I'm attacking the darkness! Crap, I rolled a 2: Dungeons and Dragons Discussion

[Zetanio]

Losing points in a non-primary stat is not the end of the world for 5E. It's also at DM discretion so they will likely get worse at something they are already really bad at.

[BaneTheBrawler]

yeah. i guess i just think it's a bland approach. i'd do something more story-driven.

[Zetanio]

It's baked into the world at this point story-wise. I was more asking for a check on the actual mechanics to see if I was missing something. My players love the story and they had also mentioned thinking that the death mechanics were very weak. This is a first step into making them much more dire.

It should also be noted that the lower level resurrection spells do NOT renew body parts. They only bring you back. So there's a great chance they end up with missing arms, legs, and other bits.

[BaneTheBrawler]

ah ok. yeah, sorry, mechanically, no idea.

[Zetanio]

So I'm trying to make a decent scale map of my main city (50k people or so)

I have a shitty paint drawing of it but I can't find a decent city maker tool to speed things up. The only things I find are random generators, which are sweet but not useful in this case.

[Cantih]

I'm sure somewhere in searching these subreddits you'll find exactly what you need
https://www.reddit.com/r/mapmaking/
https://www.reddit.com/r/imaginarymaps/
https://www.reddit.com/r/dndmaps/
https://www.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding/

[-Zer0-]

Worldbuilding is one of my favorite subreddits, but it's more tailored towards creating fantasy settings and concepts for stories and writing moreso than dnd outright. Good food for thought though.

[Zetanio]

I found a forum dedicated to cartography and fantasy map making. Gonna see if someone over there will do a commission for me.

[Souj]

So this is basically my first campaing I've been playing and were doing Tomb of Annihilation.
Currently Drow lv5Rogue/8Monk/3Warlock Way of Shadow, Swashbuckler, hex build with Raven Queen Sentinel Raven- which I'm having a lot of fun doing shit with that raven. 12str/20dex/15con/14int/16wis/18chr
I'm doing good keeping myself out of harms way for the most part.


I don't think I'm going to put in any more levels into Rogue- another SA die would be nice, but maybe not for the lv investment, maybe not Warlock either unless I really start itching for another feat- I already have Elven Accuracy and Defensive Duelist. I'm deciding if my next 3 levels should go into Monk or Fighter.

lv11 monk would get me 1d8 damage, but fighter at lv1 with Duelist would give me consistently more damage with a static +2 to damage and Action Surge sounds nice too. Combat Superiority sounds almost too good to be true. Monk's purity of body, +5 movement and 1d8 increase from 1d6 seems kind of meh in comparison. Am I missing something or should I just jump right into Fighter next level?

[Zetanio]

I would reallocate all of your levels into one class and be reallllllllllly strong.

I don't understand the multiclass jack of all trades situation. Also your stats are ridiculous.

[Souj]

As far as multiclass goes, I go for more entertainment value than min/maxing for games in general and I play with close friends who aren't super serious about that stuff either. Of course, I've never tried it any other way in D&D. Played like 5 hours worth of a 4th ed game before that fell apart then they changed it to this one.

As far as stats being ridiculous, I assume that's just a product of how the DM had us do stats at the beginning. There was a lot of roll x die x amount of times and drop x lowest scores. I don't remember all too well about that.

[Zetanio]

You roll 4 die 6 times and drop the lowest usually. That's a ridiculously high average stat block though.

Anyway, my point was splitting out past two classes ends up sacrificing a lot of damage and utility in higher levels. The top tiers of spells/attack bonuses/abilities are farrrrrrr stronger than most.

A great example in this case would be Monk. You'd be Monk 16->17, you jump to 1d10 base damage attack. You'd have 55-60ft of movement based on your race, you'd have another +4 to ability scores (12/16), if you were Open Hand monking you'd get Quivering Palm, which is instadeath or 10d10 necrotic damage. That's just with basic leveling up, no feats, no min-maxing.

[BaneTheBrawler]

One of the many reasons I like Maroo's system. Multiclassing isn't such a steep penalty. You still miss out on powerful capstones, but whatever concept you're going for is still powerful at 20th level.


anyway, yeah, generally sticking to one class and specializing hard leads to a much stronger build. My GM for Strange Aeons is learning what that means from behind the screen. We've got 6 characters, all specialists with some secondary purpose. Even after he's adjusting for our new CR, there's not a check in the campaign we haven't cleared by 10+, and the encounters have been a cakewalk... admittedly, in large part because we're being very cautious about spell expenditure and resting. A horror campaign putting the players on high alert!? Who knew!

The big exception to that is prestige classes. By their nature they require multiclassing, so they often make the tradeoff much more attractive. Advancing your spell levels (!!!), or adding scaling abilities, powerful capstones, etc.

How are you playing? Flurries of attacks, glass cannon, not-so-glass cannon, tanky, mobile bitchslap platform, pewpew, etc? It's a bit late to start powergaming on this character, but getting a feel for how you actually play would help us give advice.

[Zetanio]

Cautious players? Sounds like your DM needs to dump you into a fighting pit or stop letting you rest.

My players were being timid about spell slots and healing so I just started attacking them while they slept. Stole their healing potions, grabbed a horse. They've since stopped letting "evil" linger.

5E is pretty skewed towards pure/dual classing these days. 3.5/PF is muchhhhh better for it. 8/9th level spells are far too good to ignore and once the NPC's start using em, your defensive stats won't matter much.

[BaneTheBrawler]

yeah he's a novice GM so i'm sure he'll start doing that eventually. i might even prod him in that direction; i want him to have fun too.

[Souj]

I'm far more interested in the idea of DMing, even before I played a session of d&d. Not having played kind of puts a damper on that, even though I knew the basics. I've even made an outline for a campaign when I was bored at work one day, though there's still some details that need adding lol

[Greatguardian]

Do any of y'all use D&D beyond, and if so are you familiar with the Legendary Bundle they're putting out? One of my groups is thinking of pitching in together to buy it. I only own a player handbook so access to a bunch of online resources sounds neat, but I have no idea how to gauge the practical value of the source materials or how easy it would be to allow the whole group to access everything.

[Zetanio]

Do any of y'all use D&D beyond, and if so are you familiar with the Legendary Bundle they're putting out? One of my groups is thinking of pitching in together to buy it. I only own a player handbook so access to a bunch of online resources sounds neat, but I have no idea how to gauge the practical value of the source materials or how easy it would be to allow the whole group to access everything.

Yes. I bought it with my players. It is INCREDIBLY useful. The website is awesome and they just redesigned the character page to be very intuitive and easy to use.

Keep in mind though, of my players, 3 are using it full time while we're playing and 2 are not. They keep track of all items in it and I will drop stuff into their bags as we go so we utilize a lot more than just the books.

Having the combined access for everyone allows people to flesh their characters out further, read more of the lore, and allows the DM a lot more access to monsters/stories/stats/npcs etc.

[Zetanio]

So to have everyone get access, one account gets a master tier subscription (5.99 a month). This allows you to share all content purchased on that account.

You buy the Legendary package (There is a Critical Role discount of some kind that will save a LOT of money)

You create a campaign that everyone joins and has sharing enabled.

[Greatguardian]

That sounds pretty awesome. Thanks!