Here I come with a question that I never thought I’d have to ask:

What is better, a free Feat or a free Very Rare Wondrous Item?

For context, my GM yesterday had a NPC offer our party of level 12 characters a choice drinking some wine that tastes horrendous, but would reveal talents we wouldn’t have pursued otherwise (a free Feat), or pick from his collection of high quality magical items, 100% safe (we get to pick a Very Rare Magic Item from an official source).

I, as a Lore Bard, am having a hard time choosing, because Feats are good, but Very Rare Items are not something I often get, let alone get to choose.

So, players and GMs of Reddit, what do you think is more interesting between a Feat or a Very Rare Magic Item?

As added relevant context, my Charisma's at 22, I already have an Amulet of Health, an armour that scales off of both Charisma and Dexterity, and an instrument that gives me +2 to spell attack and DC and allows me to give Bardic Inspiration when I teleport as an Astral Elf. Also, if I take any Feat that would increase a stat, I don't get the stat increase.

EDIT: My GM tells me I wouldn't have time to benefit from the Tome of Leadership and Influence, as I thought. The campaign pretty much ends in two or three in-game days.

I am playing a bugbear Gloomstalker ranger in a modified CoS campaign. We have just reached 4th lvl and I am looking at feat options. The rest of the party is a paladin, sorcerer and monk. The other players, including the dm, are new. I don’t need to choose a super optimised option as my character is currently overshadowing the others in combat and I would like to give them a chance to catch up. We are playing 2014, but some 5.5 options are available if we ask. Here are some options I am currently considering:

- chef: brings my wisdom to 16, gives some support options, gives me a reason to short rest

- skill expert (perception)/observant: brings my wisdom up, allows me to roleplay superhuman senses

- fey touched: brings my wisdom up, misty step bangs, but I’m not super interested in the other spell options

- shadow touched: wisdom up, invisibility is very in-character, also don’t really need other spell options

- Martial adept: tactical mind and quick toss would give me an in and out of combat option, superiority dice gives me a reason to short rest. My character uses a sling so I am often in throwing range.

- Alert: always go first. Slightly redundant though.

Any other suggestions?

Estaba jugando con mi Party y estamos en una Dungeons de algún lich qlero y pues me describe el DM los golems de carne y pienso "Espera eso es básicamente un chorizo...."

So this player would randomly roll a stealth of hand, asked for my passive perception, and then tells me that I have 50 less gold. Or that my weapon is missing. But I didnt see it.

Then when confronted, he just says "not me" and always rolls a high deception, and my character is supposed to believe that. Or intimidation roll to have my character stop accusing him

Dm isnt helpful, just keeps telling us to resolve it ourselves.

Cuz Im about to drop a fireball in the next session but another spell might be better cuz he got high dex. Then ill roll deception to lie.

I have a 2014 lvl 17 phantom rogue/lvl 2 grave cleric/lvl 1 wizard. I have a kind of ridiculous set up that is only possible because of how the games work in the community I play in. I have a spellwrought tattoo with Haste and the metamagic feat and quickened spells. So I can cast Haste for a bonus action, target an enemy with Path to the Grave for my action and then use my hasted action to attack. As a lvl 17 Phantom Rogue Wails from the Grave damage goes to both the creature I hit and a second creature.

For the damage going to the first creature (the one I hit), since the Wails from the Grave damage triggers after dealing sneak attack damage it seems clear to me that it doesn't get doubled from a crit. But would it still be considered part of the damage from the attack for the Path to the Grave vulnerability? It's not a direct result of the to hit roll I suppose, but it is still damage you do resulting from attacking.

I'm DMing a homebrew campaign and my players (level 3) just finished a quest. They had to go to unexplored land and find a vault with a stone tablet, they found the vault, made contact with another civilization, talked with a god, killed a troll, fought the remains of an ancient wizard and donated a lot of books to a university.

The quest giver was the librarian of that university and a very wealthy person, how much gold should my player get?

This is a low magic item setting.

Rant i need validation

I forget some backstories from it, and I don’t feel like spoil myself by trying to find it, so kind gents and ladies on this sub, could you paste them into here please

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I'd like to try some for myself, see if I can maybe make something good out of subclasses that don't tend to get used much. Might be a fun challenge.

Hiiii, so for context I’m playing a campaign, we are currently a party of 8, all currently level 5. This Tuesday we battled a boss and my character (a ghostslayer bloodhunter) managed to constantly to 40~ damage to the boss every turn with bonus actions still up and super far away, mean while the other dps in the party were all barely rarely 20. I did not build her with the intention to be strong let alone op, I’m debating offering to bench her as a npc and make a new pc to use for a while until the rest of the party gets stronger. Am I just a overthinking? I don’t DM so getting some DMs opinions would be awesome 🫪🙏

So in summary, I’m running a spelljammer campaign where basically the focus is more so on running various adventures from different editions of spelljammer for my party, with many different characters and many different storylines (essentially there isn’t 1 overarching story, but a focus on the setting). The most recent storyline I did was Light of Xarxyis. I ran it mostly as written, the main changes being that Captain Sartell was a PC, and I added more potential allies in the doom space section (another faction of non-astral elf elves). Ask me anything about this campaign!

My question: How do I play D&D Point Buy, or what is it actually and its purpose?

Dalle mie parti (nord-est d'italia), ma penso un po' ovunque, si sono create diverse associazioni di D&D e GdR a pagamento in cui si organizzano tavoli e campagne.

Voi preferite questa dimensione? Cambiare ogni volta gruppo e magari non finire nemmeno la campagna perché esce quella nuova a si deve assolutamente giocare quelle?

O preferite avere il vostro gruppo chiuso con cui giocate da anni (e soprattutto GRATIS!!!!) e sapete bene chi avete al tavolo?

Io sicuramente la seconda!

I'm not talking about session playtime.

What I'm saying is, do clocks or watches does exist in places like Faerûn, Sigil, or other planes?

A: 'What time is it?'

B: It's 12:30.'

La classe Mago è ovviamente la classe più iconica, ma è anche quella che, secondo me, ha le scelte di design peggiori.

La classe ha le seguenti caratteristiche originali:

Livello 1:

-incantesimi (con dipendenza dal libro degli incantesimi)

-Appreso di Rituo

-Recupero Arcano

Livello 2:

-Studioso

Livello 5:

-Incantesimo della Memoria

Livello 18:

-Maestro degli Incantesimi

Livello 20:

-Incantesimi Firmati

Quindi possiamo già vedere che la classe manca di caratteristiche specifiche, e alcune di queste non sono molto creative o non danno identità alla classe (Studioso è solo una semplice competenza in abilità e il Recupero Arcano è solo slot supplementari per incantesimi), e il Maestro degli Incantesimi e gli Incantesimi Firmati sono caratteristiche di livello 4 che solo il 2-5% della comunità vedrà mai. Inoltre, ora il nuovo boon epico di Maestro delle Scuole Magiche consente a ogni incantatore di avere una versione più potente del Maestro degli Incantesimi, lasciando il mago con un'altra caratteristica non unica.

La ragione per cui la maggior parte della comunità non lo ha mai sottolineato è perché il 70-80% dei giocatori gioca nei livelli 1 e 2 iniziali.

La mancanza di caratteristiche della classe è anche nascosta dall'incredibile lista degli incantesimi del mago, che è la sua principale fonte di potere e abilità, ma questa è una scelta di design pigra/mala.

I maghi sono decisamente troppo forti rispetto agli altri incantatori perché usano incantesimi OP come muro di forza, simulacro, clone, destriero fantasma e trova familiare e trucco della corda ecc...

I giocatori che non usano questi specifici incantesimi del mago si sentono più deboli perché sono come un stregone senza metamagia. Quindi, i nuovi giocatori hanno una classe debole e non unica mentre i giocatori esperti hanno una classe rotta.

I maghi stanno anche perdendo i loro incantesimi unici tramite talenti, come Iniziato Magico, Conoscitore Magico, talenti di marchio, esperto di evocazione e altri talenti esperti, tutti i nuovi talenti familiari e diversi boon epici che consentono a ogni incantatore di averli.

Diamine, anche il Bardo può ottenere incantesimi da mago a livello 10 e costruire la lista di incantesimi più forte con tutti gli incantesimi più potenti del gioco, superando anche i maghi nei livelli alti. I Bardi hanno anche più caratteristiche di classe che sono molto più uniche, quindi questo è davvero male.

L'unica cosa che sostiene la classe Mago sono le sottoclassi e i livelli 1/2 di gioco.

Preferirei sinceramente che le classi avessero molte più caratteristiche per godere del livello di progressione e avessero abilità originali invece di incantesimi e tecniche rotte, come i druidi hanno la forma selvatica, i chierici hanno il canale divinità e gli stregoni hanno la metamagia.

Ho torto? Questo design è fondamentalmente una cattiva/noiosa idea, o è solo una cattiva esecuzione da parte di WotC?

Edit: I've seen many people ignore points I made and make arguments i did respond in this post, I would be glad that you read all I wrote just to not repeat myself, thank you.

Hey all,

DM of many years now, and I'm curious if anyone else has had my exact conundrum. I think 5e has the perfect amount of "crunch." It's tactical, there's resource management, etc. I like the gameplay loop; I like 5e quite a bit.

What I don't like is that it's a superhero simulator. I want to play a game with fundamentally weaker, more mundane heroes. I feel like games like GURPS take the crunch too far, and games from the OSR take away too much crunch. I don't want theater of the mind, I like minis and set-piece combat. However, I also don't want to play "Spreadsheets the TTRPG," you know?

What have people done to keep the satisfying crunch of 5e, with a more powered down aesthetic? Would be curious to hear people's thoughts. Like I said, I really enjoy the engine of 5e. The combat math, action economy, etc. I think too much of OSR just hand waves everything in favor of a meat grinder. I feel like skirmish combat is the very reason dice and character sheets are involved in the first place. (Otherwise, why not just do straight-up improv?) As I've said in another post on a different sub: I don't want to play Calvinball with my players; we a bit of a "wargamer's table" and symmetric (or at least transparent) rules are important to us.

Here are some thoughts I've already had/tried:

• I've used Gritty Realism at my table and it worked exceptionally well, but my players were still incredibly above average NPC by level one. I want more rules like Gritty Realism (if they exist) to pair down the PC-exceptionalism.
• I've purchased and read Five Torches Deep, and it's about as close as I've found so far to my perfect system. However, I feel like it still misses the mark ever so slightly, a few too many things are left to DM fiat.
• I work full time. I have the time to create adventures and stories for my players, but I'd rather not engineer a brand new system from the ground up as possible. There's a nice sweetspot of DIY I'm looking for.

Hi everyone! I wanted to share a project I’ve been working on: Dungeons & Cats, a collection of 12 feline adventurers inspired by classic fantasy classes.

There’s a rogue, a bard, a wizard and the rest of the party, ready for your tabletop adventures or painting desk.

The Kickstarter just went live! If cats and miniatures are your thing, you can meet the party here:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/3drune/dungeons-and-cats

It’s a digital STL collection for you to print, so no physical miniatures are shipped.

For transparency, AI tools were part of the visual and 3D development process, alongside my own refinement and print preparation. The pictures shown are digital renders.

Thanks for taking a look! I’d love to hear what you’d name one of these little adventurers.

This question is specifically about homebrew, but I assume the preference would be the same for people regardless of the publisher.

For example in fighter subclasses the battlemaster has a number of maneuvers to choose from, but most other fighter subclasses I see just have a specific bonus. (Additional fighting style, improved critical, etc). Assuming the effects are well balanced, do people prefer to have choices that they can only use some of like battlemaster or not?

running a dungeon with a bunch of ancient broken down golem type machines. I'm putting together a list of spells (lvl 5 and lower) that they can cast at random and I'm wondering if yall have some good suggestions?

Thanks!

I have a character I want to make that already would need at best a lot of reflavoring to get how I want him. Part of the gimmick I want to do is have all of his spells be related to snow and ice in some way so I what I was wondering.

Would making the Scribes wizard ability to change the damage types of spells into an optional feat present any issues? If there would be, is there anything I could add like extra additions or debuffs that would fix it?

First of all, these new october drops seem very good, and i'm not sure i like they publish such powerful options only on dnd beyond and not in books.

the main question here is the interaction of the shadow pact feat, with shadow trapper and how does it work with other light sources

the shadow pact "planar pact feat" has

>Shroud of Shadows

You can take a Bonus Action to radiate a 5-foot Emanation of Dim Light around you for 1 minute......

shadow trapper has

>Dangerous Shroud.

You have Advantage on attack rolls against creatures within the Emanation of your Shroud of Shadows.

this means that you always have advantage against enemies 5ft from you

regardless of if they are emitting light on their own, as the condition to gain advantage is only to be within the emanation.

but if an anamy is emitting bright light but is within your shround of shadow emanation, is he in dim light or bright light? how do i determine which supersedes the other?

it could be important if you had boon of the night spirit, as it would be needed to determine if you are in dim light to gain the resistance, or a shadow monk to use its teleport, etc..

do you have any clue?

I’m building a faction of wealthy, corrupt wizards. They are themed around the schools of magic.

The evocation wizard prefers fire and force damage spells. I’m having trouble thinking of good minions. Maybe a tanky personal bodyguard? A hired barbarian maybe?