r/onednd

Part of a major criticism I have with Rogue is that the design space for the class is largely and heavily limited, and I find that enabling off-turn Sneak Attack contributed a bit too heavily to their overall power budget that no other meaningful changes could've been made to the class in the 2024 edition.

On Fighters, people wanted Maneuvers to be class-wide. As a semi-close concession, we got Tactical Shift, Tactical Mind, and Tactical Master, which the former two use up resources the class already had while Tactical Master is a genuinely free feature that doesn't take up any of the power budget the class gained in 2024. It is now probably the best Martial in the game's overall design space and has fully fulfilled its class power fantasy in a way that doesn't completely overshadow the ideas of other classes.

Rogues have such a tight design space and power budget because they are tasked with 2 things: Get Advantage on your Attack Roll, and apply your Skills(Expertise) well. Despite that, they only ever get 1 attack, they have the slowest class and feat progression out of any other class(they don't get their second subclass feature until the END of tier 2 and they only get 1 extra feat to show for it).

More than 50% of their power budget is tied to spending their Reaction to find a way to perform off-turn Sneak Attack using Opportunity Attacks. You can't Ready an Action and use the Attack Action on your same turn, you need to find a way to CC enemies off-turn and enable that Sneak without giving up your Advantage and without taking damage in that same turn due to using up your Uncanny Dodge.

I think a slightly better alternative would've been to allow Rogues to treat their Sneak Attack dice as something they can split up between attacks, and instead just increase the amount they get at different intervals. Maybe give them 2 every time it increases instead of just 1. That way you aren't hard-lining all your damage into a singular funnel and finagling an off-turn sneak attack that uses more of your action economy and prevents defensive utility.

A mechanical example of this would be that a 3rd Level rogue would have 3 Sneak Attack dice, and would be dual-wielding a shortsword and a dagger. They have advantage on the first attack because they were just hiding, so they get the Sneak Attack, but instead of using all 3d6, they just use 2d6. They end up killing the enemy they attack with just the 1d6+Dex from the shortsword and the 2d6 from the Sneak Attack, which then allows the Rogue to attack another target with the Nick Mastery, and let's assume they also manage to get Sneak Attack on them as well(maybe they have Skulker) and deal 1d4+1d6 to the second target instead of pumping ALL of their sneak attack into the first attack, overkilling, and then only dealing an average of 2 damage to the second foe and wasting their damage economy. And if they want to do off-turn sneak attacks, they still can, but without sacrificing design space to a niche mechanic.

I recognize that I might not necessarily be smart enough to really have a standing opinion, but the idea that Rogues were (nearly) entirely unchanged from 2014 to 2024 and their overall progression sucking as bad is it does leaves a sour taste in my mouth considering all of the UA that the community went through and ended up voting on. Part of why Martials didn't get that much better is also on the people who made the votes, and it's no longer just WoTC's design space.

One of my personal favorite magic items are the boots of Striding and Springing, not just for the jumping but the carrying weight interaction. I wanted to get some input from other people if my interpretation seems to be RAW and RAI or not.

The full text is short so I'll put it here. "While you wear these boots, your Speed becomes 30 feet unless your Speed is higher, and your Speed isn’t reduced by you carrying weight in excess of your carrying capacity or wearing Heavy Armor.

Once on each of your turns, you can jump up to 30 feet by spending only 10 feet of movement"

Specifically my interpretation is that means that your carry weight effectively becomes your push/lift/drag capacity. I use this for characters with powerful build or other lifting boost effects to single handedly pull carts for the party, lift virtually anything that I've got grappled over my head, and combo lift large boulder with the jumping aspect to drop anvils on enemy heads (hilarity ensues) even more fun when you combo it with grappler feat and have a fly speed. Just fly as high as you can go and drop.

If there's a rule or terminology specification I'm missing please let me know, I prefer my shenanigans to be as RAW as possible when I can

Basically, what the title reads, I think the temp HP based on your druid level is just bad.

I got inspiration from the Villainous Titan druid UA, where your wildshape is specifically 4x your druid level for a titan form, and I liked that idea a lot, and it scales decently.

My idea is to give all CR 1 and below wildshapes temp HP equal to 3x Druid level.

CR 2-3 = 4x druid-level temp HP, 4-5 = 5x druid-level temp HP, and 6 = 6x temp HP.

A nice scaling table for regular druids to become slightly stronger than they could with regular wildshapes, and allows for moon druids to slowly scale up and have some decent HP in their higher CR creatures.

A direwolf at level 8 would give 24 temp as a druid, and would slowly scale up by 3 HP per level, which would go beyond what a regular dire wolf would have in terms of HP since their max is 37.

Let me know what you think!

Hi, I have doubts about my Celestial Warlock build. My party has a Fighter, a Shadow Monk, and an evoker Wizard. I see many taking a dip in Paladin/Fighter for melee and the taking Pact of the Blade, but I’m considering a ranged/utility focus since I’m the main healer. I was thinking of grabbing Green Flame Blade for melee coverage, but focusing on Eldritch Blast and Pact of the Chain or Tome for utility. Any advice? Is Pact of the Blade actually better?

I was also thinking about taking fey touched into misty step and bless. We are starting an adventure from level 7-8 and we will reach level 12.

Having only played mono classed paladin I've never considered this but now that smite is a paladin spell is it correct that you can select it at level 1 and not have to wait for level 2 when it's free?

Does this combination mean you could potentially target two creatures within 5 feet of each other with Chill Touch and expend just one spell slot to attempt paralyzing both of them?

Wizard is considered still the best class in the game by a very solid chunk of the playerbase.

Wizard is heralded as the best class simply put because of the spell list.

While it doesn't have natively healing and restoration and resurrections, it has basically THE REST to solve most problems that can be resolved with spells.

And sometimes the spell it doesn't have are ,simply put, spells that don't fit the playstyle of a squishy wizard (like going melee with Spirit Guardians).

To many the whole spell list is the biggest point on why the class is so strong.

I've been playing a sorcerer for the past half year in one specific campaign and it served me really well and I liked the combat prowess.

However there are probably other types of campaigns where a Wizard would have served me better.

For just combat effectiveness, as a spellcaster Sorcerer is really good with Metamagic and Innate Sorcery.

Wizard has other advantages, like being able to choose niche spells and have them in their arsenal and pulling them out for the campaign only when you need them.

For me on the most well designed wizard spell is Remove Curse. Remove Curse is a spell you add it to your spellbook and leave it unprepared. Then you stumble upon your friend being cursed simply because they couldn't keep their hands in their pants and you have to solve the situation. The result is you just take a Short Rest and you change a prepared spell and boom, you solve the problem.

To me, Wizard was made for spells like this. The Memorize spell feature is a super well designed feature that makes the Wizard actually more reminiscent of the Vancian System. Remember when you would leave the spell slot unprepared and prepared them later with the spell you needed by studying for 15 mins? Memorize spell tries to get closer to that approach and it's nostalgic and it gives off a big satisfaction.

The spell list is huge indeed and when Wizard argue online, their biggest comeback at the Sorcerer is always "But do you have Wall of Force?" to which the Sorcerer would respond "Well, yeah if Clockwork, but I don't care for it". Then the Wizard would remain smug as they solve many problems with Wall of Force and remain the biggest problems solvers.

But to me that's just part of the whole picture. To me the only regret that I have when playing a Sorcerer, is honestly just missing being an Intelligence Caster.

Intelligence and Knowledge checks are super valuable. Why do I say that? Well because there are many Charisma classes already and Paladin is hella popular at most tables. I see Paladin more represented than Fighter, but this is just my experience and doesn't reflect the stats. When I don't see a Paladin I very likely see a Sorcerer or a Warlock at least. Bard has been more rare occurrence to my experience but the other 3 are more common indeed.

This means you will have someone already who's capable of leading the conversation and steer the conversation in your direction.

Meanwhile Knowledge checks are imho what uncover mysteries and lead to clues and give powerful hint to approach the whole plotline. Decision are always being made after you discover what the item or clue is about. This to me is really valuable. Hell, I would consider it the main reason why Knowledge Cleric is so strong to be fair. It's also the reason why I re-evaluated the whole Magician Druid. All the Knowledge checks are super important. We haven't even touched on the value of Investigation, which on its own solves many puzzles and crime scenes and stuck plotlines.

This is also why some are so happy to play the Artificer indeed. They just love the Intelligence Stat and what it provides.

Charisma is valuable for sure, but I end up many session without ever using certain skills and some skills I don't even use because it doesn't come up natural to me to Intimidate somebody, so I haven't used yet Intimidation on this Sorcerer. I mean I'm a level 10 Sorcerer and I should have already but it's just not natural for my playstyle.

What is natural for me is asking questions and Knowledge checks are my favorite. The only reason I didn't pick a Wizard or a Knowledge cleric was simply because we already had a Bladesinger and a Knowledge Cleric already in that specific party

Rituals also play a big part into this. I mean Detect Magic and Identify are great, sure. But HAVE YOU SEEN TELEPATHIC LINK? Holy shit that's insane. Having that prepared for free when you have other high level spell prepared is such a game changer. When I reach level 9 or 10 I would make sure to have Telepathic Link. Such a good spell. The only problem with Detect Magic is that sometimes I do wanna cast it as an action because the narrative warrants rush and I regret not preparing it on time. Let's not forget Find Familiar and comprehend languages and many more. Rituals are great and imho they should design more rituals so that Wizard gets more fun times. Probably they won't do that because they fear the martial outrage at the wizard. We can definitely argue that the extra prepared ritual could or could be not better than the extra prepared spells of other classes indeed.

TLDR:

I love the spell list of Wizard but my favorite reasons are

• being an Intelligence class and having good Knowledge checks
• Memorize spell feature
• have some must have spells for free as rituals

I like Sorcerer gameplay and it's fun but Knowledge checks are addicting to me to be honest. 100% would play a Wizard again once the new subclasses come out in fall with Arcana Unleashed

I’m looking into the possibility of having a mini that can stand and can be put atop a horse as well. Since the paladin now basically get a free horse at lvl 5, I’m wondering how people do that with their minis.

>You can’t willingly end a move in a space occupied by another creature.

Have we been reading too much, but not enough into this line?

If I push a creature onto another square I am actually moving them, therefore if I push them onto the square of another creature I am "willingly ending a move in a space occupied by another creature"

Note that the rules do not specify that you can't willingly end your move.

I wouldn't try to read this much into it usually, however the new D&d beyond drop more clearly indicates that pushing creatures into another space is not RAI.

Hello all! I'm a new DM and just started reading Adventures in Faerûn and a little bit confused on how the mini adventures work.

-Am I supposed to start with the Lost Library of Letchauntos (Ch7) and then do the mini-adventures in Ch1?

-Are the mini-adventures in Ch1 meant to be run as One-Shots? Or am I meant to create a campaign that weaves them together or are these just examples of what you could create in the Forgotten Realms setting? I'm a bit confused what the point of them is!

I've got my first session coming up this week where I'm DMing a one shot, and I'm not sure whether to start with the Lost Library of Letchauntos, one of the -adventures, something from Dragon Delves, or just Homebrew?

Would really appreciate any advice!

A new D&D beyond drop included a feat Shifting Combatant with this ability

> Domino Strike. When you hit a creature with a weapon and activate the Push mastery property to push that creature into a space occupied by a Large or smaller creature, you can force the creatures to collide. Each creature must succeed on a Constitution saving throw (DC 8 plus the ability modifier of the score increased by this feat and your Proficiency Bonus) or have the Prone Condition.

I always thought this is how push worked by RAW even without a save based on this rule.

> You can’t willingly end a move in a space occupied by another creature. If you somehow end a turn in a space with another creature, you have the Prone condition (see the rules glossary) unless you are Tiny or are of a larger size than the other creature.

So if a player pushes a monster into another monster both monster fall prone at the end of the turn.

Have I’ve been unintentionally buffing push mechanics at my table?

This is a bit of a technical question. I am trying to make a character that uses the Double-Bladed Scimitar (DBS) and have it be able to use its bonus action attack.

Now using homebrewed feats and Items I've been able to make using a DBS very easy the sheet recognizes it and it rolls correctly for the regular action attacks.

The problem comes with the Special Bonus Action attack. The character sheet doesn't have it, but I was able to add it to the Revenant Blade feat as an action but since it's attached to the feat and not the weapon GWF doesn't get applied.

Basically I'm trying to find out if its possible to get this interaction to work. I tried looking at Great Weapon Fighting through the homebrew section but there's no modifiers or actions it's just a list of prerequisites. Does anyone know who GBF functions under the hood and how one would be able to replicate it on another feat?

With the new Grave cleric, at level 3 (or 4 if you want a feat right away), you can Bonus action and spend a Channel Divinity to impose disadvantage to a saving throw on a creature within 30' till start of your next turn so as an action you can cast a spell with a saving throw and give the target disadvantage.

Looking to Multiclass into Sorcerer, Bard or Warlock. Any suggestions on spell selection?

so far, I have Sorcerer 1 for CON save and innate Sorcery then Cleric 3-4 for path to the grave.

Wondering progression after that?

I'm playing a wizard and recently reached level 3. I also have a druid and a cleric in the party.

It feels somewhat bad that they each get 4 subclass spells and I don't. I'm stuck with 6 preparations, they also get 6 +4 from the sublass.

I've compared the class progression and my Wizard won't start catching up before level 14.

Is there something I'm missing?

I have long wondered how races/species with natural armor gain any advantage from class feats and other effects that come from being unarmored. I may have missed something very clear on this and, if so, I’d really appreciate anyone who can point me in the right direction. But it seems to me that RAW don’t address this, RAI probably count natural armor as armor and therefore prevent that character from ever benefitting from certain class fears etc., but my gut tells me that this feels unfair.

I have often homebrewed a rule that characters with natural armor are so used to this being part of their actual body (rather than worn armor) that they can still benefit from the class feats, adding together the bonuses received from natural armor and feats like unarmored defense.

I am interested to see if anyone else handles it the same or differently, any other insights, and whether the edition you are playing makes a difference to this?

Many people have argued that the push mastery by making two enemies occupy the same space can make them prone at the end of your turn. Here I'd like to argue that rules as written (RAW) most probably does not support it and that rules as intended (RAI) obviously does not support it.

RAW. The interpretation that push mastery can make two enemies prone comes from this text:

"Moving around Other Creatures

During your move, you can pass through the space of an ally, a creature that has the Incapacitated condition (see the rules glossary), a Tiny creature, or a creature that is two sizes larger or smaller than you.

Another creature’s space is Difficult Terrain for you unless that creature is Tiny or your ally.

You can’t willingly end a move in a space occupied by another creature. If you somehow end a turn in a space with another creature, you have the Prone condition (see the rules glossary) unless you are Tiny or are of a larger size than the other creature."

The proposed interpretation: if you move a creature to an occupied space, both will become prone at the end of the turn.

Observe that the whole section is written with you in mind. It's about your own movement. In no moment forced movement is mentioned or what happens to other creatures when you move them. Designers probably didn't consider that in this text.

So, what happens to creatures when they are moved against another creature: the only RAW information is that we do not know. I couldn't find any text that says that they can occupy the same square on a grid or that alternatively they stay on the next square.

However, multiple abilities in the game, including high level spells like etherealness and blink move you to the next square when you return to the same square of someone else. So, why would a first level mastery force two creatures to stay in the same space?

RAI: there is a very strong mastery that requires a save to make people prone. Its name is topple. Why would the designers bother to make such a strong mastery when another one moves enemies and can make two or three enemies prone at the same time? Of course, size restriction and positioning would matter more, but the ceiling of a level 1 mastery would be disproportional. This sounds like people trying to kill BBEGs at tier 3 suffocating them with the Shape Water cantrip. Don't be this person.

Conslusion:

There is no RAW support for the interpretation that push mastery causes enemies to be prone and RAI is clear when one considers the mastery system as a whole.

Edit: for clarity, as this has been asked multiple times . "You" here means any willingly moving creature, the active voice of the sentence. It can be a PC or a NPC. The point is that this section would not have the receivers of an action in mind, in other words, those suffering from forced movement.

Creatures in DnD do not fill the space they take up in combat. This is a very specific feature of the Gelatinous Cube monster.

No, you don't hit an invisible force field 5ft around every goblin in existence when subjected to forced movement.

A creature's combat space is actually quite large: even small and medium creatures take up a 5x5ft area. So how does this interact with movement?

The ACTUAL Restrictions:

> During your move, you can pass through the space of an ally, a creature that has the Incapacitated condition, a Tiny creature, or a creature that is two sizes larger or smaller than you.

This is because enemies are, presumably, actively choosing to physically stop you otherwise. Not because you can't fit.

> Another creature's space is Difficult Terrain for you unless that creature is Tiny or your ally.

> You can't willingly end a move in a space occupied by another creature. If you somehow end a turn in a space with another creature, you have the Prone condition unless you are Tiny or are of a larger size than the other creature.

That's it!

Note that the first two only apply when you are actively choosing to move, and are irrelevant with forced movement. In fact, the rule about falling prone is almost impossible to even happen without forced movement.

There just doesn't need to be a rule that states how many medium creatures can fit in a 25 square foot area, because you would need to cram like 10 people in the same square before this starts to break the realm of believability.

Which option do you find the most interesting to play, even if not the strongest? Bard is one of the classes that has received subclasses both in Faerun and Ravenloft books.

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One thing I keep coming back to with 5.5e is that a lot of balance still seems to depend on something that is not always easy to control: how often the party gets to rest.

On paper, a lot of the 2024 rules feel cleaner. Encounter building seems better, monsters feel more dynamic, and classes generally feel smoother. But in actual play, rest pacing can still completely change how the game feels.

In my experience, this is one of those things that can make the same party feel balanced or wildly overpowered depending on the adventure structure. If the party gets a Long Rest after one or two meaningful fights, casters can unload their strongest resources almost every encounter, and even dangerous fights can get flattened quickly.

But if I push too hard in the other direction, it can start to feel like I am forcing artificial time pressure just to make the math work.

Short Rests are also weirdly table-dependent. Some groups naturally take them, while others almost never do unless the DM creates a very obvious pause. And in some official-style adventures, the story feels urgent enough that stopping for rests can feel strange, but the mechanics still assume some kind of resource attrition.

So I’m curious how people are handling it in 5.5e.

Do you feel like rest pacing is still one of the biggest balance levers in the game?

Do your players actually take Short Rests regularly?

Are you using any house rules, safe havens, gritty realism, time pressure, or narrative limits on Long Rests?

Or do you think 5.5e works fine without worrying too much about the adventuring day?

When I say melee caster I don’t mean someone who uses a weapon but someone who stays at melee range, on the front line, and uses close range spells.

Or would War Wizard or Bladesinger be better?