r/onednd

I’ve had this happen across multiple campaigns.

I’ve played a Polearm Master character who went an entire campaign without finding a magic polearm. Currently, I’m played a dual-wielding character where the only real support I found was one +1 dagger and we're at the end of the campaign. I’ve played a Crossbow Expert character in a campaign where there were no magical crossbows.

This is ultimately a DM/session-zero issue, but in my experience, that conversation can be harder than it sounds. A lot of DMs are understandably coy about loot. They might say something like, “I can’t promise what you’ll find,” or “you’ll have to see what comes up in the campaign.”

Those experiences made one thing very clear to me: martial characters can feel much more dependent on item support than casters do. And in practice, I’ve rarely seen costly material components meaningfully enforced outside of a few obvious examples, like the tuning fork for Plane Shift.

What is the point of the unused Armor types, i.e.Padded Armor, Hide Armor, and Ring Mail. I'd normally include chain shirt in there but it is at least on the recommended starting equipment for clerics.

Bards, druids, rogues and warlocks start with leather. Paladins start with chain mail. Rangers start with studded. Fighters start with either chain mail or studded leather. Everyone else has none. Granted most games do the money thing so light armor wearers can just automatically upgrade to studded because the cost is not horrible at 45 gp. And clerics staying in medium armor would probably just get scale mail since it cost the same as chain shirt but is noisy for stealth.

So no light armor class would ever wear padded. No medium armor class would wear hide and probably not a chain shirt. And no heavy armor class would wear ring mail. I can see a medium armor class taking breastplate if they want to not be impacted on stealth and have decent money Half plate with some money and want higher AC. I can see splint armor for the heavy armor class before they get enough money for plate.

So padded is useless, hide is useless, chain shirt is slightly better at stealth but is less AC than scale, and ring mail doesn't require any strength.oyher than that I don't see the point. Unless you find some enchanted version of the armor or some elven chain and don't have armor training, what is the point?

I play at the table where we use exclusively 2024 rules. Since these annoying rules about buying magic items taking several weeks and additional costs are technically no longer a thing and were replaced by just a couple of simple guidelines and costs, our DMs just let us buy and sell magic items without trouble. So, any large enough settlement just has a vast enough market of magic items that you can just buy or sell them for the listed cost

Uncommon items are 400 gold, rare items - 4k and very rare 40k. Legendary ones are the only ones not for sale.

So, to the point. Apparently, at our table martial-caster divide kind of does not exist. With enspelled items you can get Divine favor, Shield, healing word, hex and other useful spells like that many times per day for a very reasonable price of 400 gold. For 4k gold you can get big ones like haste (especially good for rogues), spirit guardians, counterspell, fireball and so on. Wall of force is considered one of the best spells you can get, right? Sure, for 4k there is Cube of Force! 10 charges, up to 2 walls of force per day (5 charges each). No spellcasting ability required.

Sure, you can always say it is but a fraction of full caster power. And you would be right. But it definitely does level the field. Because no matter how cool spellcaster is they don't get second concentration. Most of the time they don't also get strong defensive abilities. Do you know how good Monks actually are at keeping concentration? They often negate damage from Dex saves entirely and most of the time they negate one attack per round, reducing damage to 0 and avoiding concentration save. Same with fighters - with their armor proficiencies, shield spell, con save proficiency and additional feats they can keep concentration for whole fight without trouble.

Vicious weapons make it so having extra attacks, weapon masteries and appropriate feats like polearm master, fighting styles etc actually matters a lot. Basically, any class without extra attack and weapon masteries stops being comparable in single target damage to martials. Half-casters and extra attack subclasses stop being comparable to Fighters in single target damage. In other words, power levels of classes get much more reasonable.

This works for 5e, but it should be the same for 5.5e.

Great Weapon Fighting Style runs behind Dueling in it's damage adding only +0.8333 for a d12, +0.8 on a d10, and +1.3 on 2d6 vs Dueling's +2. '24 isn't better at +0.25 for a d12, +0.3 on a d10, and +1 on 2d6. Great weapons should have great damage.

> **Great Weapon Fighting Style** > When you are wielding a melee weapon that has the two-handed or versatile property in two hands your weapon attacks deal an extra 1d4 damage of the weapon's type.

I saw this comment thread on a different subreddit with a truly baffling take. It started because one commenter was saying that if you gave an NPC exhaustion it was permanent because there's no mechanism to remove exhaustion from an NPC as opposed to a player character.

Other commenters clearly pointed out that the rules say that NPCs are monsters, monsters are creatures, and that all creatures can take long and short rests. The monster manual clearly states that all monsters have hit dice in their stat block and that you can spend hit dice on short rest to heal. And the rules for exhaustion and long rest clearly state that long rest remove exhaustion.

So I was really unsure of what the argument would be. Digging further into the comments, the one who said there is no way to remove exhaustion basically said that no DM is going to track rests for NPCs. If the players in the NPC disengage and come back another day, he's just just re-materialized the NPC and it couldn't take a long rest because DMs don't track that. It seems kind of absurd to me that you would give the NPC all the benefits of a long rest, i.e restoring its daily spell casting and hit points, but then claim it didn't get a long rest because you don't track that.

Now by no means am I expecting a DM to role play the NPC, finding a bed laying down for 8 hours and doing the long rest actions. But I feel it's kind of disingenuous to say they can't take long rest and are just reinvented. Especially when the rules clearly state they can.

Does anyone else have any perspective on this? Does anyone have any experience with not long resting or short resting your NPCs but rather rematerializing them whole?

If you check out the WPN website here and log in, you can claim all content that stores can use to run the Encounters Program.

It got taken down! If only they allowed me to download the content in a ZIP-file...

Removed!

There are 5 files:

• Blank Custom Character Sheet
• Organizer Instructions
• 2 Maps
• Premade characters from the Dungeon Masters
• Shadows Over Sithicus Encounters, a bunch of adventures with some of the updated stat blocks.

Enjoy!

EDIT: They got wind of it and took it down! Check my cheeky remark.

I want to improve these feats so that they perform well. Revised effects are indicated in bold. Please give me your feedback.

#Great Weapon Fighting

When you roll damage for an attack you make with a Melee weapon that you are holding with two hands, you can treat any 1 or 2 on a damage die as a 3. In addition, once per turn when you score a Critical Hit with the weapon, you can replace one of the weapon's damage dice with its maximum value. The weapon must have the Two-Handed or Versatile property to gain this benefit.

#Interception

When a creature you can see hits another creature within 5 feet of you with an attack roll, you can take a Reaction to reduce the damage dealt to the target by 1d10 plus your Proficiency Bonus and your Strength or Dexterity modifier. You must be holding a Shield or a Simple or Martial weapon to use this Reaction.

#Unarmed Fighting

When you hit with your Unarmed Strike and deal damage, you can deal Bludgeoning damage equal to 1d6 plus your Strength modifier instead of the normal damage of an Unarmed Strike. If you aren’t holding any weapons or a Shield when you make the attack roll, the d6 becomes a d8. At the start of each of your turns, you can deal Bludgeoning damage to one creature Grappled by you equal to your Proficiency Bonus. While you are Grappling a creature, the distance you are pushed or pulled by enemy is halved.

Edit) Interception: damage reduction is now 1d6 × PB

Ankhtepot... so cool... reminds me of the video game: Stone Prophet!

Hail and well met Everyone! 

I just published Dead Moon Rising on DM’s guild! Dead Moon Rising is a Level 20 one shot designed for four players using the 5.5e ruleset, in which they will investigate the convergence of undead near the city of Tantras, after the last adventuring party disappeared after noticing signs of the cult of the Dead Three. What they find in that tomb will send them to the desolate moonlet of Atropus, where they will have to confront and stop the Elder Evil before they can complete their collision course with Faerun, ending all life within the Forgotten Realms.

The adventure itself is about 15 pages long, and goes approximately 4.5-5 hours if ran in a VTT from my experience. Your mileage may vary depending on your group and how you run, but there is a good point in the adventure if you want to split into two sessions. The rest of it includes the character creation rules I used for the playtests, advice on how to run the adventure, a lore primer, and a Bestiary including new 5.5e stat blocks for an Atropal (CR 21), the Aspect of Atropus (CR 23), and most excitingly Atropus, the World Born Dead (CR 29!) 

The maps I used in the playtest are included as well! This adventure is designed to challenge Level 20 characters in the 5.5e edition. It proved to be a moderate to severe challenge to both playtest groups, although both succeeded without any casualties, but as a precaution, I included a few pieces of advice in toning down the adventure if you desire. 

Thank you all for your time, and I hope you all have a great day!

Stone sorcerer is the only type of sorcerer subclass I ever really cared to play.

I played it in 5e from level 2 to 13ish and it was a fun time. Does it hold up well in the current rules or did it kinda get left behind?

For context the Stone Sorcerer is an old UA subclass that got good reviews but never ended up making it to a book.

There seems to be this impression that the rogues damage is too low from level 5 onwards, however comparing the base chasis with the DW feat to a PAM fighter their likely damage seems almost identical.

Fighter assuming two reactive strikes and one action surge over 6 rounds of combat (Action surge is used once in two x three round combats) 70% hit chance

(16×(5.5+4)+6×(2.5+4)).7=133.7

DW Rogue

(6×(4.5+4)+12×3.5)×.7+6×3×3.5×(.973)=126.4

Is a 6% difference really unacceptable for the skill monkey class?

Adding in extra attack seems to be the common "solution" but this brings the rogues damage up to 162.1, a massive overcorrection.

And if we assume champion fighter vs assassin and account for crits then the damage gap becomes even closer.

At most it seems like then only changes that may be required is;

A) Twist the knife: When you apply sneak attack any damage riders from magical weapon properties are doubled.

B) Make the withdraw cunning strike free.

I want to make a character in case my main character dies in a campaign, or if I join a different campaign and want to use this character.

The backstory is he was a royal court jester half-elf who served in a kingdom in the icy/snowy areas. He grown up being the jester and is a late teen. One day, the old king dies and his son takes over, but unlike his kind and well-liked father, he is greedy, unlikable and taxes almost everyone except the high nobility. My jester is the only one who brings smiles to faces at the moment and tries to advise the new king what to do. During the new king's tirade, he accuses my jester's older sister, who was close and was a royal knight, as a traitor and executes them via beheading. My jester watches in horror and everyone in town is shocked and upset. The sister tells my character to just keep making people smiling right before she died. My character snaps and ends up murdering the royal court who all went along with the young king while wearing a smiling mask before arriving to the throne, where the young king is. Jester is caught but manages to escape with his royal jester clothes, mask, some performing items and a lantern that has his sister's soul inside, like the Ghost Lantern from the Tomb of Annihilation. He is constantly on the run as the young king wants his head, but manages to run into whatever party I get a part of.

The flavor I want to do with him is make him able to cast cold types of spells, like frostbite, cone of cold, ray of cold, frost fingers, ice knife, icing frost's death, snowball swarm, sleet storm, ice storm, investiture of ice, freezing sphere & wall of ice. Other spells that would be in character is like vicious mockery.

Some of his good stats would be charisma, dexterity & wisdom/intelligence (interchangeable). Any ideas of how to bring him to life?

Awesome!

I've been in a campaign for the past 10 months or so and have mostly been enjoying it. My character is a Diviner Wizard who's backstory is fairly simple, with room to explore - he used his powers to look too far into other planes/timelines and it kinda warped him a bit. We started at level 10, so there are some growing pains as my previous spell casters were a Bard and Sorcerer, so I'm more accustomed to the more more rigorous spell lists and not all that much planning ahead.

We're in a very magical effect heavy campaign so Circle of Power has been very useful, but it feels as if after I get that up, there's not much I can do. My original intention was to play the Recon and Intel specialist and leave the damage dealing to our Paladin, Fighter, Barbarian, and Warlock. We have a Cleric as well for secondary support.

I'm unsure if my spell list, while on theme (psychic and force heavy to emulate the Outer Realms feel), is as helpful as it can be. I will say I did want to avoid the most traditional spells for the most part, but am amenable to trying to pick them up if my list is that weak.

Also if anyone has suggestions on how I can restructure my approach to combat to be more useful than just "protect team saves", that would be very helpful too.

Spell list:

Cantrips: Light, Minor Illusion**, Toll the Dead**, Sapping Sting, Prestidigitation, Mind Sliver, Message

1st Level: Comprehend Languages*, Detect Magic, Silvery Barbs, Shield**, Magic Missile, Absorb Elements, Sleep, Find Familiar, Cause Fear

2nd Level: Mind Spike, Augury*, Detect Thoughts**, Fortune's Favor

3rd Level: Catnap, Pulse Wave, Tongues, Clairvoyance*, Counterspell, Dispel Magic, Slow, Intellect Fortress, Leomund's Tiny Hut

4th Level: Divination*, Arcane Eye, Confusion, Gravity Sinkhole

5th Level: Rary's Telepathic Bond*, Contact Other Plane, Synaptic Static, Scrying, Circle of Power

*Divination Savant Spell
**Spell From Feat or Background (Magic Initiate: Wizard, Telepathic)

My Ability Scores are

10, 15, 15, 18, 10, 8

Feats: Alert, MI: Wizard, Res Con, Telepathic

+1 Arcane Grimoire, Broom of Flying, Barrier Tattoo (Small), Amulet of Proof against Detection and Location

Man they are doing a lot of updates!

Now updated! See the latest v1.6 download below. I do not expect to make any more revisions.

PDF link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZkVxpvdJYTTb-KHZlHB5HUlCPp1KNWwO/view?usp=sharing

I made this for fun and thought I'd share. Blood Hunter already has so much overlap with Ranger, so to me it makes sense as a Ranger subclass. Thoughts?

Highlights:

• Concentration-less Hunter's Mark
• Impose Disadvantage on saving throws against your own spells
• Blood Curse form similar to Winter Walker's Frozen Haunt

Criticism:

• Strong focus on Hunter's Mark (if you don't think Ranger's should be based around Hunter's Mark)
• Blood Curse is very similar to Frozen Haunt
• Abomination Slayer is a weak level 11 feature superseded by Foe Slayer This is somewhat addressed after changing Abomination Slayer in v1.1

Changes:

• v1.1 - Abomination Slayer now does an additional die of Hunter's Mark damage to Monstrosities on top of the previous effect which increases the damage die size from a d6 to d8
• v1.2 - Reworded a few things and added more flavor text
• v1.3 - Added 1d4 Necrotic damage every time you use Dark Brand
• v1.4 - Removed Exhaustion from Blood Curse form
• v1.5 - Blood Curse now requires the use of Dark Brand when casting Hunter's Mark
• v1.6 - Blood Sense feature replaced with Dark Focus. Dark Brand renamed to Crimson Brand

Feedback welcome, this is a rough first draft.

LEVEL 3

Skin of Stone

You gain proficiency with all melee weapons that do not have the Finesse or Light property and with shields. You gain a base AC of 13+CON. Your hit point maximum increases by 1 for each level in this Class.

Hands of Smiting
To spend a spell slot to cast a non-Smite spell, you must spend Sorcery Points equal to the spell slot. When you spend a Spell Slot not created by Font of Magic (lets not go infinite here) to Smite, regain SP equal to its level. You always have all Smite spells prepared for which you have spell slots, except Divine Smite.

You can cast a Smite immediately after you hit a creature if it is not your turn. (Still spends a spell slot, but requires no Bonus Action.)

Activating Innate Sorcery does not consume your Bonus Action. While it is active, you may gain Advantage on the first melee weapon attack you make each turn if you are able to Smite the target after. (You have BA, Spell Slot and can cast spells.) If you gain Advantage this way, you must Smite if still able to after the attack.

LEVEL 6

Stone Aegis

As an Action, or when you roll Initiative, or when you use a Smite, you may grant Stone Aegis to one allied creature you can see within 60 feet of you, or choose new targets and resistances for any Aegises. Aegises last until you are incapacitated. (You have one now, will unlock more at Level 18.)

The Aegis grants the target resistance against Force damage, as well as one of your choice of Bludgeoning, Piercing, Slashing, Acid, Cold, Fire, Lightning, or Thunder damage. (Chosen when granted). While within 10 feet of the protected target, you gain those resistances too.

In addition, when a creature you can see hits the protected target with an attack or causes it to fail a saving throw, you can use your Reaction to teleport to an unoccupied space you can see within 10 feet of the protected target. If you teleported, you may spend SP equal to your Proficiency to take all effects associated with the attack or saving throw instead of the protected ally. You may also make an Opportunity Attack against the attacker if able.

LEVEL 14

Indiscriminate Smiting

You can Smite even if your weapon attack misses, if the defender fails a Dexterity or Constitution Saving throw. (You choose which one, Spell Save DC).

Whenever you Smite, you may choose additional targets both within your reach and 10 feet of the target for 1 Sorcery Point each. They become additional targets of the Smite if they fail a Dexterity or Constitution Saving throw. (You choose which one).

LEVEL 18

Earth Master's Aegis

Beginning at 18th level, when you use your Stone’s Aegis to protect an ally, you can choose up to three creatures to gain its benefits.(You may choose different resistances.) You can also choose the same ally multiple times.

Once/Aegis/round, teleporting to protect the ally costs no Reaction. (Regardless of whether you redirect the attack or make an Opportunity Attack after. Targeting the same ally multiple times: You can have Force+3 chosen Resistances, but Resistance does not stack, as usual. You can also teleport to protect and attack multiple times.)

If you got this far, thanks for reading. Feel free to brainstorm some custom Smites.

Aoba, bão? Me ajudem por favor, vale a pena uma multiclasse de trapaceiro arcano com mago bladesinger? como eu devo construir essa build? Talentos? Itens? Focar tudo em int ou ter des também?

So, I am playing an Eldritch Knight build which focus a lot on INT and I have been having a good time with it thanks to Shillelagh, Ranged Cantrips and True Strike which allowed me to use virtually whatever I want. My INT is capped (20) so I have been using control spells like Mind Whip, Web and Suggestion and I am satisfied with how they have performed so far.

I am going to reach level 8, and I think I want to have more spells and cantrips at my disposal as there is a lot more that I want to try both in and out of combat. I am not the sole damage dealer in my team, as there are three frontliners in my party including me (a Barbarian and a Paladin), there is also an Artificer who is allowed to use Spell Storing Items at level 5 (Sounds broken, I know, but that clutched our asses several times so no one had any problem with that) and a Rouge whose function is mostly being a Skill Monkey as somehow we are severely lacking in that department.

Since I am kinda determined that I would go for Wizard multiclass due to the lack of a full spellcaster, what should I choose between War Wizard and Bladesinger if I still want to do both meele and ranged & Battlefield control playstyle at the same time?