Hello everyone,

I thought it would be nice to have a dice mechanic for 5e’s character creation with an output more similar to the point buy system, since the default dice mechanic leads to overall higher stats. This could be a system with the same output range as point buy as well as one that still offers the possibility of rolling very high numbers (16-18) but with a higher probability to roll very low than 4d6 drop lowest.

Do you already know of such a dice mechanic? Or could you maybe provide a source for the probabilities of a stat having a certain number in the point buy system, so as to make it comparable to 4d6 drop lowest? The latter would give a starting point to play around with dice.run in order to create a system as desired.

Thank you all very much in advance!

In our Gatewalkers game, my barbarian bit the dust in book 1. Very sad but more importantly, an opportunity arose; I could play this little awakened hedgehog dude! Only, there were some troubles. First off, Awakened Animal PCs aren't officially supported until the next splatbook comes out, so I needed to jury-rig a hedge hogman ancestry.

This was very easy.

The next hurdle was to find out what kind of class fits this little dude and worked with our party's already quite janky setup.

This was very hard.

ANCESTRY DETAILS

Hedge Hogman

Traits: Rare, Animal, Humanoid, Hedge Hogman;

Ancestry HP: 6;

Stats: +STR +CON +FREE(CHA) -INT;

Heritage: Quillcoat Hogman (Stolen from Shisk's "Quillcoat shisk");

Senses: Lowlight Vision;

Feats: 1-Animal Elocutionist (Gnome), 5-Renewing Quills (Shisk), 9-Critter Shape (Beastkin)

BACKGROUND

Dance Prodigy: +CHA +STR. Dance Lore, Virtuosic Performer (Dance, naturally)

CLASS

Swashbuckler

Key: Dex.

Final Boosts: +STR, +CON, +WIS, +CHA;

Subclass: Battledancer (Naturally);

Class Feats: 1-Focused Fascination, 2-Antagonize, 4-Leading Dance, 6, Combination Finisher, 8, Reactive Strike, 10-Derring Do;

Skill Feats: 2-Intimidating Glare, 3-Distracting Performance, 4-Lengthy Diversion, 5-Assurance: Acrobatics, 6-Assurance: Stealth, 7-Steady Balance, 8-Battlecry, 9-Catfall, 10-Terrified Retreat;

Free Archetype Feats: 2-Bard Dedication, 4-Multifarious Muse: Versatile Performance, 6-Uplifting Overture, 8-Rallying Anthem, 10, Lingering Performance;

General Feats: 3-Armor Proficiency, 7-Toughness;

Juiced Skills: Performance (Master @ 7), Deception (Master @ 9);

Equipment: Greatsword, Handwraps of Mighty Blows, Breastplate, a million scrolls of Bless, Jolt Coil, Dancing Scarf;

Spells: Shield, Musical Accompanyment

IN REVIEW

Our hogman friend here specializes in the Performance Skill to the extreme. On its own, Performance is good for... building panache. That's it. After snagging every feat, putting on some sick tunes w/ Musical Accompaniment, and doing a prepatory headspin or two, Hedge Hogman Capoeria takes off.

Once Panache is obtained (stupid easy for Battledancer), Performance is now rolled with 5e-style Advantage, can be used to Demoralize, Aid every skill check, Distract to make teammates Hidden in plain sight, perform an MAP-less Reposition, make good impressions on people and animals, MMO-style taunt on spellcasters, and extend a defensive buff/prepared aid over the course of a fight.

There's also a sneaky trick in there, did you catch it? Hedge Hogman Capoeira also subtly encourages enemies to attack the Swashbuckler while debuffed via the Antagonize feat (cutely enough, this also uses performance!), potentially triggering a nasty Opportune Riposte with a big greatsword, or at the very least a faceful of Quillcoat Spikes.

Howdy folks, I posted this little dude in the CharArt community, and thought I'd ought to post his funny numbers here too.

Shitty Artwork

Yogi Troubles, Professional Forgettor and Part-Time Grenadier. Goblin culture warns that practicing literacy steals thoughts from your head, so in order to make ends meet, Yogi has to constantly be learning staggering amounts of information on an enormous amount of subjects. Although he's best suited for exploration and a bit of downtime activity, it'd be unwise to underestimate his combat ability.

Note: This build benefits from an origin in Alkenstar, Dongon Hold, The Shackles, or some other place with access to guns. You can also just ask for Access from your GM.

Ancestry:

Goblin, naturally. Goblin grants access to the Goblin Weapon Familiarity feat, which gives you Martial Scaling on the Explosive Dogslicer and Crit Specializations for it and the Big Boom Gun at lv 5. Unbreakable Heritage is probably best, but I chose Charhide.

Chassis:

Lv 1 Statline should be | STR +3 | DEX +0 | CON +1 | INT +4 | WIS +1 | CHA +0 |

You might wonder why a gun-toting, finesse weapon wielding investigator would dump dex. The answer is because DEX only meaningfully modifies your Reflex and AC, and your soft-cap for the latter is only a +1 as early as lv 3. Devise a Stratagem is how you'll aim your gun, and you can just swing your Dogslicer around with STR if you don't have time to aim. You can use Athletics if you want to forget a bad Devise a Stratagem Roll, especially since you can brew up Fury Cocktails to wrestle huge enemies.

Alchemical Sciences Investigator grants you a small pool of wildcard items, but they can only be Elixirs or Alch Tools. This is pretty huge, but kind of restrictive. Some seriously useful tech can be pulled from this pool, though, so don't underestimate it. Cognitive Mutagens remove the potential of crit failing recall knowledge checks. Fury Cocktails as described before can make you Large. Juggernaut Mutagens can clear non-combat mutagens from your system.

Speaking of Cognitive Mutagens, Investigators get a Lv 3 Feature that lets them attempt any unskilled Recall Knowledge Check as if their proficiency Modifier was equal to their level, rather than 0. Use Specific Lore + Cognitive Mutagen + Dubious Knowledge to guarantee useful information no matter what you're thinking about.

Feats:

My own table uses the Free Archetype ruleset, so I'll be including that into the build here. If you're not using that variant rule, prioritize the dedication!

Lv 1: Wildcard Class feat slot. I like Flexible Studies, but you might prefer the action condensation of Known Weakness. Take Goblin Weapon Familiarity for some nice weapons that work with Investigators.

Lv 2: Duelist Dedication + Shared Stratagem. Duelist gives you Quick Draw, which is a vital feat for blasting and dart throwing. Shared Stratagem's just nice to your teammates. Be nice to your teammates. Take Dubious Knowledge as your skill feat.

Lv 3: Armor Proficiency. Medium Armor decouples you from dex almost entirely. Note that you'll need to upgrade to Sentinel Dedication at lv 18. Take Specialty Crafting: Alchemy for an even easier time making cheap bombs when you've got downtime.

Equipment:

Explosive Dogslicer: Part Scattergun, Part Knife. It's actually pretty good as far as investigator weapons go. Only use the gun half for its Critical Fusion benefit on crits, or when you're up against swarms.

Shifting Rune: Dogslicer not cutting it? Turn it into a bastard sword. or a whip. Or whatever. Any 1h strength weapon you'll ever need, all in one rune. In particular, use this when an enemy has resistance to slashing, or weakness to another physical damage type.

Adaptive Cogwheel: Slap it on your dogslicer, and bam. Now its an arquebus for a turn. Or a bigger scattergun. Honestly, between this and the shifting rune, you should always be using the right weapon for the job.

Big Boom Gun: Fatal d12 available when you roll a guaranteed crit.

Darts: Ranged + Agile, for when you roll a guaranteed hit, but dont want to close in with your knife or swap to its gun form.

Thrower's Bandolier: Put 20 darts in here and phase 16 of them out with bombs as you become wealthier. Cheap 4gp bombs only.

Blazons of Shared Power: Fuse your Dogslicer and Big Boom Gun's runes together to save money in the long run.

Cognitive Mutagen: Push Crit Fails off the table, letting your Dubious Knowledge guarantee useful information no matter what. Incidentally gives a nice scaling boost to your untrained Recall Knowledge ability.

Every Bomb Known to Man: You have guaranteed information. Combine that with every damage type you can get your hands on. Buy or make them for dirt cheap and stow them in your bandolier to scale their damage up as you level. Don't bother with higher level bombs unless they add new effects.

Tactics:

Always be learning. Remember that you can Recall Knowledge on ANY subject with Specific Lores to reduce the DC by 5. You also don't need to be in combat to recall knowledge. Find tracks? Roll a Footprints Lore to determine what kind of monster left them. It was an Troll? Roll a Troll Lore and brief your team on their strengths and weaknesses.

Swing->Devise->Swing again. When you're fighting an enemy with Low AC, don't be afraid to get a little greedy with your first hit. You've got the strength for it.

Use outcomes wisely. Don't waste actions running up to cut someone with a 20, Quickdraw your fatal d12 big boom gun. Don't pull it out for a miss, obviously, because it will blow up in your face if you do. Pull out a splash weapon keyed to your targets weakness instead. If you know you'd critically miss, then throw it at the floor beneath them instead. Did you guarantee a hit by 4 or more? Cut someone else first, then throw a dart at your original target.

Hey as my last character, ranger died in AV, im looking to make kobold champion, but cant decide between two flavors of build:

1. Here is the build link for Kobold champ summ. To view this build you need to open it on an android device with version 196+ Pathbuilder 2e installed. https://pathbuilder2e.com/launch.html?build=485517 Champ, shield ally, with summoner dedication, dragon steed form.

2. Here is the build link for Kobold champ cavalier. To view this build you need to open it on an android device with version 196+ Pathbuilder 2e installed. https://pathbuilder2e.com/launch.html?build=484839

Champ with cavalier dedication, mature draft lizard.

Eidolon pros: dont take double damage from aoe, spellcasting, fire breathing Eidolon cons: less hp, no "free" actions (tandems). Cavalier pros: more hp, better attacks, better ac later due to feats, free action from mature. Cavalier cons: takes dmg from aoe, will need to be given commands if need to double stride.

Imo action economy is better with cavalier, but summoner provides spell casting and versatily... Im lost.

I'm struggling to build out a Psychic that primarily uses Imaginary Weapon in melee. It is so flavorful, yet at 6 base HP per level and no armor proficiency, it feels really dangerous to get up close and personal. Sure, Warp Space amps it to be at 30ft range, but there are only so many focus points available to spend amping.

I'm looking to have this be viable at level 6 (so Parallel Breakthrough is an option). Any heritages, feat chains, or items I should look into to make it feel good to use Imaginary Weapon?

Title

Note that this is subtly different from the “one level in every class” thing; this is about taking your levels one at a time, starting from level 1, rather than a fully-finished level 13 concept.

Could this be at all viable? What order would you go with?

Does anyone have experience with both versions of the kobold as a PC and have a strong opinion on way or the other on it?

I'm creating a kobold Rogue for a Rime of the Frostmaiden campaign. Pact tactics sounds like it could be very useful. But I generally like the MotM version of kobold a bit better.

For more context: We might get another player, but right now it looks like it will be just a party of 3. One is thinking of playing a wizard or sorcerer and the other is considering barbarian at the moment. My plan is to go Scout Rogue . And I am open to switching to Ranger if that feels like it would be a better fit for the party.

My absolute favorite thing to do in 5e is when I can find a niche spell that's perfect for a situation the party finds itself in.

This naturally draws itself to the prepared casters and especially the deep spell list and ritual casting of the wizard, but unfortunately wizard is also a generally good class which means there's usually someone looking to use it in a party, and while doubling up can be fun sometimes I like to have other options.

I'd like to ideally make something strong without any glaring weaknesses: I don't want to minmax utility off a cliff.

My front runner has been an arcana cleric, which enables Wish eventually and adds a handful of common wizard spells to its list, but I'm not sure the other features of arcana are all that great, and not getting heavy armor makes me a little leery of closing to melee for cleric staples like Spirit Guardians.

Any other cool setups that enable a lot of flexibility and utility?

Warlock wielding shadow blade. Obviously there are stronger things to concentrate on, but do your worst within parameters.

I recently theorycrafted a Dex and a Str version of an Artillerist with the Gunner feat popping off a Booming Blade and a Force Ballista each turn.

Dex variant: Choose a race that gets a weapon proficiency (e.g. Githyanki) to weild a Rapier. Pick up Gunner at 4. Starting stats are somewhere along the lines of 8 15+2 14 15+1 10 8, aiming to max Dex and pick up a Headband of Intellect to cover the otherwise low Int. Rolling can get the starting Int to be more respectable, but otherwise this feels pretty bad early game.

Str variant: Can start with a feat race for Gunner, point buy stats of 14 13+1 14 14+2 9 8, aiming to max Int, get Resilient Wis, and pick up Gauntlets of Ogre Power to cover the otherwise low Str. Acquiring an All Purpose Tool can provide Shillelagh to not need GoOP.

Why do this at all? Arcane Firearm, whether you tap your rapier with it as your Artificer-required tool material component, or whether it itself is the staff you go bonking people with Booming Blade, provides an extra 1d8 Thunder damage. Force Ballista's built in knockback has no save. Put those together with Faerie Fire, and you have a pretty reliable chunk of damage every round alongside a semi-reliable BB rider proc.

Questions:

• is Shillelagh via APT viable here? Since you can't cast Shillelagh and Faerie Fire on the same turn, setup feels bad.
• would some other pushback, like Crusher, be more effective?
• is being ranged overall, with ranged cantrips, just better damage faster (i.e. by dropping Gunner and maxing Int faster)?

Much of the time I think of items as addons to a build, and focus on the race, class, and feat progression when planning. However, in both Westmarches and many standard canpaigns, it is not unreasonable to be able to buy, craft, or at least request some specific items, at least going up to Rare rarity. That got me thinking about trying to optimize a build around the item, rather than the other way around.

Out of the Abyss provides a unique and interesting Rare item, the Stonespeaker Crystal. It has 10 charges, regains ~7 per day, allows spending some charges to cast the three Speak With spells, and, most importantly, allows expending a number of charges equal to a divination spell's level to replace one consumed spell component. The following divination spells have consumed spell compoments:

• Divination (4) 25gp¹
• Fortune's Favor (2) 100gp
• Legend Lore (5) 250gp
• True Seeing (6) 25gp

¹uses two components with combined cost of 25gp, so the crystal can only replace one of them.

If you play with EGtW, the obvious use case for this is the Graviturgy or Chronurgy Wizard, getting Fortune's Favor (upcastable for more targets, letting you safely cover a party at least once per day with a 1-hour long Lucky d20 each). You also get Legend Lore (cast for free once per day to keep improving your results about the same thing) as well as True Seeing as a Wizard, and since TCoE expanded Wizard spells to include Divination, you don't even need Ritual Caster Cleric to get the full set. It's nice to have the crystal on a Wizard who normally doesn't get Speak with Animals or Speak with Plants too.

The most broken use of this item that I can think of is, conveniently, with Chronurgy's Arcane Abeyance on Fortune's Favor. Cast Fortune's Favor at 5th level on four members of the party, and then also save a bead with a 4th level casting to re-up three party members' Lucky dice mid-combat, increasing the likelihood they actually use them. Between that, Chronal Shift, Silvery Barbs, and Convergent Future, you might as well be the DM now.

Even without EGtW, a Divination Wizard can benefit greatly from the Stonespeaker Crystal thanks to Expert Divination, effectively reducing the total burned cost of Legend Lore to one fifth of a spell slot. Again, after enough castings, you at least know as much as the DM does, and with Portent and Silvery Barbs can control the outcome somewhat.

Did I miss any synergies worth exploring?

(In the absense of a WhatWouldYouBuild type of community, I figure 3d6 is the closest place here for such things, but correct me if I'm wrong.)

How would you build, in either D&D 5e or Pathfinder 2e, Cirilla of Cintra, based on her powers and abilities exhibited in the beginning of season 3 of The Witcher? She had the battle-prowess of a witcher, but she doesn't use her magic in combat. Her magic is powerful enough to stand against very strong sorcerers, but seems to mostly be reactionary rather than intentional.

Sad to see reddit effectively die, but a big thank you to everyone who set this community up so that the party can keep rolling! (Budum, ting)

5e's Fear has the added mechanic of requiring the target to take the Dash action and run away, unless there is nowhere to run. This can cause some DMs to rule Oath of Conquest's aura as allowing the target to use its action for other things. But with Sentinel's reaction causing movement speed to drop to zero, that wouldn't trigger until after the Dash action had been used--creating an optimizable opportunity.

My current build idea for this is a Hexblade 1 / Whispers Bard X, choosing to be Custom Lineage to grab Sentinel at level 1. This means that Cha can be maxed by 9 (rather than 13), the build is Cha-SAD, and you can augment your attacks with blade cantrips (yes, BB doesn't synergize with either Fear* or Sentinel, but it is still a nice chunk of scaling damage). Bard also provides Command, Dissonant Whispers, Healing Word, Psychic Blades, and eventually Find Greater Steed (to get another opportunity attack).

(* If your DM counter-rules that Fear, Command, Dissonant Whispers, etc should proc Booming Blade, definitely opt for a reach weapon. That way BB procs when they move 5ft away, and then you lock them down with Sentinel at 10.)

The primary drawback is a lack of reliable advantage, so even though Psychic Blades add another layer of damage, missing on an opportunity attack risks them breaking Fear.

Thoughts on how to optimize around Fear+Sentinel, either by improving this build, or through some other means?

This is an old topic, but I'm curious what a more recent assessment for the ultimate support build would be in D&D5e.

Previously, Treantmonk has pushed the idea of the 'God Wizard' who is built around spells that shut down enemies and empowers allies. Area control, vision control, area denial, and the odd buff to assist allies.

However since his build was popularlized, there have been a number of fascinating subclasses that are built around support, specifically between bards and druids. With that in mind, what are the best support builds? These are builds that help win the fight without dealing any damage, preferably