The General D&D thread

5E does indeed have vicious mockery. It is a cantrip. Wis save to avoid 1d4 psychic damage and disadvantage on next attack roll.

Any bard that doesn't take Vicious Mockery is a failure as a bard and should have their bardic license taken away.

edited 4th Oct '15 9:20:31 PM by TheyCallMeTomu

We're using the beta rules. :| I'm too poor to buy two-hundred dollars' worth of rulebooks and too lazy to pirate them.

I remember in one fantasy series, the element of earth had strong ties to necromancy and that didn't seem like a stretch to me.

Then ... how is he playing a bard?

OH! Not the free version, the BETA version. Right right. Okay, carry on. Well, I just described Vicious Mockery to you. Wisdom save negates, deals 1d4 damage, and they have disadvantage on their next attack roll. I forget the range, so you can pretend it's "they can hear you" :P

Wizards should use Scorching Burst then, they removed it from the actual game :P

edited 5th Oct '15 8:07:07 AM by TheyCallMeTomu

There should be a version of Vicious Mockery that is exactly the same, still does the same psychic damage and everything, but instead of insults it's based around telling puns so bad they cause mental damage.

You could always just flavor it that way.

So, my 5e players encountered their first boss battle that was made up of multiple bosses at once. At least one of them bitched the whole way through. It was only three enemies though.

I've got the statblocks for the bosses in my recap (scroll down to the bottom). I was trying to design basically an enemy party that worked well together. I think it worked out pretty well.

So, wait, Sword guy deals 2d6 damage? not 2d6+4? I guess monster design in 5E doesn't explicitly say "yeah, you have to use statmods for damage" but it's pretty implicit!

Creating monsters to match CR is way more complicated in 5E than in 4E, and way more precise than 3E was, so I can no longer simply eyeball things. Lame. Oh well, most important point is that there was no TPK~

Taunt feels to me like it should either not allow a saving throw, or it should last longer. Either that, or it should be a bonus action. Compare to the Goad mechanic of the fighter, or possibly even the sentinel mechanic.

Joli's reaction ability needs a trigger to specify when it happens.

Wand of Teleportation, eh? Disarming Attack is really useful in situations like that.

"Legendary Reactions?" Interesting house rule mechanic I suppose, though I'd say it goes against the spirit of 5E (which explicitly tried designing things so that you only ever use one reactionary effect per round-even legendaries specifically only use their legendary actions at the end of another creature's turn).

There! I have taken down your enemies! Muaa haa haa!

...Is there any plausibly applicable use of Prestidigitation in a combat scenario? :/ I'm honestly starting to worry that our bard is gonna be completely useless for the first session or two, and I don't even know if he'll do that much better than the rogue as far as being useful out of combat. Hell, and the rogue's a glass cannon; the barbarian might end up carrying them through everything else.

Fucker takes the most useless-sounding spells on the list and doesn't even want to know what they do...
Maybe he thinks he's gonna lean on his dragonborn breath attack like I leaned on Runequest's shapeshifter's racial ability in his campaign (Hey, if I can either cast one one-target, nearly-no-damage spell or turn into a rhino, guess what? I'm gonna take the rhino every time, because that does something. I asked for a changeling mage, and got a superdruid with a limited-uses Chilly Breeze instead).

edited 7th Oct '15 8:54:13 PM by Knowlessman

Clearly, your bard doesn't want to play in a campaign that is just a series of combat encounters. They want to do other things. Combat isn't everything.

I dunno. He's played enough stuff and has the kind of attitude that I'm pretty sure he didn't pick those because he planned to make great use of them. He also refused to start with armor.

...He's also my roommate. :|

Thinking of telling him about Vicious Mockery and just giving it to him. That much oughta help something.

And I have told the players that the whole campaign isn't going to revolve around combat, but the first couple sessions kinda will. I'm going to bullshit the rest as I go, but try to put actual opportunities to roleplay in as much as I think I can.

At least Bardic Lore is nigh-guaranteed to come in handy, given how I plan to... plan... the next parts of the campaign.

edited 7th Oct '15 10:03:42 PM by Knowlessman

Re: Prestidigitation: You could... somehow trick an enemy into step onto an unlit campfire, and then light it unearth them? That's the best I can think of.

'Not focusing on combat' doesn't strike me as the problem here, though- no amount of focus on roleplaying will help a caster who doesn't even know what his spells do.

I once used prestidigitation and copious amounts of alcohol to burn down the building we were fighting in.

Yes, a spark into powder barrels. There's also the use of putting sparkling symbols on your enemies to help aim at them clearly.

What if you add sparks/light to arrows, in effect making tracer arrows?

Is there a need for that ? Arrows are slow enough to be tracked by eye.

The problem with prestidigitation is that, anything that can be done with it, can be done without it. It doesn't help action economy, it doesn't really help with range, it doesn't really have a meaningful impact. It just looks cool.

Or, it can be used to win bar bets to generate some extra coin and pick up bitches.

Unless you class as a Mystic Pimp in which case you can, apparently, summon bitches.

Okay so yesterday I had the most fun I've had with Dn D yet.

The campaign was a 5e rendition of a Dark Souls inspired world, with me being a late addition as a barbarian. I'm level 6, while the highest guy in the party is level 9. We had a rogue, me, a paladin, a hexer (special kind of caster in the campaign, they cast great spells but damage themselves), and a sorcerer? later on.

When I joined the campaign, the group was separated for reasons. I found the rogue alone, and introduced myself to him by stabbing a monster that was accosting him to death in a rage. Truly, we met how we meant to go on. When the party met back up after a bit I performed a hurricane attack against a group of undead and killed three of them in one turn, with the rest of the party finishing up. We took a break, and I got my upgraded weapon. Sick.

Then we went to a new area to find an ember to upgrade the blacksmith's forge so we can get better weps. I approved of this venture, and we arrived. The rogue naturally went forwards first, but I didn't give a shit so I kept walking forwards without a care in the world, whatever pussies dared challenge me and my manliness didn't stand a chance anyways.

The rogue, still a bit ahead of me, bumps into this NPC rogue chick who was here to hunt the undead. He and her chat for a bit, and after she fucking obliterates a passing zmbie, I challenge her to a manly competition to see who can kill more things. She accepts, and I hop to work.

Even though she had a range advantage with her pistol, I could move very far, and kept an edge over her on the kill count. As I reached about my 5th undead, something purpleish blue came cutting past me, and it hurt like a bitch. It was a MASSIVE half-magic arrow! I, manly I may be, have no resistance against magic attacks so I get the fuck behind a wall and go kill a few undead on the other side of it, with the NPC rogue following.

Me and her take a moment to chat. She asks how many points I think whoever shot that arrow is worth. I say about ten. She agrees, and we split up again.

I mull around a bit, as the party is still way behind me, and eventually I find myself having looped around the boss monster and am behind it. The area is VERY dark, but occasional lightning strikes illuminate the boss just long enough to see that it's a giant motherfucking monster in a suit of black armor with a ballista!

I'm currently behind it. After I finish killing the undead over there, giving the group a chance to catch up, I charge towards the boss and start attacking it, with the NPC rogue having already started scuffling with it. I'm not afraid of you, ballista armor guy!

After we both engage, the team shows up, with the appropriate people surrounding the boss with me. The paladin backs me up, as does the sorcerer and rogue. We all start beating the boss down, especially the rogue who fired an arrow-based fucking rocket every round, but it's attacks HURT. What with us being so close, it can't shoot us with it's ballista, instead having to roundhouse kick us until it activated an Ao E attack that dealt 10 damage every time it's the boss' round.

This all adds up to the hexer trying to go into MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE and critting themselves. The paladin has to bail and go fix them up, and the NPC rogue and sorcerer have both backed off. That leaves me, alone, biting the bullet and hacking away on the boss, making sure that the rogue still gets his sneak attack damage.

Then, the best thing happened. The NPC rogue tells me to hold my axe above my head. I comply, and she jumps off a pillar, onto my axe, and then shoots the boss in the fucking FACE. After that, I chop into it just one more time and it dies.

Me and the rogue look at each other and laugh, as it seems the competition has ended in a draw. We shake hands, and then all take a break after the long fight.

Basically 11/10 would play again

edited 10th Oct '15 9:40:11 PM by ShadowDimentio

Just putting this link here; it's for funny moments, for which maybe the above isn't most suited, but there's bound to be an Awesome Moments thread around here somewhere.

At any rate, good on ya!

And in other news, I wasn't wrong about the bard. :/ He quite literally spent the whole fight hiding in a basement while the barbarian and my emergency DMPC fighter (the rogue had to cancel because reasons, but should hopefully be good for next week) cleaned house.
Since I have recently acquired the official 5th rulebooks, I decided to restat their characters for it, adjusting whatever needed adjusting. The barbarian basically just ended up slightly tweaked from the ability changes, but after talking to the bard about purposeful uselessness, roleplaying, and what I felt I was equipped to DM, he decided to make a whole new character.
...Said new character is a tiefling warlock with a 20 Charisma whose eldritch blast hits with +7 for 1d8+5 at 300 feet (Also leveled them both up to 4, so the math is legit; he took two Invocations that buff the blast). :|

Well, at least I can railroad a warlock. Legitly, I just now thought of a way to ensure that his character goes along with the second encounter.
Still, though, I'mma have to buff up the second combat encounter by a lot. Well, I was going to have to do that regardless, considering the ease with which the barbarian and fighter got through the goblins, but now I have to keep in mind the kind of damage they'll be doing. 24 HP is kinda not gonna cover the main boss, caster or not.
Also gonna have to meet up with the rogue to restat her character; gotta remember that.

EDIT: Oh, and he has Scorching Ray, which was the OP spell Tomu was talking about and which Wizards actually left in. Hell, they boosted its range, too.

edited 10th Oct '15 10:40:05 PM by Knowlessman

Be careful with the buffing. From what I understand, the line between 'the party wins without taking damage' and 'one of the party members dies' is pretty thin in 5e.

edited 10th Oct '15 10:57:24 PM by Gilphon

True; the barbarian did get brought down to 11 from 35 with the goblins and fireballs. :/
...Oh yeah, the goblins' leader had a (homebrewed) wand of (nerfed) fireballs that the barbarian barely managed to not destroy (he picked his teeth with it, and I was kinda hoping he'd snap it for the humor of it), so I gotta account for that as well. ...On the upside, they'll probably blow the last charge without knowing better, so I won't have to worry about it for the rest of the campaign. :]

Mark you, you don't die at negative bloodied in 5th, you die at negative max (or three death save fails), and they'll have a druid NPC with them, so I'm not terribly worried. ...Oh yeah, gotta upgrade him, too.

Scorching Ray isn't that big of a deal. 6d6 single target for a 2nd level spell isn't big; compare to a monk's 1d8+1d4+8 or so (15) and it's about twice as much, but it's a spell slot. Pre-nerf, the 10th level evocation feature added Int Mod to all three rays but now it's (arguably) one.

The spell I was talking about was Scorching BURST, a cantrip that did damage in a small localized area; it's one of only two cantrips (excluding Eldritch Blast see below) that can deal damage to multiple targets; Acid Splash can, but those targets have to be adjacent.

However, starting 5th level, your warlock's gonna be dealing 2d8+10 damage, since he gets 2 blasts per casting. This, of course, scales at the same rate that Fighters get extra attacks per attack action.

You only die at negative max if you're reduced to that in one shot. 5E doesn't track negative HP, so the only way to kill someone is to keep forcing them to autofail death saves. Which is pretty easy since any damage while unconscious does it, but all the same.

edited 11th Oct '15 8:19:11 AM by TheyCallMeTomu

Scorching Ray is a big deal if you're a fire dragon sorcerer, you get to add your CHA modifier to each beam. It turns it from a pretty good spell to god tier.

Actually you don't : The damage bonus applies to one damage roll of a spell, not multiple rolls.

edited 11th Oct '15 9:58:33 AM by Aetol