Arven’s Refraction

So my friend is playing a 3rd level wizard for my game, and loves the various color and prismatic spells, and wants to make a wizard themed around them. But other than color spray, he’s pretty strapped for early options. So I thought I’d make him a spell.

I understand that a similar spell, Elemental Bane, is 4th level, concentration and only single target for 2d6 instead of vulnerability, but I thought I could balance that with less range, random damage types and only one hit, instead of it hitting on every turn for the full 1 minute like Elemental Bane. Still, if it’s overtuned I also considered adding a material cost, making it concentration, or even it afflicting yourself with a random vulnerability as well.

In case it’s considered under tuned, perhaps reduce the damage types, or increase the cone size?

Just looking for some feedback.

Hey y'all! I'm Bill, a DM of three years and player for just as long. A group of fellow D&D nerds and I have been running a Discord server called Altrole, where we teach free courses that cover all the basics of D&D. Our courses cover everything from making a character, to combat, to even learning how to DM! Once you learn a bit, we have an LFG area to group up with other new players and new-player friendly DMs to get into your first TTRPG experience with other newbies! We've been doing this for over 3 years now, and have helped over 500 groups learn and begin playing D&D! While based in NA, we have instructors and groups from all around the world to make sure courses & games are being run at a variety of timezones

Whether you're brand new to the hobby, or an experienced player wanting to help others, join us with the link below!

https://discord.gg/altrole

I'm playing a game where I'm a Large-sized Centaur (only changed the size, nothing else) and I'm now curious on what size it would be.

For now I said 2.55m/8'8", but would that be somewhat accurate?

Me and my group are starting a new campaign and I will be playing a centaur ranger (fey wanderer). Our DM apporoved a few replacement features in the optional feature manager, "deft explorer" being among them. Deft explorer grants me this in particular: "Your walking speed increases by 5, and you gain a climbing speed and a swimming speed equal to your walking speed."

My question is: how would you roleplay a climbing/swimming speed of 45 ft. as a centaur? I dont want to give up this feature, but Im having trouble coming up with a reasonable description/rp solution of how the heck would a horse climb to begin with, let alone at the speed of 45 ft. :D

Hi, so like the title says I'm a massive noob when it comes to playing DnD but I've consumed far too much content for my own good.

I've been tossing an idea for a video game character (that I'm making) around for a lot longer than my interest in DnD, and I think I've found a really nice thematic combination _within DnD_ and just need some opinions, mainly on if this is even a feasible build.

Anyway, here's my character's backstory:

Leorik is a half-elf, born to a human mother and elf father, the latter of whom left well before his birth. His mother was a fighter within the Harper organization, but wasn't around much as a child and teen due to the nature of her calling. Because of this, he spent most of his childhood being cared for by his Grandfather, a humble yet sagely wizard. He often enjoyed watching the beautiful colors and magical swirls emanating from his grandfather's magical tome.

In his early twenties, both his mother and his grandfather died suddenly. His mother during a failed attempt to protect royals, and shortly thereafter his grandfather peacefully in his sleep. From them, he inherited his mother's raven-color longsword and his grandfather's tome. To his surprise, the tome was empty despite what he'd witnessed as a child, save for a single quivering line scrawled on the first page: "Now it's your time to write your own story."

Three years have passed and he's heard through rumors and whispers that the battle his mother died in may have been doomed to fail from the start. Not only that, but the tome he was bequeathed may hold deeper secrets than at first was apparent. So now he has two callings: unravel the mystery of his mother's death, and discover what secrets his grandfather's tome possesses. And who was his father???

Remember, I've had this idea in my head for awhile, well before my interest in DnD, so I've added in his mother's association to fit the Forgotten Realms theme. Now, here's my idea for the build, because frankly it sounds super interesting to me thematically:

A multi-class Eldritch Knight / School of Scribes Wizard.

My character would start out as a Fighter (because his mother's longsword) and discover a few spells that revealed themselves within the tome (becoming an Eldritch Knight), mostly ones that would protect himself and others. Later, he would decide to walk in his grandfather's footsteps and vow to fill the tome with new stories and ideas and magical teachings (School of Scribes Wizard).

The way I'm thinking about this, assuming I'd ever take this to level 20, he'd be Level 6 Eldritch Knight, Level 14 School of Scribes Wizard. Gives me plenty of tankiness and martial prowess, while not stunting my wizardly abilities too severely.

Anyway, is there anything inherently off about this kind of build? Anything I ought to keep in mind about this kind of combination? I'm not super focused on optimization at this point (see: noob), but more on if this would even be a feasible build for a campaign.

All opinions are seriously welcomed!

So, I skinned an already dead Goblin, because we suspected it might’ve been the skinwalker we searched for (dumb idea we know). Everyone agreed on it and our DM found it very funny too.

I play a paladin in our fairly fresh campaign and haven’t sworn an oath yet. Now, my DM came up to me and told me to choose a god fairly soon, so she could decide on what punishment dawns on me.
I wasn’t aware I could be punished for I did before my oath, since I am playing a paladin for the first time.
What can I do? Or is there any deity that wouldn’t want my head for doing what I did?

Will preface by saying this is mostly for fun, and not an actual major issue I find with the game. Just something that I think could spark some fun discussion.

Dnd has a lot of skills, not all created equal. Perception investigation and stealth are all incredibly useful and appear very often, while there are some other skills that are supposedly held up to a similar standard but are comparably very niche (Animal Handling immediately springs to mind).

If you were adding any skills to the list, what would you want to add? Is there a missing niche among the skills that do exist that you think should be added as an optional proficiency?

Secondly, and arguably less interestingly, are there any skills that you think feel out of place? It's very easy to say that if we start removing skills, that any skill can be removed and we can just use ability scores, but that's not really what I'm looking for here. I think more options is far more interesting than less in terms of skills (look at some other systems with many skills such as call of cthulu for example), but I do believe there are some justifications for certain base game skills to be removed or reworked. Animal handling feels like its significantly more niche than all other skills in the base rules in my opinion, for example (and should arguably be a charisma skill too but that's another can of worms, and my table as well as many others allow for uncoupling of stats and skills, such as the famous using strength for intimidation)

Edit: Please also do the same for tools, instruments, gaming sets etc!!

We've all seen it—people creating some divide between "roleplaying" and "combat," or talking about roleplaying in combat as if the two were inherently different from one another. Questions about how to get their players to "roleplay more" are common.

Well, let's just state my main point upfront: it's all roleplaying. Everything you do.

Yes, even the warlock that says "I cast eldritch blast," rolls their attacks, and then ends their turn. That's roleplaying. The barbarian who says "I rage and hit the guy with my axe" is roleplaying. The player who, when presented with a character they don't trust, says "I wanna do an insight check" is roleplaying too.

Roleplaying is literally just playing a role. It doesn't mean "spouting paragraphs of purple prose," which is often what people mean when they ask about how to roleplay better, especially "roleplaying in combat." Grognard the Fighter choosing to attack an orc instead of an ogre is roleplaying, whether he describes his ancestral blade sinking into the foul beast's spleen, releasing a spray of blackish-green blood as he pulls it loose or just says "I attack that guy. 17 to hit, 8 damage."

In either case, he's playing a role. But that's all academic—knowing that fact doesn't change the fact that some folks want more thespianism, they're just using an incorrect word to describe what they want.

That's a problem for one very simple reason: it creates a culture of expecting players to be ready with a monologue, flowery description of action, or otherwise act like a theatre kid in order to be considered "good roleplayers." A common reason people desire these flowery descriptions is because they feel it makes the "story" better. It can, there's no mistake there. A person with a good grasp on writing can paint a scene with their words and make even something mundane enjoyable to experience.

But it isn't necessary to tell a good story in an RPG. RPGs aren't about writing paragraphs of descriptive text, they're about taking actions in a fictional world and seeing what happens if you succeed or fail. It's an extreme example to highlight the point, but consider the following two scenarios:

#Scenario 1: Descriptive, but Boring

Gary the Wizard wants to go shopping. He and the GM launch into a 20-minute dialogue between Gary and the shopkeeper, discussing the man's wares and prices, haggling, and ultimately Gary buys 50 feet of rope after multiple minutes of pointless, but engaging, dialogue.

#Scenario 2: Flat, but Consequential

Grognard the Fighter, Gary the Wizard, and Jesús the Cleric are being attacked by an ogre and three orcs. The ogre managed to get to Gary and is menacing him, while two orcs harry Jesús and one engages Grognard. Grognard says "I move away from my orc—yeah, I know, opportunity attack—and attack one of the orcs on Jesús."

In the first scenario, people might be entertained by the dialogue, but anyone who's played in a group with long shopping scenes will know that some folks just don't have the patience for it and would rather say "I wanna buy these things. Can I just take the gold off my sheet?" The scene may have been entertaining, but it accomplished nothing of note and could have been skipped without a problem.

In the second scenario, Grognard was faced with three choices.

1. He could prioritize his own immediate safety, dispatching his orc before helping his friends.
2. He could help Gary with the ogre, as that's the most dangerous threat.
3. He could help Jesús with his orcs, because even though they're less dangerous, losing the cleric is even more dangerous

No matter what he chose, a story and personality traits have arisen. In the scenario he helped Jesús, which shows that he's not afraid to take a hit for his friends and that he has a good tactical mind. Gary might get annoyed at him, which could prompt a scene on its own of Gary confronting Grognard, or it could prompt Gary to be less helpful towards Grognard in future encounters. Gary might even die as a result of Grognard's choices, leaving him and Jesús to deal with that, which would lead to more choices which would lead to more "story" being told—all without a single line of flowery, purple prose. The same is true of any other course of action he might take.

It's the actions we take, not how well we describe them, that has the most impact on the story being told.

tl;dr: Focus less—don't ignore, but focus less—on wanting your players to deliver descriptive flourishes and monologues, focus more on building a story based on the actual actions your players take. One is, essentially, decoration, while the other is the foundation your game stands on. It's better to hone your fundamental skills in storytelling than to try and gild the lily.

If you can do both, great, but don't call descriptive narration "roleplaying" because it's not. It's icing on the cake.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

While it's sad that last edition's PHB had the warlord in it and this one's doesn't given how fun the class was, at least creators like Kibblestasty and Laserllama have had some really solid cracks at it. The same is true for several others like the psion, but there are plenty that have slipped through the cracks not to mention classes like artificer which may as well be an entirely different class now.

What have you enjoyed in the past that can't be done in 5e? And bonus, what homebrew version have you played that have scratched that itch?

My players are totally brainless at times, for the last 4 sessions they were trying to learn where their enemy "Palaven" was hiding, and to do that they made a deal with a bunch of witches. In the end they failed the quest, started litteraly insulting the coven to their faces, and the witches cast the spell "contact other plane", for the intestines of one of the players. One questions was wasted by the witch, and the other four? A player decided to recreate the scene from the dnd movie, and no one stopped him... they killed the witches, dont know where Palaven is, and failed 2 other quests by just not caring i guess. Does anyone know how to punish players who do this? They act like they know that eventually they will find him, since its just a game.

By that I mean, the tiers of:

Mundane weapon

Silvered weapon

Adamantine weapon

Magic weapon

I feel like in most games, it's most common to go directly from mundane weapons to magic weapons. The use cases for the intermediate weapons are so niche (devils, lycanthropes, golems, objects), and magic weapons do just as well against those, apart from objects.

Am I right in thinking that most games just have you go directly from mundane to magical, without those intermediate weapon types?

Edit: I realize that there's no such thing as "tiers of weapons" in the game, that's just how I'm framing this progression of stronger and better weapons.

I'm just curious. I'm in two campaigns right now and they are very different.

The game I DM is now on level 18 (though we skipped levels 15-17 due to plot and started at level 3) and everyone is playing their starting characters. We have a ranger/rogue and a wizard/bloodhunter that were in the game from the very beginning, and two players that joined later. One of the original players retired a character when it got hit with a serious debuff due to his stupidity, and later left the game due to group drama. The only actual death we had was another player, whose monk heroically sacrificed himself to save the empress of a nation from coup. It was one of the best sessions we ever had, and the player left the game soon after due to becoming extremely busy with work. I like this game because characters have a long story going on, got attached to many NPCs and a lot of the game world revolves around them by now.

I'm also a player in Icewind Dale campaign and we have a party of four. The only one who plays his starting character is the ranger, the rest of us are on number 3 and expect it to increase each session. In the very first session, we witnessed the death of an npc that was traveling with us to an unlucky roll and it should have prepared us for what was to come. I died in session 5 to a random encounter on the road, then in session 8 by falling into effectively bottomless pit. Player A died in session 2 because the ranger went berserk (backstory curse) and killed him, then recently got frozen to death in one hit from an ice giant skeleton. Player B was imprisoned for a few days in session 14, so he took a backup character into a dungeon with us. He died that session because we set cobwebs on fire and almost tpk'd by choking on the smoke. Next session, his original character returns after paying a fine and that very session dies after we take in a refugee woman to our camp who turns out to be a succubus. Dies to one roll of her drain ability. The only one who persists is the ranger who dies a little bit every time he witnesses one of his comrades passing. On average we seem to have 1 death every 3 sessions.

This game has certain charm to it, because we truly feel like we're in a cold, desperate place and death lurks at every corner. I think it's a mix of RAW brutal module and starting at 1st level.

What about your games? How many characters have you gone through? What's the way you like it?

Hey

How would I go about building this class(specifically the oblivion version) in DnD if at possible wether it's a multiclass or a pre existing class that comes closest

https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Battlemage

The Grung have poison variants that produce some amusing and potentially debilitating effects, such as the ones that make you eat all your rations or dive into the nearest pond. I love these little guys and how goofy their status effects are, so I wanted to make a few more to go with the existing ones. I was hoping to make Silver, Pink, Brown, and Indigo Grung.

Please share any ideas you have for similarly goofy (but effective) status effects for these froggy boys.

I've never played one before and I have a dark back story for her, I guess tips a tricks to get the best experience out of the class. So best spells and set up for a schizophrenic half elf sorcerer

So, my DM is running his campain and he bring White Plume Mountain as a Side Quest to our party. In the end he let my Hexblade Warlock keep attune/pact Blackrazor but he make some changes, start: +1, the "haste" only come when i get half HP and Devour Soul he change to 50% of HP..still strong so he change again to: every time Devour Soul is activate i gain (level+cha mod+prof) of Temp HP and provide all benefits. Now we reach lvl 10 and every time i kill a Creature with a soul i gain 18 temp hp... The problem is...most of the time this temp hp gone super fast, one round and fight against strong creatures is strange cuz the hp is gone...i cant "refull" the sword hability and the creature dont fall easy. Im complaning too much? The sword still amazing but i feel kinda odd. Gimme yours opinion. Thanks for your time

I am running a campaign and the next leg of the journey will involve completing a "dungeon" for each of the four elements, earth, air, fire and water.

Also, there will be bridge tasks to link to the next element. So for Earth to fire the bridge would be lava and fire to air could be lightning of fire to water steam.

Any ideas for things in each dungeon or tasks related to the bridge from one element to an other? I'm going to make a unique dungeon for each element and thought I'd are what ideas the community might have.

So I’m creating a game to dm for the first time, and I was going to have the players start at level 3, and I was wondering what challenge rating the monsters should be. I don’t want to kill them all, but I also don’t want the encounters to be too easy either

Haven't played a Rogue in a while. Was thinking about playing one in a one shot soon. Just read that they're proficient with longswords... yet longswords aren't finesse weapons so they cannot use them for Sneak Attack. Why do they have this? Wouldn't it make more sense for them to be proficient with scimitars and blow guns?

My players will fight an angel in a world leader meeting and they are very high level, it’s going to be one of the few fights that I will be able to weaken them without outright make them useless since they are a paladin, fighter and an artificer with a gun. It’s probably the third time between 20 levels that they will encounter it so I don’t feel bad to give them this puzzle to solve (save the world leaders while fighting minions or go straight for the angel and when the dead magic drops protect the world leaders.

They will fight inside a dead magic zone and i thought to rule it as the dead magic zone doesn’t effect the angel and he can float or do sort of magical things, how would you rule it?

Also I wanted to ask One of my players plays a homebrew subclass of a fighter and it’s a Nazgûl pretty much with rings of his soul, will they be effected by the dead magic zone?

I am playing a swashbuckler rogue, rogues can apparentely start with a rapier, would it make sense to ask for a katana and have it be a flavor texted rapier that does slashing damage? I feel like asking for a finesse longsword would be too op, especially as a starter item.

Have a recent gaming experience you want to share? Experience an insane TPK? Finish an epic final boss fight? Share it all here for everyone to see!

Ask any simple questions here that aren't in the FAQ, but don't warrant their own post.

Good question for this page: "Do I add my proficiency bonus to attack rolls with unarmed strikes?"

Question that should have its own post: "What are the best feats to take for a Grappler?

For any questions about the One D&D playtest, head over to /r/OneDnD

Playing "The Wild Beyond the Witchlight" campaign goes from Levels 1-8, I will be hitting lvl 7 shortly. My stats are 8,14,14,10,12, 20; and without listening every spell I have mostly control and out of combat communication/utility spells; I have the Actor and Cartomancer feats. I have Boots of Elvenkind, Dagger+1, and Rhythm makers drum +1.

We recently hit an area in which my control spells are less effective and my group is taking on combats more often. This has led me to feel less useful and is some cases helpless in fights.

I'm looking for advice as to if I should: A) Stick with bard to lvl 8 and maybe just trade out some of my spells for something like Shatter. Pros: lvl 4 spells ASI and feat, both because DM likes the power fantasy, I will probably take Phantasmal killer(7) and dimension door(8) Cons: I'm not super excited about either spell, Idk if any of the feats excite me and my cha is already 20

B) Hexblade dip for 1 or 2 lvls Pros: survivability with shield spell and medium armor, plus a viable damage ability with EB and at lvl 2 gaining agonizing and repelling blast Cons: I'm not a Frontliner but I find I get targeted often in combat due to strong control spells so extra ac might be unnecessary. In line with this damage isn't a bards focus and I will almost never get value out of Cha weapons.

C) Other 1-2 lvl dip like clockwork soul to enhance what I'm already good at.

I'm new to DND and appreciate your input.

I've played dnd a bit in high school and for a semester in college, but I've never been the DM. I asked my friend group if they'd want to try and was expecting 3-4 to say yes, but I ended up getting most of the group excited to try. All but one are unfamiliar with Dnd.

I have 6 players and have been writing a one shot to see how they like it. Would it be better to split them into 2 sessions of 3 players? 6 feels like a lot and I feel like waiting in between turns and trying to field all the questions might take them out of the game. Advice welcome!

iv tried to do more roleplay in combat, "i fling a ball of hellish energy at the target" compared to "i cast eldritch blast"

or "i sink my blades in their flesh, going for the weak points in their armor near the neck" vs "i attack and use sneak attack"

when i try and use it, i feel like im slowing down combat encounters

what is the point of a superiority dice being a D6 or a d8 like I get I have so many charges I can use for my attacks but I don't understand why the dice is like eight sided what is the point

Imagine this: A wizard slays a kobald sorcerer, and his mysterious spellbook details a ritual that allows him to use the head of the dead kobald to gain a spell that the sorcerer could innately cast.

Now, I’m trying to get my DM on board with this idea, but I’m not too sure how exactly to balance it so my DM would be cool with it. I think there should be some costly component, but I feel like you all might have a couple ideas. (And I’m trying to get this implemented because he just never throws an enemy wizard against us, and not many scrolls)

If you are the Crimson Comrades please turn around and leave this thread!!

With that out of the way...

I've made four bespoke magic items for my players which are elemental themed (air/water/fire/earth) for reasons I don't need to go into here :)

I'd love some feedback on how powerful they are in comparison to each other - if anyone has any other suggestions thats fine too but it's keeping the power of each relatively the same i'm worried about; I don't want one character to think they ended up with a rubbish item. ######Air item made for a level 14 Sorceror (Wild Magic)

• resistance to Thunder and Lightning damage.
• a fly speed equal to their movement speed.
• you may apply any one metamagic you know for free to air spells cast (see list below). You may apply a second metamagic at normal cost, even if that combination is not normally allowed.
• +2 to all spell attacks and spell DCs for air spells.
• three times per day, resetting at dawn, you may cast any air spell on the list below regardless of whether you know it. You expend a spell slot as per normal.

(i'm not listing what I consider air spells here but basically exactly what you think makes sense I picked :P)

######Water item made for a level 12 Bard (Glamour)/2 Warlock, plays very supporty in style, gets downed a lot :P

• a swimming speed equal to their movement speed and the ability to breathe underwater.

• resistance to Cold damage.

• 15 charges for the following properties. The armour regains 1d8 + 4 expended charges daily at dawn.

•    Shield (appears as a blocking sheet of ice, 1 charge). 

•    Armour of Agathys (3rd level, 3 charges). 

•    Mass Healing Word (3 charges)

•    Mass Cure Wounds (5 charges)

•    Wall of Ice (6 charges)

• When you are reduced to 0 hit points, you can choose to have a wave of flowing water surround you. You regain 20 hit points and are lifted to your feet. Each enemy within 10 feet of you takes 2d6 cold damage. Each ally within 10 feet heals 4d6 damage. This property of the armour can't be used again until you finish a long rest.

######Earth item made for a level 9 Ranger (Gloom)/Rogue 3 (Phantom)/Druid 2 (Land), this was already a +2 finesse moonblade +1d6 radiant damage now having earth powers added

• +2 finesse longsword dealing 1d6 radiant damage (this is what it already does)
• the wielder gains Tremorsense to a range of 60ft.
• on a hit, as part of the same attack you may cast Erupting Earth at 5th level with the target at the corner of the area. Once this ability has been used it may not be used again until after a long rest.
• you may cast Earth's Mark (a bespoke spell that is basically Hunters Mark + Earth Tremor on the marked target only). Once this ability has been used it may not be used again until after a short rest.

######Fire item made for Level 8 Rogue (Thief)/6 Fighter (Champion), this was already a +1 Rapier of Speed

• +2 rapier
• you can make one melee weapon attack as a bonus action.
• resistance to fire damage.
• on a hit, the weapon deals an extra 1d6 fire damage.
• on a turn in which you action surge, the number needed for a critical hit is reduced by one and the fire damage dealt by this weapon increases to 2d6*.

on a hit, as part of the same attack you may cast Flame Strike with the target at the edge of the flame strike. Once this ability has been used it may not be used again until after a long rest.