge Tank archetype (I might get Bloodlust at lvl 8 to increase my HP by proxy of healing mid-combat, but can't say for certain).

There's been a lot of talk on this sub about Rogues, Cunning Strike and balancing, and I'm not here to add anything to this whole discussion.

I have, however, come across a thought while thinking about Cunning Strike: I'd like others here to correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Cunning Strike the only feature in the entire 5.5e system (as of writing this) that gives a player a choice with a trade-off?

If I'm not mistaken, nearly every class \ species \ subclass feature \ feat in 5.5e is just "you may now do this thing, no strings attached", but Cunning Strike is "you may choose to be worse at dealing damage, but you get additional effects on top of your attack".

Small aside here: you could argue that learning new spells is sort of the same, although debatable. I can't remember a single spell (officially released) that goes something like: "You can choose to either deal full damage of the spell, or inflict half damage, but poison the target" (as an example).

Small aside 2 here: I suppose Barbarian's Reckless Attack works somewhat similarly: you trade more damage for more damage taken?

So, two questions: a) am I missing something else that functions in the same manner? b) isn't that interesting how that's the only feature that has a mechanic like that?

EDIT1: not 20 minutes have passed and I see the problem with my initial wording. People have brought up that the whole system is about trade-offs: either Barbarian Rage blocking your Spellcasting, Druid Wildshape doing the same; class- and subclass-based resources; spell slots; equipment choice (TWF with more damage \ less AC or sword-and-board with less damage \ more AC, for example).

So I'll rephrase: I thought that Rogue's Cunning Strike feature was the only ones in the entire 5.5e system (as of right now) that allow you to actively choose to sacrifice some part of your output (damage in this case) to apply additional effects.

Then people also pointed out that the new Brutal Strikes for Barbarian act sort of similarly, true.

EDIT2: Comments to this post are the best proof that people just don't read post bodies. I posted this 2 days ago, edited to improve wording, and people are still replying to the first 3 words of the post... Jeez.

I've been seeing a lot of hype for the Piercer feat (5.5e as per flair), especially on Rogues.

But I don't get it: what is so good about this feat? I feel like I'm missing something here.

Reroll 1 (o n e) die once per turn? Really? Is this worth a feat?

Or is this strictly about the fact that you can use Piercer every turn (unlike practically every other feat, where you might only occasionally use it, even if the conditions are easy to meet), therefore it has a 100% uptime and is good?

The Fear & Hunger (and other similar games, like Trench Face) games do fights in a way I find interesting for making big beefy boss monsters in D&D 5e \ 5.5e:

In F&H every enemy is divided into body parts in combat, and each body part: a) can be targeted by the player; b) has its own turn and its own set of actions it can take. For example, a humanoid enemy would have the following parts: head, two (or more) arms, torso, legs (usually go together; certain beast monsters can have front and hind paws), any other body parts useful to that monsters (wings, "stingers", tails, etc.)

I'd like to throw something like that at my players as a boss encounter: it's practically taking 4-5 different statblocks of different monsters and mushing them together into one + give some debuffs to said boss once its arms or legs are damaged enough (less attacks in a multiattack, less speed due to legs being hit, no spells with verbal components if tongue debilitated).

I know that this is very similar sounding to "called shots", but each body part would have its own stats. Mechanically speaking it's no different from players killing minions first and then killing the actual boss.

What I'm struggling is with control spells: Hold Person \ Monster, Slow, Hypnotic Pattern, Banishment and the like.

What I've been thinking is letting a player use such a spell on a body part and just say that this particular body part is debilitated while Concentration is still up. I feel like that's the closest thing mechanically to the same "minions + boss" type of combat.

But perhaps Reddit has more ideas? I'm sure someone somewhere has already run F&H monsters in D&D, mayhaps even posted in this sub (I couldn't find anything myself, my bad).

EDIT: I realize that condition immunities exist, but the problem is, well, "the head" body part: what's stopping my players from casting their control spells on the head, effectively turning off 4-6 "enemies" at once? Yes, "no you can't do that" is always an option as the GM, but I'd like something less confrontational as a solution.

EDIT2: Bah, forget it: I remembered Fireball exists and would completely mop the floor with such an encounter. And there's no way around AoE damaging spells without just saying "no they don't work because I said so."

EDIT3: So, after sleeping on it for a little bit, I have come up with the following:

1. Don't make the Head body part low HP / high AC + making it so destroying the Head ends the battle. It will just make it so the players will fish for crits with advantage (5.5e has a lot of ways to gain advantage in combat). Instead, I think, it will be better to make it so if the Head is "killed", then the creature suffers from the following: a) no Verbal components; b) Blinded condition; c) perhaps something else. Narratively, let's say, the Head is still there, but it's been battered and bruised so much that it hampers the creature's cognitive functions.
2. For AoE damage spells: the creature gets to decide where to allocate the damage (think MtG blocking an attack). Narratively it would mean that the creature covers its more important body parts with its hands or legs, or even just torso-tanks the whole thing (the Torso part would constitute 70-80% of the creature's total HP).
3. Control spells... Still not sure, really. Mechanically speaking the spellcaster targets "the creature", so I could use that excuse to also reallocate control spells to Torso or any other body part (say, if my Warlock Hold Monsters this boss enemy, the GM can choose to sacrifice one of the arms. That way the Warlock has still mechanically done what they wanted: took one "creature" out of the fight, the action economy works out) if I see fit.

I've been thinking about conquering HoMM4 as a way of just putting it behind me. I generally don't get the sentiment of hating on the game because it's not HoMM3, and I have a soft spot for HoMM4 because it was my introduction into the series.

What I've been wondering is this: HoMM3 has both the HD Mod and HotA fan editions\patches; HoMM5 (iirc) has some sort of fan edition as well. Does HoMM4 have some sort of a fan edition or patch that makes it run better \ has QoL features like the HD Mod does for HoMM3?

And generally, what should I download before just running HoMM4 and beating the campaigns?

Thanks in advance!

I've been into D&D for some 10-11 years at this point, started with 3.5e, and now am playing in a WM 5.5e campaign. Going quite to my liking, all things considered.

In all these years I've been, of course, consuming a lot of D&D content, be it Reddit posts or DungeonTube videos.

That, of course, skews my perception of the current state of the game (that it's all doom and gloom, people have been saying "D&D is over" for a few decades now).

I am, however, also quite aware of how online discourse works: no one is ever happy about anything.

We're all familiar with why "D&D is awful" nowadays (heck, I'm one of those people who're never satisfied with this system), but I myself have only played a little bit of a few other systems (a bit of 3.5e, as I've said, a bit of Dungeon World...).

So my question is this: if you frequent communities of other TTRPGs, what's the most obvious reason for your being unhappy with that system? What's the latest "tea"?

I'm mainly asking because I want to remind myself that every system's community is in a state of constant unsatisfaction, but I'm also just interested.