So I am hopefully going to be joining a campaign soon. The basic plot is we're all gnome clerics going to a human kingdom to spread the world of our pantheon and do (good?) deeds, but here's the thing. apparently the DM is just... very trusting? very naive? and isn't actually going to check our character sheets. So only two of us are actually gnomes, the others are either halflings or a dwarf pretending to be gnomes.
My ability to turn into a bear-sized ankylosaur from level 2 with 34 HP and 19 strength, on the other hand, is totes balanced. :::PPP
Super duper balanced! :p I get what you mean, that's a sweet boost at a low level. I think that's earlier than the temp hp options a few classes get, and level 2 STR 19 is otherwise only possible with rolling stats and having a racial bonus... But yeah, I'd have to check which book those dino friends are in. Adventurers League has a lot of weird restrictions, they might also be banned. The idea is, fly speed = melee-only characters being completely incapable of doing anything to them, and other stuff that I'm not enough of an optimizer to think of but can be done RAW.
Yeah, Wild Shape, especially Circle of The Moon wildshape, is pretty broken. Just... turn into any animal, with a completely separate HP pool. I mean, objectively, a good build of almost anything can be more effective than animal shapes. But it is very nice defensive ability at a very early level. You do sacrifice some high-level spells for it? Dunno. It's a far cry from 3.5s CoDzilla, though. That's for sure. 1st Level Fly is indeed quite a thing. It lets the character bypass a lot of low-level obstacles (pit traps? Cliffs? walls? irrelevant), and, of course, the melee thing. Of course, only an idiot would build a melee-only character. What's really scary is when everyone starts flying. And Wizards somehow forgets to give enemies a counter to flight, even at high level. (Witness the Tarrasque being laughably helpless against a bunch of 5th level wizards. They at least gave it a sort of ranged attack, IIRC)
Offensive ability, too. "Hi yes I'm a deinonychus, here with my 3 1d8 multiattacks with 15 STR at level 2."
Very important DnD session update: The guy playing a mantis-person tried to cruise for hot guys while forgetting he was playing a mantid and the DM made him describe what traits a mantis person considers hot in guys.
Apparently the answer was mostly "is big." Other highlights: Mantid would not stop giving enormous amounts of money to people at random, the tiefling rogue smells like "A mixture of bugspray, Axe, and also a horse's ass." "moving bush" in Q'rah's accent sounds like something very rude in Gnomish, and the fighter was chugging beer at 9:30 in the morning.
I'm GMing a game and it's been a little rough, since it's my first time GMing and I introduced too many plot threads at once, but I think everything's starting to shake out okay! I have to share the other night's adventure, though. Spoiler: This got long So, my party is about to split (one member has already split off, actually, and is off saving unicorns from the Unseelie Court at this point), in response to the aforementioned too many plot threads. I had introduced a couple of kobold scouts for a bandit team who were following the party; their Stealth roll had been 21 so I was confident no one would spot them, and after the party split I was going to have the bandits jump one of the pairs now that they were separated. I had the party roll Perception for another encounter, and... two people rolled 21. Anyway, after some efforts to stealth the kobolds back, the kobolds yelled for their Big Friends and the other two bandits, a human woman and a dragonborn man, showed up. First, the owl aarakocra cleric used a Light cantrip and an awesome Intimidation roll to TERRIFY the kobolds. I actually gave them Frightened status, because it was a great roll and a great bit of RP; they thought she was some kind of holy avenger. Then everyone else focused their fire on the human woman, who had started out by shouting "Your money or your lives!" The half-orc bard did critical damage with Vicious Mockery and reduced her to 1 HP, so I represented that by the woman breaking down sobbing at the insult. ...Then the tiefling rogue spent her turn giving the sobbing woman a pep-talk, and bitching out the dragonborn bandit when he tried to get his bandit team back on-track. After which the human fighter made a Persuasion roll to get the bandits to clear out entirely; the kobolds fled, the human bandit dropped her weapons and offered to walk away slowly with her hands up, and the dragonborn bandit realized he was screwed and stormed off. The party offered to escort the now ex-bandit woman back to town. She tearfully told them that they were the nicest people she'd ever tried to rob. I had to name her in a hurry, since they'd asked her name, and now she needs a personality before next game.... I'm pretty sure the dragonborn was her jerkass boyfriend, so that may come back around to bite them.
This is really neither here nor there but someone houseruled Homestuck trolls for 5e and put it on the wiki ...why
Holy shit I remember being in the chat when someone was writing that. Or that version at least. (There was a prior version that was way less accurate about how trolls do, and upon being linked it someone in the chat took it upon themselves to edit it to be more correct to the comic.) fake edit: hey WAIT A SECOND no, someone just plagiarized the 3.5 alternian troll page! And messed up the formatting. look: http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Alternian_Troll_(3.5e_Race)
i recently learned that someone made fidget spinners as a playable race in 5e for April Fool's highlights: "A Dank Spinning race that will be helpful in a fight" "Fidget Spinners live from 4 - 400 years old. They reach sexual maturity at age 50." "You have the advantage on hitting with weapons that do slashing damage, because you always spinnin'." "Languages: Common and one other of your choice, You also often make loud vvvvvvsssssshhhhhing sounds."
Yeah, it seems really weighted towards the two far ends of the spectrum. Bluebloods don't seem to have any unique material benefits at all.
the original 3.5 homebrew went something like this: never mind that trolls pitch massive shitfits for attention and are omnidirectionally contentious, or that the half of their culture that isn't built on the war machine is built on convoluted romances. nope, everyone hides their emotions. ahaaha. ahaha. ha, ha. troll cults definitely weren't around... no major plot points there...
