D&D 5E Discussion

[DavidBVal]

Sure modern multiclassing systems make a lot of sense, are flexible and all. But nothing compares to dat feeling in 2nd edition when your dual class character finally reached the level where he regains all the powers from the 1st class... I'd welcome some broken weirdness like that for a change.

 

[Irenaeus]

Nonsense, mutliclassing is well balanced and fairly cool to pull off different flavors of characters.

Prove it with math, right now.

Make an interesting and valuable bard/paladin build that's at least got 80% of the functionality of one of the builds and 45% of the value of the other. This was possible in 3.5. Go. Now. Faggot.

Paladin 3/Valor bard 6+
You have all the basic paladin abilities and more spells slots to power divine smite than a single class paladin. Also all the basic bard ablities and two attacks from valor bard, so you're not behind a regular paladin in number of attacks. The tradeoff is no access to mid and high level paladin abilities such as the sweet auras, and you also get higher level bard spells 3 levels late.

That was actually his homework and now you've gone and done it for him.

 

[J1M]

What I had in mind is a bit of a dweeb - someone that could actually sell his soul for power over others.

That's what wizards are.

I never understood what warlock's concept was anyway. I pretend it doesn't exist, like I do with ching-ling monks.

It made sense in 3.5 when nobody else could endlessly cast spells. They were the 'longevity caster' with limited spell selection.

 

[Irenaeus]

Wait, I thought that was Sorcerers?

 

[J1M]

Wait, I thought that was Sorcerers?

They were even more sorcery than sorcerers.

Essentially they had a spell that acted as a basic attack the way a sword would, and as they leveled up had the ability to modify it in various ways. (Damage type, aoe shape, status effects, etc.)

 

[Irenaeus]

So they were Arcane archers?

 

[Lhynn]

So they were Arcane archers?

Sort of, they were blasters with a very limited spell selection. Wasnt a great class, but wasnt shitty either.

 

[Zero Credibility]

You can still be a dweeb with a high charisma score, You just never learned to be persuasive or use your natural charisma.
Warlocks use their charisma a lot, so i wouldnt recommend a low score, they need it for damage, DC and some other special abilities.

Hmm, I can certainly see an asshole high charisma character, but not sure about a dweeb high charisma. When I think of "dweeb", low charisma is pretty much the first thing that comes to mind. Wouldn't that be like trying to play a high strength weakling or a clumsy high dex char?

Anyway, I'm shelving my nerd cultist character as poor warlock material and now thinking of a half-elf high dex high charisma buxom adventuress. Start as a rogue for skills and a bit of sneak damage, then go all warlock - fey patron, blade pact. Was thinking of at least 3 levels of rogue to grab swashbuckler for some survivability through strike and dash attacks. Sneak damage is going to be low, but between hex and blade invocations it might still be worth it.

Way less effective than a simple range blast spamming fiend warlock might be, but that just sounds boring compared to an elusive bitch with a wicked blade.

 

[Lhynn]

Why even go full warlock? just get 3 levels of warlock for the darkness and the devils sight and go rogue with the rest.
Also go chain and get a familiar with invisiblity, his help action means youll get free advantage every round, meaning free sneak attack.

 

[Irenaeus]

You can still be a dweeb with a high charisma score, You just never learned to be persuasive or use your natural charisma.
Warlocks use their charisma a lot, so i wouldnt recommend a low score, they need it for damage, DC and some other special abilities.

Hmm, I can certainly see an asshole high charisma character, but not sure about a dweeb high charisma. When I think of "dweeb", low charisma is pretty much the first thing that comes to mind. Wouldn't that be like trying to play a high strength weakling or a clumsy high dex char?

Anyway, I'm shelving my nerd cultist character as poor warlock material and now thinking of a half-elf high dex high charisma buxom adventuress. Start as a rogue for skills and a bit of sneak damage, then go all warlock - fey patron, blade pact. Was thinking of at least 3 levels of rogue to grab swashbuckler for some survivability through strike and dash attacks. Sneak damage is going to be low, but between hex and blade invocations it might still be worth it.

Way less effective than a simple range blast spamming fiend warlock might be, but that just sounds boring compared to an elusive bitch with a wicked blade.

Maybe D&D was designed so that dweebs would fail in having a fey patron or blood pact with demons, since the fey and the demons would feel embarrassed in associating with such losers.

Thus the Charisma requirement.

Solution: Work on a different character concept.

 

[Zero Credibility]

Why even go full warlock? just get 3 levels of warlock for the darkness and the devils sight and go rogue with the rest.
Also go chain and get a familiar with invisiblity, his help action means youll get free advantage every round, meaning free sneak attack.

That could work too, though I'd prefer to have a full caster as main class if possible.

 

[Lhynn]

That could work too, though I'd prefer to have a full caster as main class if possible.

Why? its not like full casting is superior in this edition. Also probably wizard would be a better fit. 2 levels of rogue for light armor + cunning action + proficiency in a few cool skills and then go wizard 18. Its also int based which is good for some rogue skills.

 

[Zero Credibility]

Already made that wizard, thought to change something and never really looked at warlock before. As for why caster, dunno - in part probably my prejudice from previous versions: You are either a caster or a dirty peasant. Don't really care much about maximizing DPS or all that stuff as long as I can do my part in combat reasonably well, for me it's all about customization and cool toys that I could choose from, and casters still beat non-casters there, don't they?

 

[Lhynn]

Sort of, rogue thiefs can use consumables to very good effect, if you are into inventory management and all that shit youll probably love the sheer amount of possibilities it provides. Bards are probably the most flexible class in the game, they can do everything reasonably well.
Fighter eldritch knights are pretty great too, if you want flexibility with a martial class. Warlocks arent flexible at all, they have like 6 spells in total b level 20, their thing is that they recover after short rests tho. Warlocks of the chain pact get a lot of mileage out of their familiar, especially scouting and spying.
Overall you can go with any class or class combo and be competent in combat, because combat effectiveness is mostly tied to your proficiency, total level and action economy, and everyone is fairly equal on those terms.

 

[Irenaeus]

Bards need a nerf then.

 

[DavidBVal]

Agreeing with what Lhynn says. I don't think in this edition you need to worry too much about your character's "optimization", it's not easy to make a character that is completely useless unless you do it on purpose. As opposed to all the pitfalls and traps in 3E, it is very fool-proof, you can pretty much focus in what you want to play conceptually because most development paths will lead to capable characters one way or another.

 

[Zero Credibility]

Warlocks arent flexible at all, they have like 6 spells in total b level 20, their thing is that they recover after short rests tho.

Aye, I noticed that. They have a limited spell selection to begin with, can learn only about 20 of them at all (cantrips included), and only one per levels 6-9 (and those higher levels are cast once per long rest anyway). Half of their career they can only cast two spells before needing a short rest. And those can only be cast at max level, even if you don't need it, or the spell has no extra effect at all if cast at higher level - you can't "split" a slot to cast two lower level spells. And of course, unless the party has all the time in the world (in which case the DM is probably not doing his job) there is no guarantee that there will be a short rest between encounters. At which point warlock is reduced to spamming eldritch blast. Booooring.

But they do have invocations, which I think are an awesome idea. A kind of mini-feat that you can take several of and that can be used to customize your very own warlock. Sick of being a mobile cantrip artillery piece? Invocations can help change that. I wish more classes had something like that - instead of just leveling up and gaining the next ability from a table, you select one from a list of options that fits your concept best.

 

[DavidBVal]

Warlocks arent flexible at all, they have like 6 spells in total b level 20, their thing is that they recover after short rests tho.

Aye, I noticed that. They have a limited spell selection to begin with, can learn only about 20 of them at all (cantrips included), and only one per levels 6-9 (and those higher levels are cast once per long rest anyway).

Just to put this in perspective: not just the warlock, all spellcasters have very few slots compared to previous editions, typically just 1/level for high level spells. I like how they made each slot count.

 

[ShadowSpectre]

This thread is pretty dead. So, what campaign are you guys playing right now and your class?

I've been playing a homebrew campaign as a Wild Magic Sorcerer class, finally reached level 10 (started at 1).

 

[Lhynn]

We took a break from pnp for the winter. Too much work stuff to focus on this.

 

[Keldryn]

Oh man, NEVER sell your osul.

 

[Mystary!]

Well there isnt much to say, is there. Im glad they revised the Ancestral Barbarian, the previous version was shit. To lend others your resistence you had to forego your own


Starting a new campagin soon. Tempest cleric. Probably Vuman. Undeciced on feat. I've never played a caster before. Our latest campagin had like 1 concentration save in 6 months (no full casters and the spells where mostly instant) so Im not sure how useful Resilient: Constitution or Warcaster will be, but those are an option. Otherwise I'm keen on Magic Initiate for Booming Blade and Absorb Element and some other Cantrip for even more flavour.

Also I'm about to DM for some people at work that have never played before. Could be fun, or a total disaster.

 

[ShadowSpectre]

Starting a new campagin soon. Tempest cleric. Probably Vuman. Undeciced on feat. I've never played a caster before. Our latest campagin had like 1 concentration save in 6 months (no full casters and the spells where mostly instant) so Im not sure how useful Resilient: Constitution or Warcaster will be, but those are an option. Otherwise I'm keen on Magic Initiate for Booming Blade and Absorb Element and some other Cantrip for even more flavour.

We had a tempest cleric in our campaign and the guy playing him ended up making a new character. All around a lot of advantages, especially with channel divinity. He only really lacked in the skill checks but combat was ridiculous. (Then again, the guy also changes characters like he does underwear). It's a good pick if you think your party will end up gimped in combat for some reason. As for feats, I never really find anyone having to do concentration saves either if you have some front-line melee in the party. Interestingly enough, I realized that the Warcaster feat is useless with the Sorcerer class since you are proficient in con saving throws and basically become uninterruptible with the way concentration works.

 

[Mystary!]

We had a tempest cleric in our campaign and the guy playing him ended up making a new character. All around a lot of advantages, especially with channel divinity. He only really lacked in the skill checks but combat was ridiculous. (Then again, the guy also changes characters like he does underwear). It's a good pick if you think your party will end up gimped in combat for some reason. As for feats, I never really find anyone having to do concentration saves either if you have some front-line melee in the party. Interestingly enough, I realized that the Warcaster feat is useless with the Sorcerer class since you are proficient in con saving throws and basically become uninterruptible with the way concentration works.

Yeah, it's probably not worth a feat unless you benefit from all the effects, but being able cast spells on AoOs is neat.
Also depends on how pedantic the DM is with somatic components, but most seem to allow using the shield as a holy symbol so nothing I have to worry about.

 

[ShadowSpectre]

Very true, a lot of it really comes down to how the DM likes to play things out. I can see in the case of the cleric, if you have useful spells for a reaction then War Caster might be worth it if you plan to be in the thick of things during combat. Come to think of it though, our tempest guy went with Magic Initiate to get Booming Blade (because it is exceptionally good).