@Ben Yes. In the section about death saving throws, the PHB says you stop dying when you regain any hit points or stabilize. 5e doesn't have negative HP (0 is the minimum) so any amount of healing should bring you to 1+ HP.
I'm about to start running a 5e game. To make magic weapons more special, I'm thinking about giving them all minor magical effects (eg the stereotypical "faint glow"). Does anyone know where I might find a list of that sort of thing?
@Adeptus I suggest that, depending on what "special" means in this context, the solution will be to make them matter more, not make them glow in the dark. Give weapons histories, prophecies, devotees, enemies... and instead of swapping them out as you level up, make them increase in power, 4e-artifact-style.
The goal is to make them memorable and give them some characterization, yeah?
e.g. "This is the legendary falchion Trollstriker, said to have slain over 500 trolls. You can tell by its unique shape, color, and subtle scent of cinnamon"
and not "This is a +2 longsword I crafted last week because I was bored. I'm gonna sell it for booze money."
@Miniman About like that, yeah. Sting is kind of special even though it doesn't have a (known) name when Bilbo finds it. Glamdring and Orcrist are more special because they have names (and are probably +2 or +3).
In the past, I've handed out item cards that I make myself. Half a snapshot-size sheet of photo paper, with a picture I've found on the internet, and name & game stats of the item. So, I can make the dagger +1 looted from an orc look different to the dagger +1 found in a noble's tomb
Well again, you should consider magic item prevalence. Especially in 5e. If it's common to find a +1 weapon as random loot, then it may seem less special.
@MikeQ I've thought about it. Obviously I won't have a shop in the market selling shiny new custom-made magic weapons. P135 of Xanathar's looks about right, I think.
@DavidCoffron Why do you say Quivering Palm's not magical? It uses ki points, and ki is magic (per "The Magic of Ki" in the monk description). It's not a spell, but it's still magical. (cc: @NautArch)
No, it is not magical
Jeremy Crawford clarified this point on Twitter, using Sage Advice to support it. It is "background magic" similar to the breath weapon of a dragon.
Grant Myers @realgrantmyers
@JeremyECrawford ki is described as magical, but nothing in stunning strike says that it...
I'm going to call bullshit on Jeremy there. And not even self-censor as I do it.
From his Sage Advice article: one of the types of magic is "the concentrated magical energy that is contained in a magic item or channeled to create a spell or other focused magical effect."
That type is the type suppressed in AMF, &c.
Ki is a class feature. You use various ki-powered things as an action. You spend ki points that recharge on a rest and grow in number as you level up in monk.
It's exectly what he's describing when he says "energy... channeled to create a... focused magical effect."
I may even go post that.
(But thank you, @DavidCoffron, for pointing that out to me!)
@nitsua60 Yeah; I don't understand why he ruled that way either... but every since then (which was back when I considered Crawford more important), I've just presupposed Ki is not magical (per the game term); I may need to revisit my presuppositions
I mean, the first time we see the word in the PHB it's in the header "The Magic of Ki."
Now, I'd be totally cool with a non-magical ki system. (As long as it were in a campaign that didn't allow any spells or caster classes/archetypes.) Say that ki's a thing, draw up a list of things that can be done with it, give some classes access to it...
Oh yeah, that's just inventing a parallel magic system.
And that's fine! Just don't do it alongside "standard" magic.
@trogdor I did giggle when I was helping my son learn how to do some altar-serving things and told him to (for a high mass) "censer yourself. Then incense the priest."
@Adeptus It's not like I know the DMG particularly well myself, I just had happened to have it open to that page at the time while I was putting together a list of magic items that our party might be able to buy from Shady Character who had offered to try to find some stuff for them.
@nitsua60 well even when I have used the replacement word before, what makes it think, when I fully typed out the word Fair, that it should go ahead and just replace that with Fanservice?
@nitsua60 This is among those many things that bug me when someone is creating low magic or no magic campaigns in DnD. Monks tend to be exempt despite being rather clearly supernatural...
This is among the things that bug me when a system asserts that its magic works in a certain way, but then the system mechanics have a lot of weird interactions that suggest otherwise.
Generally I find fewer headaches with systems that split the power sources from their in-game effects, and don't try to unify all the "powers" under the same in-universe umbrella concept
Sorcerers, dragons, and fey have inherent magic. Druids have magic if they wear leather, and wizards have magic if they read the right books. +1 daggers have magic. Monks do, but they also don't, unless sometimes. Also bards exist.
Again, I love how 4e was like "Yeah, there's all these different sources of power," but lists "martial" right there alongside "divine" and "psionic" and "primal" and all the others, and doesn't give two figs about sorting out any kind of hierarchy or limitations between them.
"Sure you can shout at people until they regain hit points, why not?"
I'm trying to think of other systems that are entirely modular like that. e.g. You have {abilities} because of {sources}.
M&M 3e does this pretty well. Heroes have powers, and sources behind their powers, and the player fills in the why and how for their character. No power effects are inherently more or less supernatural than others.
And one of your Rogue 10 utilities is to become Schroedinger's Sneak. When you move from cover to cover, make a Stealth check without penalty at the end of the move. If it succeeds, nobody saw you during the move. And you saved the cat!
@BESW I love it too. To me, a Fighter isn't just a guy with a sword. They're one of those legendary St. Georges or Miyamoto Musashis or similar legendary warriors with a mystic essence to reinforce their fighting
And I mean, given how DnD tends to love pointing out that a Fighter is not just a guy with a sword, it's probable quite close to developer intent too.
In M&M3e, your "expert swordfighter" is mostly equivalent to your "clergy type with a warrior blessing". Combat-wise, one isn't better than the other. No analogue of 3.esque casters using magic to out-fighter the fighter.
4e - How would a fighter and paladin differ, other than flavor and its effects on RP?
@trogdor I can consult the wikia to see the differences, but I'm curious about how those differences manifested in gameplay
A fighter exerts melee pressure just by swinging a weapon at someone in the first place. Their options for taking advantage of it are kind of limited if they're not in weapon range, but they're good at containing people there.
A paladin exerts melee pressure by pointing at a guy and saying "fight me, by Kord!" And it doesn't matter where that guy is, if he fights somebody else, Kord's radiant brofist punishes all party fouls equally.
@MikeQ It manifests in martial classes never feeling like they're "missing" something or having to pick magic items to make up for gaps that caster classes have.
It means you can have an all-martial party without it feeling samey.
Also,... You could make, for example one I live to talk about but wouldn't want to play, a Pixie rogue that did stuff that you would expect a Minotaur barbarian to do
Because the roles (leader/healer/buffer, defender/tank, controller/aoe/debuffing, striker/damage) have been divorced from power sources, you get ALL of those roles in ALL the power source groups.
@MikeQ They don't differ as as they would in 5e, that's for sure. They have different powers and class features but the most important bit -- marking for defending allies -- works very similarly
For example, paladins say "You, that one person there! You take -2 to attacks, and take damage, if you try attack anyone except me, no matter where you run!"
While certain swordmages say "You, that one person there! You take -2 to attacks and are teleported next to me if you try to attack anyone except me."
And guardian druids say "You, anyone next to me! You take -2 to attacks and are rooted to the spot if you try to attack anyone except me."
While fighters say "You, anyone I've attacked recently! You take -2 to attacks and I'm gonna smack you upside the head with a really big stick if you attack anyone except me, and you don't want that because I've stacked a ton of additional effects onto that sticksmacking."
Ok, so my understanding is: primal defender -> limited movement, arcane defender -> forced movement, divine & psionic defender -> damage, martial defender -> nothing extra but they can mark multiple targets. Is this roughly correct?
Don't try to extrapolate specific classes into power source guidelines.
Fighters, for example, get the "extra" that their opportunity attacks (in addition to marking their targets) stop you cold in your tracks if they hit you.
Hmm ok. So the gist is, there's different types of defenders, and they have slight variations in how they defend, but they're more or less equivalently powerful?
@MikeQ sorry I was driving, so what I was saying was, I made this build once that mechanically was a Pixie Rogue, but all it wanted to do every round was make a charge attack, and when doing so the target would take all the sneak attack damage and be knocked prone
And anyway, some classes are more distinct than the others. Eg. Ranger and Rogue are both Martial Strikers and work rather differently, while you have to study them a lot to get an idea of the mechanical difference between a Wizard and an Invoker because it's a lot more subtle.
Yeah. Each has a niche--paladins are great single-target defending from a distance, with a solid sideline in healing; battleminds have to be next to their defense targets but are super good at personal mobility and have a sideline in debuffing.
Yeah, there's also some amusing rogue builds that basically say "I get sneak attack because you saw the attack coming but you're surprised I'm sneak attacking with such an unlikely weapon."
"Yes, I'm sneak attacking with a two-handed club. Deal with it from a prone position."
Fighters are super customizable with weapon and feat selection--the traditional fighter is "I'm sticky: anyone who comes near me never gets away;" but we had a super-effective fighter who went "I'm rubber: anyone who comes near me goes very very far away from me and all my friends."
There's a barbarian class that starts each fight as a martial defender who controls his local area effectively, but can choose to turn into a primal-powered striker (massive single-target damage) for the rest of that fight.
yeah basically the point is, even within a class where certain things were expected of that class, 4e had built in ways to make that class actually do something completely different
@MikeQ So, you can have the same "a mark is a debuff which gives the target -2 to all attacks which don't include the source of the debuff," and "all defenders can apply marks and have a feature which triggers when marked creatures do certain things," but the application and trigger conditions are vastly different between each class so having the same base mechanic doesn't make the classes samey.
Some classes are just "everyone adjacent to me is marked until they're no longer adjacent." Others are "anyone I attack is marked" or "that one guy I choose is marked."
For Swordmage? Yeah, it was "teleport to the triggering marked creature and attack them" OR "teleport the triggering marked creature to you and they grant combat advantage" OR "reduce the triggering attack's damage based on your Constitution."
And which of those you picked then opened up specific feat/path options to double down on that playstyle.
The first option opened up damage-based paths; the second one led to debuff-based paths; the third to healing/buffing paths.
Usually, those class options also determined your stat spread.
Most D&D 4e classes got to pick two of three stats to focus on, and since AC/Fort/Ref/Will were each tied to "higher of two stats" rather than just one stat for each, those were real choices.
A warlock, depending on their pact, might use either Constitution or Charisma to attack, and then use Con, Int, or Cha to determine the effectiveness of their secondary effects.
Fighters almost always used Strength as their primary, but could easily go with Con, Wis, or Dex for a secondary stat and it'd totally change how they played.
As a bird, you start play with the ability to fly, but it costs 2 Wonder each scene you use it.
Later on you might pick up Found It: for 10 Wonder you can use your exceptional sight to automagically find an object or person from a distance, but you're night-blind and can't make Animal checks at night.
You'll never be able to pick up a dog power like Sorry (for 8 Wonder you can be forgiven of nearly anything if you ask, but you're also incapable of lying).
Isn't that exactly why 3.5 didn't have martial healers?
Classes tell you what roles you play in the story, and give form to game lore about what a single person can and can't do, and how those abilities are related to each other.
They do other things too--in D&D they try to create a balance of agency within diversity by separating unreasonably synergistic features--but mechanical balance isn't a necessary quality of classes while I think it can be argued that narrative definition is.
I recently asked this question on what level a homebrew spell/item would be in D&D 5e.
I want to ask a follow up question on how to balance it better and add/remove some of the features that make it so powerful. Before I go to the effort of writing the question up I wanted to check that it is o...
@PeterCooperJr. YYYY-DD (Just use "days since start of year")
It will mostly be easy to calculate what month, tenday and day it corresponds to, you just need to remember what day midwinter, greengrass, midsummer, shieldmeet, and feast of the moon are
1. I wanted to comment on that invisibility positioning post What is the Difference of the Absolute Value of 'C' from the Absolute Value of 'T' from the Absolute Value of 'Y'?
because of the way they formatted.
2. Do I remember right about relative distance to cover being a factor in whether or not you receive cover?
@NautArch Thanks! I'm kind of stumped about the optional rule part though. Do you think the attack has disadvantage on the invisible creature? Or is the rule for hitting cover more specific to override it? Or something else I'm missing?
@NautArch So I like it, but I think you are using Meteor Storm as a comparison point right? not as an example as a bonus action? If so, I would find some way to adjust that flow since it is talking about bonus action stuff, then MS, then more bonus action stuff comparing to MS.
But I think it is a little weird where it is placed.
Not a huge deal, but it was kind of hard to follow the logic because of where it is placed and the formatting even though I knew what you were doing. Also you may want to change your "Two example" header/footer. Ot am I misunderstanding how you organized thigns?
@NautArch Better, but i still find it a bit confusing because your level 2 header says "here are two examples" then it goes through those two examples (good so far) then it keeps on going with a control example then more exmples compareing more features that benefit to that. Maybe add another header level 2 in there in between the SW/HM e xample and the MS control?
Something like "Damage spells would become much more powerful as well"
Does that make sense? To be clear I think it is a great answer still but I think if you clear this little bit up it makes it much better.
I've been planning to open a new question and try to get the old one flagged as a dupe of the new one if we couldn't get significant action on the old one, based on what a Mod suggested on the Meta for questions like that.
@Xirema Honestly, I think the question was too broad.
And I would have VTC it if it had come up
In fact, I still might for that reason
The two main questions should be separated and also the argument could be made that even then it would be too broad because of the range of abilites you have to cover.
I convinced myself. I put in my VTC for this being too broad. Too many questions, too many possibilities and none of the questions fully even answer the question because of its broadness.
@Rubiksmoose Seems like the answer is generally "yes, if the phrasing of the item is 'you cast[...]' and the class ability's phrasing is '[...] when/if you cast [...]', otherwise no". With some corner cases around if a requirement is that it's a {class} spell.
I feel like, much with the popular Attack action vs. attack question, we could probably use a Cast a Spell action vs. cast a spell question to help with some of these types of questions (if that doesn't already exist). I'm not sure there's many triggered effects that actually specifically care about the former.
This question: Does casting a spell from an item allow you to apply class abilities that are used when casting a spell?
The question asks two hugely broad questions:
Do abilities that trigger from casting a spell activate when casting a spell from an item?
and
Can the character modify ...
Just for curiosity. Can I ask which spell slot combination is better (D&D5e)? Note: Imagine the hypothetical case that you only have these spell slots (similar to warlocks than only has 5 slots of 5th and recover after short rest). 1) Have 3/short rest slots of 3rd tier and 2/long rest slots of 6th tier. 2) Have 3/short rest slots of 4rd tier and 2/long rest slots of 5th tier. 3) Have 5/short rest slots of 3rd tier and 2/long rest slots of 5th tier. 4) Have 3/short rest slots of 3rd tier and 3/long rest slots of 5th tier.
I need to double check, but I think i've found a lot of 6th level spells underwhelming and would likely prefer the 5th ones (unless I want the 6th fdor an upcast)
Ok, but so I have to make a clarification. This homebrew class is able to "purchase" some upgrades when it levels up. One upgrade let you learn a 7th spell (once a day) and another upgrade lets you an 8th. Also, another upgrade increases the slot amount of the higher slot by one. Another upgrade increases the slot amount of the lower slot by one (can be bought twice). Of course, there are more purchases, so you must choose focus on magic instead of another stuff like tank, warrior or tactic choices
Also, because action economy is limited, it is usually more efficient to have a few high-level slots than many low-level slots
For example, if I have a bunch of 1st level spell slots, then I could cast every turn. But that means the enemies have more turns to do stuff to me and my allies.
It would be better to use a single 4th level spell slot to win the fight on round 1.
Argh. I seem to have completely messed up my gravatar.
I joined a scientific blog, for which I wanted to add some photo as avatar. So I had to add it to my gravatar because it's wordpress-based. In the process, I tried to sort out the email addresses associated with that account, partly because I was there anyway and needed to add a separate mail for that blog to show a different avatar there.
I have about 4 email addresses: Google (G), professional (A), private (P) and an obsolete one which I don't have access to any more (O). Turns out, O is the main address on one gravatar account, which also claims G. G is the main address on the other account.
Because I am not aware of this, I add A to one of them, then try to make G the main adddress and drop a manipulated image on O, so I will recognize it as βOh, this website uses my obsolete email address, I should probably update itβ.
Go to Stackexchange and notice exactly that image as my profile picture. But nearly all my Stackexchange emails (login, profile, β¦) are G and only in one place O, so I play around with the settings on Stackexchange and Gravatar until everything is really messed up.
And now apparently my old me-sitting-at-a-desk is back and I have absolutely no idea where from.
Now, my stackexchange profile shows obsolete-picture, with no option to choose a picture from Gravatar (which is where it got that picture from, however). The chat shows at-desk. Blog shows new-photo. Gravatar-account 1 appears empty-G-default. Gravatar-account 2 shows at-desk. What in the name of all the virtues is going on.
Oh, and visiting my profile in an anonymous browser window shows a red identicon, while the Change-Picture dialog shows a blue identicon.
No, it is not magical
Jeremy Crawford clarified this point on Twitter, using Sage Advice to support it. It is "background magic" similar to the breath weapon of a dragon.
Grant Myers @realgrantmyers
@JeremyECrawford ki is described as magical, but nothing in stunning strike says that it...
I recently asked this question on what level a homebrew spell/item would be in D&D 5e.
I want to ask a follow up question on how to balance it better and add/remove some of the features that make it so powerful. Before I go to the effort of writing the question up I wanted to check that it is o...
This question: Does casting a spell from an item allow you to apply class abilities that are used when casting a spell?
The question asks two hugely broad questions:
Do abilities that trigger from casting a spell activate when casting a spell from an item?
and
Can the character modify ...
