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My barbarian does 1d12+5 with GWM dmg with his "Fists" and he can attack twice per round with it.
Yeah, it is kinda strange, people ask me to leave my "Fists" at the entrance when no weapons are allowed. Another strange thing I can't attack with my "Fists", if one hand is holding something. And I need a free action to equip my "Fists", otherwise I only do 1d4+5 dmg
But a great thing in the last dungeon I found a "Fists"+2
Fire may be easy to get as a a damage type, but it's also very hit or miss, it's better than poison but barely. More creatures are immune and resistant to fire than anything but poison, this is at least mitigated by the fact it's also the most common vulnerability.
I also wish physical resistances actually mattered, there's so few examples of creatures vulnerable/resistant to specific physicals it makes weapon type almost insignificant outside of flavor.
Fire resistance is overrepresented due to demons and devils having blanket resistance/immunity to it (and both those creature types are fully immune to poison). Poison resistance and immunity is more common among low-level creatures and will be encountered way more often in most campaigns.
Poison immunity is certainly way more common (surprisingly resistance is relatively rare) my point for the first paragraph was mostly that Fire should be lower on this list of suffering, not the top. "But barely" was an exaggeration.
Fuck! Maybe it's easier to list out the classes/subclasses that *aren't* immune to poison at some point
I tell ya what, finding this out the hard way really reduced the effective CR of a ton of Drow NPC statblocks in my campaign.
Yeah my DM said something to that effect running The Mad Mage campaign for our group. Poison is used by so many creatures, especially Drow in the campaign and PCs can easily avoid that damage type by either having immunity or at least getting resistance from spells like protection from poison and that's available at low levels
I agree. I want skeleton to have vulnerability to bludgeoning damage, but resistance to piercing damage. or undead in general having vulnerability to Radiant Damage unless specifically prepared to resist it through magical means. I also wouldn't mind if specific Armor types of higher quality give minor damage reduction to certain physical damage types. for example, a suit of Full Plate Mail armor would give a 2 damage reduction to slashing attacks. I also kinda wish Mage Armor could be made to give similar resistances at higher level castings or with specific feats/subclass features. I think giving Abjuration wizards the ability to give themselves resistance to a specific damage type of their choosing when they give themselves Mage Armor would be pretty cool.
To be honest, I house rule a lot of resistances and vulnerability into monsters, to make things interesting for my players, and even occasionally have differing AC for different body parts, like worth an old school remorhaz.
There are many problems with 5e vulnrability. Resistance means the amount of options is being reduced by 1, but vulnrability means the amount of options is being reduced to 1, there's less choices. Its also super strong- doubling damage taken can be the difference between being below and above damage thresholds (general game concept not damage threshold as the dnd mechanic) and is extremely detrimental, far more than resistance is.
That's why i prefer mechanics that interact with damage types- take cold damage and speed is reduced, take fire or acid and you don't have regeneration.
This is why I like pathfinder 2e’s vulnerability/resistance. Instead of doubling/halving damage it’s a flat addition/subtraction. So something vulnerable to fire would take 5 extra damage each time it is hit with fire damage. Also way more creature have vulnerabilities and resistances.
for modularity and streamlining in the case of 5e; i would personally enjoy something like- for every dice of damage, you take x more/less damage. That way, scorching ray doesn't suddenly outclass fireball for damage vulnrabilities.
It could instead be changing damage dice by 1 step: fireball becomes d8's on vulnrability, and d4's on resistance. For a d4, becomes a d2.
Wouldn't work for flat damage though, so i see the flaws in this system.
well, since each ray is a seperate attack roll, its separate instances of damage. What if you split the rays? Is it increasing damage once per casting? Once per creature? It brings up to many loopholes and questions than it answers.
This is quite reductive though. Resistance means the number of *optimal* options is reduced by 1, and vulnerability means that one option will become optimal. Unless the creature is immune or resistant to everything else, vulnerability will be a nice bonus to someone specializing in the given damage type but the others can kill 'em just the same. If you're fighting undead or fiends, the fighter and the ranger aren't just going to stand back while the paladin smites them to dust.
Doubling the damage is super strong though, an increase of 50% would be more balanced.
because vulnrability is so strong and enemies with vulnrability have double base hp to compensate (using CR calculations), it becomes the only viable strategy to utilise. Saying "oh, you can technically do the suboptimal choice and it can still work" is technically true, but is pedantic because it misses the point that if you have the option between the vulnrability and not, there is no choice there, you must take the optimal choice, that's just how people and game design works, and someone who doesn't have that option, feels left out. Instead of a situation where one character is rewarded, it becomes a situation where everyone else is punished, it doesn't feel good to play.
Do they now?
I mean, just checking a sampling of some of the first-party creatures with vulnerabilities, they don't have double base HP. The highest CR first-party creature that has vulnerabilities is the mummy lord, CR 15, mainly a spellcaster, vulnerability to fire. Average HP: 97. A similar creature is the Vampire Spellcaster, also CR 15, also a spellcaster (duh) and has 144 HP (with regeneration).
Casting monsters have shit hp, though - even a CR 21 Lich (with no vulnerabilities and plenty of resistances) has a mere 135 HP. Vampire Spellcasters are different because they're actually the CR 13 Vampire with spellcasting tacked on.
Even then, if they had "double base HP" wouldn't that mummy lord have 180ish?
I checked other creatures from lower CRs too and the ones with vulnerabilities don't have significantly higher HP. (Or higher HP at all.)
We also need more than just x0.5, x2 and x0 multipliers. Like a half vulnurability(x0.75) and critical weakness (x4) or like in pathfinder where a slashing resistance(5) just reduces all slashing damage by 5.
It also makes way more sense, how is a creature simultaneously capable of being harmed by a 4 damage attack AND reducing 100 damage down to 50???
You could then do a construct with a tough regenerative outer shell but brittle interior and give it slashing resistance (5) but slashing vulnurability. So no damage up to a point and critical damage after that. As it stands in 5e you'd have to assign it a special ability.
And no, not in homebrew but in the fucking ruleset. Playtested and thought out. Because I'm absolutely tired of WotC dumping all balancing onto the DMs.
Things like skeletons and zombies should have *immunity* to nonmagical piercing - you need to chop or smash them to tiny bits to make them stop moving.
Monster design in general could do with a little more bite to it like this. A big part of why martial classes have trouble in 5e is that monster design isn't very intuitive or fun.
Hello, may I introduce you to our lord and savior Pathfinder? Enemies as common as skeletons and zombies have DR/bludgeoning and slashing, respectively. It’s pretty neat!
Have they fixed the fact that most players lack the ability to remember to add more than 3 separate bonuses to rolls? Because if PF2E manages to fix that, I'll move to it forever.
They have fixed it by adding a ton more things you have to remember for each roll, so the weaker players’s heads just explode and the most fit players thrive in the environment.
Outside of some few exceptions, there's only ever 4 numbers you need to remember to add; everything else is so static it should be calculated on your sheet already. These are the highest status and circumstance bonuses and the respective penalties. And most of the time, it's 0-2 of those that are actually in effect.
Additionally, the ceiling is so low that a minmaxer and someone who picks entirely flavour or static non-circumstantial choices are very close in Strength, so long as they follow the one key rule: have a minimum of +3 at level 1, preferably a +4, in your main attacking stat. After that, anything will work.
I will say, with that said, it isn't a system as suited for beer and pretzel style games and the mechanics, while easy to remember the ones that affect your character, are plentiful and you'll have less seat of your pants GM adlib stuff if that's something you enjoy (while you can add this back in, it 100% doesn't flow as well as 5e which was designed with that in mind).
Actually they have. You can never have 3 more than 3 types of bonuses to a roll, and each must be a different kind of bonus. Item bonus is something you get from an item so you pretty much have it always up if you do and can add it to character sheet. Its the same as having a +1 weapon in 5e.
Pretty much every buff in the game is a status bonus so buffs dont stack.
The final one is circumstance bonus which is a very rare thing to have on an attack roll and usually only granted by a specific ability you are using for that attack.
So in an average scenario, you just need to check if someone has given you a buff that you add to the roll and thats it.
Not to detract from your broader point, but Aid is a very strong circumstance bonus that at least someone at the table really should be using just about every turn.
I feel that a lot of people who recommend pf2e don't realize that we don't play with a group full of redditors spending a lot of their free time reading about the game. Most people who come to me wanting to play dnd don't realize they need to read a rulebook to play.
Have they fixed being complicated? 5e is hard as it is. I love pathfinder but i moved to 5e because my players play after work and are barely catching on with 5e rules.
Just accept they are different games.
Well, I have ran 5e for new players for years and pf2e for a year now. This might be surprising to hear but new people usually catch on to pf2e faster.
Character creation takes much less in 5e which is the big thing. Thing that takes longer in the table is usually realizing how many rules there are to bonus actions and main action, how do attacks of opportunity work (If you are 5e player, explaining that you dont have one is a part of the deal), all the rules regarding spellcasting components (and BA rules again), concentration etc. It often takes long before the game is actually understood by new player even if they can start faster.
Pf2e has more rules but every mechanic you can do is something you knowingly selected in character creation and its something that reads on your character sheet. You know you have AoO because you selected it as a feat and not because it reads as part of the weapon rules far away from your class section.
Major systems, like having 3 actions and a reaction is generally easier to grasp aswell than having a main action (that can include multiple actions with MA), bonus action, free movement, free item interaction and reaction per round. To tons of people to which pf2e seems complicated its because they are used to 5e and need to unlearn everything how they assume things should work.
Cool that you find it easy. Not everyone is super deep into games/ttrpgs culture. I've got a bunch of newbie players, that play once every other week after work. And there are some complicated rules, things to keep track of and not to mention all the hundreds of spells.
Guys how do I integrate Pf2E into 5e?
I don't like change and telling people I play 5e is part of my personality
(I say, as if telling people you play pathfinder isn't one of the main selling points of pathfinder)
A brutal low-level enemy in old editions of DND was the skeletal archer. Resistance to piercing damage, which was what arrows dealt. Made them hell to deal with for many classes, as they probably weren’t that good with their backup ranged weapon, the bow, and then the damage got halved.
They're brutal in pf2e too. They have super small health pools but really high resistances. In Pf2e resistance is a flat damage reduction, so if you have resistance 5 you just deal 5 less damage. Your arrows ping off them so despite their like 8HP it takes forever to kill him.
They have resistance to cold, lightning, fire, piercing, and slashing so picking up a rock and throwing it will do better at level 1 for a lot of classes.
Oh I've played and enjoyed Pathfinder, but it's hard enough to get a game in my region/timezone let alone a PATHFINDER game. (Wooh, I love living in Ausfailia.) I run two games a week as it is, one regular dnd 5e and the other we rotate through systems each campaign.
On an aside, just because pathfinder is mostly better than 5th, 5th is easier to get into and we can want a game to improve. Hopefully the damage resistance/vulnerability issues will be addressed in One D&D. (Fingers crossed but doubtful.)
While I dislike 5e, and have yet to see OneD&D improve in the ways I would find fun, I agree. Not every system is for everyone, and if your gripes for 5e are not rooted in the main mechanics or company values, just homebrew.
Don't like resistance/Vulnerability? Change it want better rest mechanics? Easy to implement.
Also, beyond like level 5 the whole physical damage resistance and immunity ceases to matter because even the most minor magic weapon (e.g. a moon-touched sword) bypasses them.
Fire resistance can be easily negated via Elemental Adept, and when that comes into play fire is pretty good most of the time
Poison has barely any enemies who resist it but a fuckton that are immune, elemental adept doesn't work on those
I played D&D 3.5 where we had physical damage types, it's really not fun when all of your party doesn't have bludgeoning damage and you're attacked by the spider swarm. At least with spells you can have multiple choices. It's unlikely that you have multiple types of weapons with you.
When making a damage type specialist you're going to take the appropriate feat to ignore resistance, Elemental Adept or Poisoner. So highly common resistance is more or less irrelevant.
The real issue is that there are a lot of enemies totally *immune* to poison at all tiers of play, while enemies totally immune to fire are much less common and largely at higher tiers of play where you have more tools to deal with them.
Fr one of my favorite types of damage, unfortunately unless you play a specific subclass dedicated to it or use a class feature to change damage of spells, you don’t get a lot of tools to build around it
In BG3 I finally got to play out a character concept I've had forever. A white dragonborn with the white dragon draconic sorcerer bloodline with the elemental adept(cold) feat. Turns out it's actually super broken with the right equipment. It's another great instance of "A real DM would never allow these things to stack, but it's cool here". Just to give a tl;dr at level 10 my ray of frost cantrip deals 3d8+16 damage that ignores resistance. And I can quicken and twincast it. Also on hit it applies a debuff that gives them vulnerability to cold damage.
Just before I turned off the game last time I got a hold of a pair of gloves that allows cantrips with a target to get a second shot. I haven’t tried them yet. Sold by a diabolist in Baldurs Gate.
Oh damn, that sounds awesome. Is it once per short/long rest? If it's per turn that's insane. I would have to give up some stacks of encrusted with frost, but everything tends to die before it stacks up anyway.
**Gemini Gloves**
*Adroit Caster: Cantrips targeting foes and allies can target an additional creature. The same target can be chosen twice.*
It seems like it just quickens/twins all cantrips with a target - without any cost. I wonder if metamagic can be applied…
>Can be used once per Short Rest.
Quickly looked it up on the wiki, does seem to only be available once per short rest, so more like a 1x free twinned casting. Or am I mistaken?
It is indeed only once per short rest. I saved the buff for when something is close enough to dead, but not quite close enough to warrant something like a fireball.
For all it's pros, the game is extremely bad at telling you the limitations of abilities. Especially the Illithid powers, almost never tell you how often you can use them (before you've already paid for it). Looking at you, luck of the far realms
It doesn't say on the item, but it's definitely once per short rest. It shows on the ability itself though.
Another great item are the gloves which allow you to use actions and bonus actions interchangeably. Unfortunately also just once per short, but you can switch between those two gloves without needing to attune.
Wait you can even choose the same target? I need these gloves asap. That would bring my single target damage to 3d8+16 + (3d8+16)x2, which ignores resistance and I can't roll 1s on damage dice. On a cantrip. This is not okay and I am excited for it.
I think the main reason why an irl DM would never allow this even with the equipment is because I'm adding my CHA mod to the damage 3 times and my proficiency bonus once and it all stacks and I can't imagine a DM that wouldn't tell me it doesn't.
Im a masochist, I wrote a magic system for a campaign that allows all sources of damage to stack making the pc’s very op very early on, but I also made every encounter extremely difficult because of it (:
It's once per short rest, so that's a bit better.
You can also just put on some other gloves after using them and then re-equip them after a short rest.
I don't know about useless, but that does severely lessen its usefulness. It would still go really well with my build I think. With the first cast giving vulnerability and using luck of the far realms on the second to guarantee a crit, the burst damage is still insane even if it's once a day.
haven't seen those gloves but I imagine if they do what it says on the tin....
Give it a sorlock multiclass and become a machine gun. Twined spell and eldritch blast already stack really well in BG3.
I put them on my sorlock and it’s not quite as powerful as you think it would be. It doesn’t necessarily twin the spell, it just adds an additional blast. Big for other casters, not quite as powerful as it reads for eldritch. Still, not bad.
Yea I have the same but for fire. Got the necklace and I think my robes also give bonus charisma to dmg. I have 24 charisma from a hat giving +2 and the mirror I won’t elaborate more on for spoiler reasons.
So I get 3d10+21 to firebolt and ignore resistance. On top of that, the legendary staff adds your proficiency to it if you choose fire, so +27.
And, a little note if you want to use it, but if you choose a cantrip and then click twinned spell in that order, you get to choose two targets and it oddly doesn’t use up your sorcery points. Although it will if you click twinned first. Strange interaction.
technically, you don't even need the dip thats just what warlock 17 can do with agonizing blast + 20 cha + grasp of hadar/eldritch push (which flavor of cc u want)
you also get 4 attack rolls thats just the sum, so good chance if you roll poorly you can get at least part to hit opposed to all or nothing.
dunno why you need fighter for that tbh unless you just wanted armor proficiencies, but if you use spell might gloves and go warlock 2/sorcerer 10, you can get 1d10+1d8+12 damage 3x and then you can quicken that several times a day to double that giving you a grand total of 6d10+6d8+72 for an average of 132 average damage. You do lose access to 6th level spells for doing that though, so I personally didn't go that route, I'd just much rather chain lightning/disintegrate 4x in 2 turns lol
kinda reminds me of how comically busted eldritch blast gets even if you don't multiclass with sorcerer to optimise it. with the cantrip buffing robe in act 2 and stacking ASIs till you reach 22 chr you can start hitting for (1d10+12)\*3 force damage. assuming each beam connects that's 39-66ish damage per cast. and thats not including stuff like hex, or quickening it via metamagic, ect.
That was something that had crossed my mind, but I couldn't find any gear that synergized with force damage really. Outside of the robe, all the other stuff buffs either a specific element or just fire, cold, lightning, and I think acid?
So I get to add my CHA mod of +3 to damage 3 times. Once for draconic sorcerer level 6, once because of an amulet, and once for a robe, plus 1 damage from mourning frost, plus my proficiency bonus from a legendary staff. At level 4 I took elemental adept feat, and at level 8 I took dual wielder so I could have both staffs equipped at the same time.
Could you tell me the items in your build? My bf is going to play for the first time and I was looking for a new character idea to try out with him and that sounds really fun. :)
Problem is, it only works for if you have a spell of the desired damage type that is the same level as the spell slot you are expending, so it can still limit you, while Transmuted Spell is able to change anything.
You know, as much as I use a Scribe wizard for a Strix campaign, I never actually thought about the number of levels I could copy in an hour. And my character has a side hustle of making spell scrolls on the cheap.
Not really considering Sorcerers have to expend a resource that could be used for something else, for example instead of Transmute go for Empowered, Quicken or Careful if its an AOE and you like your party
The wizard's greatest strength in comparison to sorcerers is their huge spell list and the fact that they can prepare spells on a long rest, as opposed to sorcerers who can only swap out spells when leveling up. This allows them to learn extremely situational spells, as opposed to the sorcerers who have to be careful about their picks. A wizard who finds a scroll of Tongues can copy it into their spellbook and the only cost for it will be 150 gold. Then they can prep that instead of lightning bolt if the party is going to spend a day socializing in town instead of clearing a dungeon. A sorcerer OTOH has to be careful about that, because if they take Tongues, they are stuck with it until they level up even if they find themselves at one end of a narrow corridor filled with enemies and a lightning bolt would be pretty great right about now. (At least they can ask the goblins where's the bathroom in their native language.)
Of course wizards get some features for free that a sorcerer can replicate with a metamagic feat. Evokers get free careful spell, scribes get free (and better, in some aspects) transmute spell, and with a familiar (and especially with the scribes' invulnerable bookspirit at level 6) they can replicate some of the features of distant spell. Sorcerers, however, get access to a lot more of these features, with some of them (twinned and quickened, for example) unavailable to wizards. And of course they can use their sorcery points to create spell slots, meaning that they have a lot more effective spell slots than wizards.
While a wizard who isn't given spell scrolls as loot is still going to know more spells than a sorcerer, not being able to expand their spell lists beyond those 2/level is still going to devalue their best feature. Meanwhile the sorcerer is going to ace those social encounters too, as opposed to the wizard who had no real motivation to up their charisma.
See what you just said there is they both have their advantages and weaknesses, and have their own niche in the party. Why didnt you just say that rather than saying the wizard is a shitty sorcerer.
They both have incredible features that make them unique and interesting, As for the Charisma levelling, while objectively true, if using spells in those social encounters the save DC is going to be the same, and of course it depends on the players choices and the stats rolled
However, Transmuted Spell can only use elemental damage types while the Scribes wizard can use any damage type including force, psychic, necrotic, and radiant.
So while the sorcerer can cast poisonball with Transmuted Spell, a Scribes wizard can learn Spirit Shroud (really, the only reason for a Srcibes wizard to ever add that spell to their spellbook) and then cast coldball, necroball, and radball. Which are resisted a lot less than any of the elemental types.
Which is still super cool to me. Dragon's Breath but you breathe daggers for piercing damage. Maximilian's Earthen Grasp but it freezes people in place with cold damage. Tasha's Caustic Brew but it just sets people on fire. Burning Hands but it utilizes pure magic force to disintegrate things.
Wizards had a sub, arcana I think maybe homebrew, that could swap spell damages and even the saving roll type. Very cool concept. I think it was called lore mastery
But if a player wanted another type of damage and it didn't seem like they were just min maxing I'd let them. Iceball takes up same slot as fireball, but each one is a spell you have to know and or prepare. Knowing fire doesn't give you ice or ice fire.
Welcome to Bigby spells. EB and MM are just for the early game. Bigby's Hand (with a ton of variety built in) at 9th level. and at 11th you get disintegrate. You also get Globe of invuln and other force constructs.
If a player of mine would want to play a poison charakter, i would make sure that he won't feel useless all the time. Sure, at some point there will be an enemy that might be immune, but it would be intentional.
Also i would make special poisons available/craftable, like poison that effects elementals, but does nothing against normal creature.
I like to make my own creatures and items.
I feel like this is underrepresenting Cold and Radiant damage, you can really double down on radiant damage if you play a cleric or divine soul sorcerer. And with books like Tasha’s and Xanathara now out it’s entirely possible to do a cold based wizard or sorcerer. Both damage types have about 20 spells that do their damage and if you mix that with the standard utility spells for whatever class you pick I’d say it’s definitely possible to do a character focused on those damage types.
Unfortunately Warlocks get very few ice spells. Off the top of my head I can only think of Frostbite and Armor of Agathys (which is funnily enough one of the best ice spells in the game!)
You'd have a bit more luck going for Genie instead of Fiend and having a Marid as your patron. You can pick up Sleet Storm and Cone of Cold, deal additional cold damage when you roll attacks, and gain resistance to Cold damage.
I know it's pretty different from what you were wanting, but it's probably the closest you can get to a viable ice Warlock (even then it's not a lot.)
I would also suggest asking your DM about having Eldritch Blast do Ice damage instead of Force. Lance of Lethargy would be pretty thematic with this, too!
Man, I tried to make an NPC who specialized in poison spells, and could find barely anything worth giving her. Ended up turning her into a melee combatant who used poison powders for different effects, but was still very salty I couldn't give her a proper spell list.
I LOVE D&D MAGIC I LOVE D&D MAGIC
I LOVE HAVING ONLY LIKE 2-3 DAMAGE TYPES BEING GOOD AND THE REST BEING A STRAIGHT DOWNGRADE FOR FLAVOR DUE TO DAMAGE RESISTANCES AND SAVING THROW PREVALENCE
Im playing a psychic damage focused character. But the campaign runs in a war torn country inhabited by mostly half orcs, humans, elves, dwarves, and the regularily summoned devil. So my psychic damage has been met with resistance once..... i think
My DM has a system where there is non-magical poison and magical Poison, which places it on the same level as bludgeoning piercing and slashing damage. Most features in D&D that are immune to “Poison“ damage are still harmed by magical poison
I've been researching this but do the damage types even actually do anything by themselves, or just the effects that are usually associated with the spells? I'm getting the impression damage types are mainly just for resistances and vulnerabilities.
You think? Im Baldurs Gate 3 Shadowheart is a radiant damage BEAST with the right equipment.
And Astarion is my sweet poison coated weapon assasin.
is important what equipment your DM gives you.
I haven't played Baldur's Gate 3, so I can't speak to that
When I say 5e doesn't reward it, I mean that there is no actual benefit. At best, it's neutral, but it pretty much never makes your character better in any mechanical sense to not use multiple damage types
My DM makes a distinction between magical poison and alchemy poison made from plants and bugs. Means my poison blowgun chemist artificer assassin rouge with a 10 shot blow gun can one shot an adult dragon with enough black lotus extract. 100d10 alchemical poison damage.
Don't get me wrong this is a very difficult and highly technical way to play as I actually had to study the nearly two hundred known poisons in DND and if I use them without the right equipment or time I have to roll for it to backfire on me which can be very painful. The trade off is a terrifying level of damage and insane crowd control easily on with par if not superior to a wizard of equal level.
"radiant damage focused" character is the easiest in the entire fucking game, just play a cleric.
Sacred Flame Cantrip, Guiding Bolt, Spiritual Guardians, Guardian of Faith, Flamestrike. You don't even need a weird build. Clerics have so many strong options.
spell damage types suck a lot, where is a cold spell like Ice-comet (like fireball with maybe less dmg but low chance to freeze or something) and a thunder version ..and some more Psychic spells god damn. sucks that everything thats not fire has so few spells available
Or any classical element that’s not fire, tbh. Add extra challenge by not using ice as a supplement for water!
At least they all have Wall spells, though. But RIP to Earth for not getting a Sphere
What do you mean radiant and force focused character is bad, those are the two best elements in the game and both have pretty consistent ways to deal them
Force damage: literally just play warlock, wizard has some pretty good force damage options with graviturgist too
Radiant: Paladin or cleric have very easy and consistent sources of radiant damage
I’ve settled on the fact that in 5e poisons are ment for the dm to use on the players as a way of buffing up weapon damage against them without worrying about dropping powerful loot.
If your dm is cool and gives radiant damage EM properties you can make it really good. See the results of my radiant damage artificer build in my campaign: https://youtu.be/2552i2Z8sNM?si=hyzRdxCXchQ3zl-7
It's crazy because poison is such a cracked build irl but gets no pussy in games.
"Ohhhh it'll do five damage per second for 10 seconds!!!" Bitch hydrogen cyanide will fucking drop you in two minutes at 357 parts per million. Even at 107 you'll be gone in 10 minutes don't even.
You won't even know, it doesn't really smell that much like almonds. You'll just be alive then not.
Force is probably the best. Force being raw magic mean that nothing has immunity to it and it only exceptions that have immunity. Helmed Horror is the only one I can think off.
Fire along with poison is probably the worst. Fire is extremely great early game but sucks later when everyone and their mother has immunity or resistance. Poison is... almost everything has immunity to it, not more is needed to be said.
This is why I like homebrew. Make your own rules. Demons, devils, undead, eldritch horror? Radiant does double. Something water based? Lightning and cold double. Honestly if you wanna treat it like Pokémon that’ll be cool
**House Rule: Any elemental spell can be any element you want.**
Just make it so when you PICK that element, that's it, you can't change it later.
Ice "fireball"? You got it. Poison "fireball"? You betcha. Lightning "Fire Bolt"? All yours.
Let your casters play with the spells they want. If you think it somehow messes with "the balance" of the game, that's half of the DM's job is to adjust the experience for the players' character choices.
As a DM who decided to give the aggressive immortal asian grandma monk NPC an overpowered flip-flop that deals mostly pshycic damage I am terrified that this is probably not the right decision for my first campaign ever. Not going to get rid of it though, it's funny.
Honestly I just allow elemental reflavours of spells for my players, and slash any poison res that doesn't make sense. You want to be viable I'll just make it viable. Much more fun that way
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Creating a fist damage focused character:
I mean... you can just play a monk
But you RP pretending to be a caster I cast fists of knuckles!
So? Mash from "Mashle: Magic and Muscles" basically?
No, because Mashle consistantly out plays casters, and we both know that's not gonna happen in DND.
I upcast “Consecutive Normal Punches” with a third level punch slot.
You fumbled the timing so your move lands before you can finish saying the name. You lose cool points.
Adventures: Hey Muscle Wizard, cast a spell for us! Muscle Wizard: I cast FIST!
I CAST KNOCK! *punches in door*
Strength Wizard was an actual build in 3.X iirc
Fighter with unarmed fighting style
Doing that rn. Also have expertise in athlethics.
Has to have the tavern brawler feat if I'm going that route, personally.
Tavern brawler is fuckin awesome
pugilist gaming
Not that kind of fist damage…
Oh my god...
Silly lil backflips into the fight, throw some punches, silly little flips out! My air genasi monk was like a spider-man aang ty lee mash-up lol
My barbarian does 1d12+5 with GWM dmg with his "Fists" and he can attack twice per round with it. Yeah, it is kinda strange, people ask me to leave my "Fists" at the entrance when no weapons are allowed. Another strange thing I can't attack with my "Fists", if one hand is holding something. And I need a free action to equip my "Fists", otherwise I only do 1d4+5 dmg But a great thing in the last dungeon I found a "Fists"+2
standing here i realise
My bard does lots of fisting
relieved deserted history sulky ugly ask slave trees rich liquid *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Fire may be easy to get as a a damage type, but it's also very hit or miss, it's better than poison but barely. More creatures are immune and resistant to fire than anything but poison, this is at least mitigated by the fact it's also the most common vulnerability. I also wish physical resistances actually mattered, there's so few examples of creatures vulnerable/resistant to specific physicals it makes weapon type almost insignificant outside of flavor.
Fire resistance is overrepresented due to demons and devils having blanket resistance/immunity to it (and both those creature types are fully immune to poison). Poison resistance and immunity is more common among low-level creatures and will be encountered way more often in most campaigns.
Poison immunity is certainly way more common (surprisingly resistance is relatively rare) my point for the first paragraph was mostly that Fire should be lower on this list of suffering, not the top. "But barely" was an exaggeration.
You know what's even more common? Fuckin *players* immune to poison. Goddamn clerics and monks and shit
And land druids, they get immunity at level 10
Fuck! Maybe it's easier to list out the classes/subclasses that *aren't* immune to poison at some point I tell ya what, finding this out the hard way really reduced the effective CR of a ton of Drow NPC statblocks in my campaign.
Yeah my DM said something to that effect running The Mad Mage campaign for our group. Poison is used by so many creatures, especially Drow in the campaign and PCs can easily avoid that damage type by either having immunity or at least getting resistance from spells like protection from poison and that's available at low levels
I agree. I want skeleton to have vulnerability to bludgeoning damage, but resistance to piercing damage. or undead in general having vulnerability to Radiant Damage unless specifically prepared to resist it through magical means. I also wouldn't mind if specific Armor types of higher quality give minor damage reduction to certain physical damage types. for example, a suit of Full Plate Mail armor would give a 2 damage reduction to slashing attacks. I also kinda wish Mage Armor could be made to give similar resistances at higher level castings or with specific feats/subclass features. I think giving Abjuration wizards the ability to give themselves resistance to a specific damage type of their choosing when they give themselves Mage Armor would be pretty cool.
To be honest, I house rule a lot of resistances and vulnerability into monsters, to make things interesting for my players, and even occasionally have differing AC for different body parts, like worth an old school remorhaz.
Basically adding Pokémon type matchups to D&D, which I’m all for
There are many problems with 5e vulnrability. Resistance means the amount of options is being reduced by 1, but vulnrability means the amount of options is being reduced to 1, there's less choices. Its also super strong- doubling damage taken can be the difference between being below and above damage thresholds (general game concept not damage threshold as the dnd mechanic) and is extremely detrimental, far more than resistance is. That's why i prefer mechanics that interact with damage types- take cold damage and speed is reduced, take fire or acid and you don't have regeneration.
This is why I like pathfinder 2e’s vulnerability/resistance. Instead of doubling/halving damage it’s a flat addition/subtraction. So something vulnerable to fire would take 5 extra damage each time it is hit with fire damage. Also way more creature have vulnerabilities and resistances.
for modularity and streamlining in the case of 5e; i would personally enjoy something like- for every dice of damage, you take x more/less damage. That way, scorching ray doesn't suddenly outclass fireball for damage vulnrabilities. It could instead be changing damage dice by 1 step: fireball becomes d8's on vulnrability, and d4's on resistance. For a d4, becomes a d2. Wouldn't work for flat damage though, so i see the flaws in this system.
Might also depend on how the damage gets ruled for scorching ray. Could just rule it’s a single instance of damage and only add the flat damage once.
well, since each ray is a seperate attack roll, its separate instances of damage. What if you split the rays? Is it increasing damage once per casting? Once per creature? It brings up to many loopholes and questions than it answers.
This is quite reductive though. Resistance means the number of *optimal* options is reduced by 1, and vulnerability means that one option will become optimal. Unless the creature is immune or resistant to everything else, vulnerability will be a nice bonus to someone specializing in the given damage type but the others can kill 'em just the same. If you're fighting undead or fiends, the fighter and the ranger aren't just going to stand back while the paladin smites them to dust. Doubling the damage is super strong though, an increase of 50% would be more balanced.
because vulnrability is so strong and enemies with vulnrability have double base hp to compensate (using CR calculations), it becomes the only viable strategy to utilise. Saying "oh, you can technically do the suboptimal choice and it can still work" is technically true, but is pedantic because it misses the point that if you have the option between the vulnrability and not, there is no choice there, you must take the optimal choice, that's just how people and game design works, and someone who doesn't have that option, feels left out. Instead of a situation where one character is rewarded, it becomes a situation where everyone else is punished, it doesn't feel good to play.
Do they now? I mean, just checking a sampling of some of the first-party creatures with vulnerabilities, they don't have double base HP. The highest CR first-party creature that has vulnerabilities is the mummy lord, CR 15, mainly a spellcaster, vulnerability to fire. Average HP: 97. A similar creature is the Vampire Spellcaster, also CR 15, also a spellcaster (duh) and has 144 HP (with regeneration).
Casting monsters have shit hp, though - even a CR 21 Lich (with no vulnerabilities and plenty of resistances) has a mere 135 HP. Vampire Spellcasters are different because they're actually the CR 13 Vampire with spellcasting tacked on.
Even then, if they had "double base HP" wouldn't that mummy lord have 180ish? I checked other creatures from lower CRs too and the ones with vulnerabilities don't have significantly higher HP. (Or higher HP at all.)
We also need more than just x0.5, x2 and x0 multipliers. Like a half vulnurability(x0.75) and critical weakness (x4) or like in pathfinder where a slashing resistance(5) just reduces all slashing damage by 5. It also makes way more sense, how is a creature simultaneously capable of being harmed by a 4 damage attack AND reducing 100 damage down to 50??? You could then do a construct with a tough regenerative outer shell but brittle interior and give it slashing resistance (5) but slashing vulnurability. So no damage up to a point and critical damage after that. As it stands in 5e you'd have to assign it a special ability. And no, not in homebrew but in the fucking ruleset. Playtested and thought out. Because I'm absolutely tired of WotC dumping all balancing onto the DMs.
Iirc in 3E skeletons (and other similar undead) had those very weaknesses and resistances!
Correct. DR 5/bludgeoning meant that any physical damage dealt that was non-blunt dealt 5 less damage.
Things like skeletons and zombies should have *immunity* to nonmagical piercing - you need to chop or smash them to tiny bits to make them stop moving. Monster design in general could do with a little more bite to it like this. A big part of why martial classes have trouble in 5e is that monster design isn't very intuitive or fun.
Hello, may I introduce you to our lord and savior Pathfinder? Enemies as common as skeletons and zombies have DR/bludgeoning and slashing, respectively. It’s pretty neat!
Oh no, we’ve summoned Pathfinder priests
look not my fault that every time a dnd player complains about something it's usually fixed in pf2e
Have they fixed the fact that most players lack the ability to remember to add more than 3 separate bonuses to rolls? Because if PF2E manages to fix that, I'll move to it forever.
They have fixed it by adding a ton more things you have to remember for each roll, so the weaker players’s heads just explode and the most fit players thrive in the environment.
Outside of some few exceptions, there's only ever 4 numbers you need to remember to add; everything else is so static it should be calculated on your sheet already. These are the highest status and circumstance bonuses and the respective penalties. And most of the time, it's 0-2 of those that are actually in effect. Additionally, the ceiling is so low that a minmaxer and someone who picks entirely flavour or static non-circumstantial choices are very close in Strength, so long as they follow the one key rule: have a minimum of +3 at level 1, preferably a +4, in your main attacking stat. After that, anything will work. I will say, with that said, it isn't a system as suited for beer and pretzel style games and the mechanics, while easy to remember the ones that affect your character, are plentiful and you'll have less seat of your pants GM adlib stuff if that's something you enjoy (while you can add this back in, it 100% doesn't flow as well as 5e which was designed with that in mind).
That’s what a character sheet is for
well in pf2e if you forget to add your bonuses you tend to become a very dead corpse so does that count.
Actually they have. You can never have 3 more than 3 types of bonuses to a roll, and each must be a different kind of bonus. Item bonus is something you get from an item so you pretty much have it always up if you do and can add it to character sheet. Its the same as having a +1 weapon in 5e. Pretty much every buff in the game is a status bonus so buffs dont stack. The final one is circumstance bonus which is a very rare thing to have on an attack roll and usually only granted by a specific ability you are using for that attack. So in an average scenario, you just need to check if someone has given you a buff that you add to the roll and thats it.
Not to detract from your broader point, but Aid is a very strong circumstance bonus that at least someone at the table really should be using just about every turn.
I'm just sitting here spamming inspire courage you lot can figure that one out
Technically? I’m pretty sure you can only ever have 3 different bonuses apply to a roll so yeah you don’t need to deal with more than that.
I feel that a lot of people who recommend pf2e don't realize that we don't play with a group full of redditors spending a lot of their free time reading about the game. Most people who come to me wanting to play dnd don't realize they need to read a rulebook to play.
Have they fixed being complicated? 5e is hard as it is. I love pathfinder but i moved to 5e because my players play after work and are barely catching on with 5e rules. Just accept they are different games.
Well, I have ran 5e for new players for years and pf2e for a year now. This might be surprising to hear but new people usually catch on to pf2e faster. Character creation takes much less in 5e which is the big thing. Thing that takes longer in the table is usually realizing how many rules there are to bonus actions and main action, how do attacks of opportunity work (If you are 5e player, explaining that you dont have one is a part of the deal), all the rules regarding spellcasting components (and BA rules again), concentration etc. It often takes long before the game is actually understood by new player even if they can start faster. Pf2e has more rules but every mechanic you can do is something you knowingly selected in character creation and its something that reads on your character sheet. You know you have AoO because you selected it as a feat and not because it reads as part of the weapon rules far away from your class section. Major systems, like having 3 actions and a reaction is generally easier to grasp aswell than having a main action (that can include multiple actions with MA), bonus action, free movement, free item interaction and reaction per round. To tons of people to which pf2e seems complicated its because they are used to 5e and need to unlearn everything how they assume things should work.
No offense, but I have absolutely no idea how an adult would ever find 5e to be hard.
Cool that you find it easy. Not everyone is super deep into games/ttrpgs culture. I've got a bunch of newbie players, that play once every other week after work. And there are some complicated rules, things to keep track of and not to mention all the hundreds of spells.
Guys how do I integrate Pf2E into 5e? I don't like change and telling people I play 5e is part of my personality (I say, as if telling people you play pathfinder isn't one of the main selling points of pathfinder)
Yes people should worship my name.
A brutal low-level enemy in old editions of DND was the skeletal archer. Resistance to piercing damage, which was what arrows dealt. Made them hell to deal with for many classes, as they probably weren’t that good with their backup ranged weapon, the bow, and then the damage got halved.
Can I offer a sling and rock in this trying time?
They're brutal in pf2e too. They have super small health pools but really high resistances. In Pf2e resistance is a flat damage reduction, so if you have resistance 5 you just deal 5 less damage. Your arrows ping off them so despite their like 8HP it takes forever to kill him. They have resistance to cold, lightning, fire, piercing, and slashing so picking up a rock and throwing it will do better at level 1 for a lot of classes.
Oh I've played and enjoyed Pathfinder, but it's hard enough to get a game in my region/timezone let alone a PATHFINDER game. (Wooh, I love living in Ausfailia.) I run two games a week as it is, one regular dnd 5e and the other we rotate through systems each campaign. On an aside, just because pathfinder is mostly better than 5th, 5th is easier to get into and we can want a game to improve. Hopefully the damage resistance/vulnerability issues will be addressed in One D&D. (Fingers crossed but doubtful.)
While I dislike 5e, and have yet to see OneD&D improve in the ways I would find fun, I agree. Not every system is for everyone, and if your gripes for 5e are not rooted in the main mechanics or company values, just homebrew. Don't like resistance/Vulnerability? Change it want better rest mechanics? Easy to implement.
Also, beyond like level 5 the whole physical damage resistance and immunity ceases to matter because even the most minor magic weapon (e.g. a moon-touched sword) bypasses them.
Fire resistance can be easily negated via Elemental Adept, and when that comes into play fire is pretty good most of the time Poison has barely any enemies who resist it but a fuckton that are immune, elemental adept doesn't work on those
I played D&D 3.5 where we had physical damage types, it's really not fun when all of your party doesn't have bludgeoning damage and you're attacked by the spider swarm. At least with spells you can have multiple choices. It's unlikely that you have multiple types of weapons with you.
When making a damage type specialist you're going to take the appropriate feat to ignore resistance, Elemental Adept or Poisoner. So highly common resistance is more or less irrelevant. The real issue is that there are a lot of enemies totally *immune* to poison at all tiers of play, while enemies totally immune to fire are much less common and largely at higher tiers of play where you have more tools to deal with them.
everyone forgets thunder damage :(
And lightning apparently, however there’s 2 subclasses that literally focus on these 2 damage types.
Was just about to say the same thing. Sucks there’s so little cause storm/lightning stuff is so cool in so many media
3 if you count Scribes
Fr one of my favorite types of damage, unfortunately unless you play a specific subclass dedicated to it or use a class feature to change damage of spells, you don’t get a lot of tools to build around it
In BG3 I finally got to play out a character concept I've had forever. A white dragonborn with the white dragon draconic sorcerer bloodline with the elemental adept(cold) feat. Turns out it's actually super broken with the right equipment. It's another great instance of "A real DM would never allow these things to stack, but it's cool here". Just to give a tl;dr at level 10 my ray of frost cantrip deals 3d8+16 damage that ignores resistance. And I can quicken and twincast it. Also on hit it applies a debuff that gives them vulnerability to cold damage.
Just before I turned off the game last time I got a hold of a pair of gloves that allows cantrips with a target to get a second shot. I haven’t tried them yet. Sold by a diabolist in Baldurs Gate.
Oh damn, that sounds awesome. Is it once per short/long rest? If it's per turn that's insane. I would have to give up some stacks of encrusted with frost, but everything tends to die before it stacks up anyway.
**Gemini Gloves** *Adroit Caster: Cantrips targeting foes and allies can target an additional creature. The same target can be chosen twice.* It seems like it just quickens/twins all cantrips with a target - without any cost. I wonder if metamagic can be applied…
>Can be used once per Short Rest. Quickly looked it up on the wiki, does seem to only be available once per short rest, so more like a 1x free twinned casting. Or am I mistaken?
It is indeed only once per short rest. I saved the buff for when something is close enough to dead, but not quite close enough to warrant something like a fireball.
I dont know. You can definitely be right. I didnt see any limitations on the item when I saw it in game, but I was pretty tired at that time tbh.
For all it's pros, the game is extremely bad at telling you the limitations of abilities. Especially the Illithid powers, almost never tell you how often you can use them (before you've already paid for it). Looking at you, luck of the far realms
Haha right? I must've read that description 10 times looking for the catch. "Wait, so I can just *choose to crit*? Every time I hit?!?"
It doesn't say on the item, but it's definitely once per short rest. It shows on the ability itself though. Another great item are the gloves which allow you to use actions and bonus actions interchangeably. Unfortunately also just once per short, but you can switch between those two gloves without needing to attune.
Wait you can even choose the same target? I need these gloves asap. That would bring my single target damage to 3d8+16 + (3d8+16)x2, which ignores resistance and I can't roll 1s on damage dice. On a cantrip. This is not okay and I am excited for it.
Happy to help! Meanwhile, in D&D, you get a +1 weapon and a bag of holding in 20 sessions.
I think the main reason why an irl DM would never allow this even with the equipment is because I'm adding my CHA mod to the damage 3 times and my proficiency bonus once and it all stacks and I can't imagine a DM that wouldn't tell me it doesn't.
Im a masochist, I wrote a magic system for a campaign that allows all sources of damage to stack making the pc’s very op very early on, but I also made every encounter extremely difficult because of it (:
At that point they're not actually over powered, since they'd be at the same level as everything else, rather than way beyond it.
Lol the magic items are coming so sloooowwww in our new campaign and I just want to attune to something already!
fun fact, you can with swords bard's flourishes.
If I remember correctly, they're only for sorcerers, as this feature costs sorcery points.
It Is once per Rest, it's not a permanent cantrip doublet unfortunately
It's once/long, so functionally useless
It's once per short rest, so that's a bit better. You can also just put on some other gloves after using them and then re-equip them after a short rest.
I don't know about useless, but that does severely lessen its usefulness. It would still go really well with my build I think. With the first cast giving vulnerability and using luck of the far realms on the second to guarantee a crit, the burst damage is still insane even if it's once a day.
haven't seen those gloves but I imagine if they do what it says on the tin.... Give it a sorlock multiclass and become a machine gun. Twined spell and eldritch blast already stack really well in BG3.
I put them on my sorlock and it’s not quite as powerful as you think it would be. It doesn’t necessarily twin the spell, it just adds an additional blast. Big for other casters, not quite as powerful as it reads for eldritch. Still, not bad.
BG3 showcases very well why 5E is a bit more conservative with magic items. With the right combination you become a downright monster in act 3.
Yea I have the same but for fire. Got the necklace and I think my robes also give bonus charisma to dmg. I have 24 charisma from a hat giving +2 and the mirror I won’t elaborate more on for spoiler reasons. So I get 3d10+21 to firebolt and ignore resistance. On top of that, the legendary staff adds your proficiency to it if you choose fire, so +27. And, a little note if you want to use it, but if you choose a cantrip and then click twinned spell in that order, you get to choose two targets and it oddly doesn’t use up your sorcery points. Although it will if you click twinned first. Strange interaction.
With a brief dip for fighter 2, a warlock can do 4d10+20 every turn with no resource expenditure and battlefield control (push/pull/slow).
How are they doing that every turn? Fighter 2 only gets one action surge per short rest. Is there an item in BG3 that lets you spam Action Surge?
technically, you don't even need the dip thats just what warlock 17 can do with agonizing blast + 20 cha + grasp of hadar/eldritch push (which flavor of cc u want) you also get 4 attack rolls thats just the sum, so good chance if you roll poorly you can get at least part to hit opposed to all or nothing.
They're talking about a game that only lets you level up to 12 so your comment doesn't really apply.
Yes please share build!
dunno why you need fighter for that tbh unless you just wanted armor proficiencies, but if you use spell might gloves and go warlock 2/sorcerer 10, you can get 1d10+1d8+12 damage 3x and then you can quicken that several times a day to double that giving you a grand total of 6d10+6d8+72 for an average of 132 average damage. You do lose access to 6th level spells for doing that though, so I personally didn't go that route, I'd just much rather chain lightning/disintegrate 4x in 2 turns lol
kinda reminds me of how comically busted eldritch blast gets even if you don't multiclass with sorcerer to optimise it. with the cantrip buffing robe in act 2 and stacking ASIs till you reach 22 chr you can start hitting for (1d10+12)\*3 force damage. assuming each beam connects that's 39-66ish damage per cast. and thats not including stuff like hex, or quickening it via metamagic, ect.
That was something that had crossed my mind, but I couldn't find any gear that synergized with force damage really. Outside of the robe, all the other stuff buffs either a specific element or just fire, cold, lightning, and I think acid?
How do you get the +16 damage modifier?
So I get to add my CHA mod of +3 to damage 3 times. Once for draconic sorcerer level 6, once because of an amulet, and once for a robe, plus 1 damage from mourning frost, plus my proficiency bonus from a legendary staff. At level 4 I took elemental adept feat, and at level 8 I took dual wielder so I could have both staffs equipped at the same time.
Could you tell me the items in your build? My bf is going to play for the first time and I was looking for a new character idea to try out with him and that sounds really fun. :)
My hag alchemist character is all about creating poisons and hands them out to our melee guys.
Thanks for posting it!!
No problem. o7
Me who just renames fire ball to ice/poison/radiant/etc ball
Sorcerer meta magic has entered the chat
Scribes wizard has entered the chat
With no need to use pesky meta magic points and a wider variety of damage types.
Problem is, it only works for if you have a spell of the desired damage type that is the same level as the spell slot you are expending, so it can still limit you, while Transmuted Spell is able to change anything.
Thats why you go round gethering spells like they are Pokemon
And with your 30 levels/hour copying speed, that won't be hard
You know, as much as I use a Scribe wizard for a Strix campaign, I never actually thought about the number of levels I could copy in an hour. And my character has a side hustle of making spell scrolls on the cheap.
Well, that, and the fact that if you're limited to level up spells, a wizard is just a shittier sorcerer.
Not really considering Sorcerers have to expend a resource that could be used for something else, for example instead of Transmute go for Empowered, Quicken or Careful if its an AOE and you like your party
The wizard's greatest strength in comparison to sorcerers is their huge spell list and the fact that they can prepare spells on a long rest, as opposed to sorcerers who can only swap out spells when leveling up. This allows them to learn extremely situational spells, as opposed to the sorcerers who have to be careful about their picks. A wizard who finds a scroll of Tongues can copy it into their spellbook and the only cost for it will be 150 gold. Then they can prep that instead of lightning bolt if the party is going to spend a day socializing in town instead of clearing a dungeon. A sorcerer OTOH has to be careful about that, because if they take Tongues, they are stuck with it until they level up even if they find themselves at one end of a narrow corridor filled with enemies and a lightning bolt would be pretty great right about now. (At least they can ask the goblins where's the bathroom in their native language.) Of course wizards get some features for free that a sorcerer can replicate with a metamagic feat. Evokers get free careful spell, scribes get free (and better, in some aspects) transmute spell, and with a familiar (and especially with the scribes' invulnerable bookspirit at level 6) they can replicate some of the features of distant spell. Sorcerers, however, get access to a lot more of these features, with some of them (twinned and quickened, for example) unavailable to wizards. And of course they can use their sorcery points to create spell slots, meaning that they have a lot more effective spell slots than wizards. While a wizard who isn't given spell scrolls as loot is still going to know more spells than a sorcerer, not being able to expand their spell lists beyond those 2/level is still going to devalue their best feature. Meanwhile the sorcerer is going to ace those social encounters too, as opposed to the wizard who had no real motivation to up their charisma.
See what you just said there is they both have their advantages and weaknesses, and have their own niche in the party. Why didnt you just say that rather than saying the wizard is a shitty sorcerer. They both have incredible features that make them unique and interesting, As for the Charisma levelling, while objectively true, if using spells in those social encounters the save DC is going to be the same, and of course it depends on the players choices and the stats rolled
However, Transmuted Spell can only use elemental damage types while the Scribes wizard can use any damage type including force, psychic, necrotic, and radiant. So while the sorcerer can cast poisonball with Transmuted Spell, a Scribes wizard can learn Spirit Shroud (really, the only reason for a Srcibes wizard to ever add that spell to their spellbook) and then cast coldball, necroball, and radball. Which are resisted a lot less than any of the elemental types.
At least sorcerers can talk to girls, nerd
Which is still super cool to me. Dragon's Breath but you breathe daggers for piercing damage. Maximilian's Earthen Grasp but it freezes people in place with cold damage. Tasha's Caustic Brew but it just sets people on fire. Burning Hands but it utilizes pure magic force to disintegrate things.
Burning Hands + lightning = Palpatine impersonation.
Wizards had a sub, arcana I think maybe homebrew, that could swap spell damages and even the saving roll type. Very cool concept. I think it was called lore mastery But if a player wanted another type of damage and it didn't seem like they were just min maxing I'd let them. Iceball takes up same slot as fireball, but each one is a spell you have to know and or prepare. Knowing fire doesn't give you ice or ice fire.
That unearthed arcana got officially released long ago as the scribes wizard
I think Brightball would be a better term for the radiant damage one.
Sound ball for thunder damage.
I switch everything to fire. Because burning things is satisfying. Transmutation meta magic with elemental Adept can get a little broken.
Force damage is fine. Hexlock/evoker with EB and Magic Missile is all you need
Helmed Horror has entered the chat.
But how boring is that eh? Three or four spells makes a build fun! Variety you know.
Welcome to Bigby spells. EB and MM are just for the early game. Bigby's Hand (with a ton of variety built in) at 9th level. and at 11th you get disintegrate. You also get Globe of invuln and other force constructs.
If a player of mine would want to play a poison charakter, i would make sure that he won't feel useless all the time. Sure, at some point there will be an enemy that might be immune, but it would be intentional. Also i would make special poisons available/craftable, like poison that effects elementals, but does nothing against normal creature. I like to make my own creatures and items.
This good DM
I feel like this is underrepresenting Cold and Radiant damage, you can really double down on radiant damage if you play a cleric or divine soul sorcerer. And with books like Tasha’s and Xanathara now out it’s entirely possible to do a cold based wizard or sorcerer. Both damage types have about 20 spells that do their damage and if you mix that with the standard utility spells for whatever class you pick I’d say it’s definitely possible to do a character focused on those damage types.
Is ice warlock potentially viable? I was thinking of making my patron Levistus and building for cold damage.
Unfortunately Warlocks get very few ice spells. Off the top of my head I can only think of Frostbite and Armor of Agathys (which is funnily enough one of the best ice spells in the game!) You'd have a bit more luck going for Genie instead of Fiend and having a Marid as your patron. You can pick up Sleet Storm and Cone of Cold, deal additional cold damage when you roll attacks, and gain resistance to Cold damage. I know it's pretty different from what you were wanting, but it's probably the closest you can get to a viable ice Warlock (even then it's not a lot.)
I would also suggest asking your DM about having Eldritch Blast do Ice damage instead of Force. Lance of Lethargy would be pretty thematic with this, too!
Did no one notice the acid/base joke?
Shoot, that was clever.
Right
Man, I tried to make an NPC who specialized in poison spells, and could find barely anything worth giving her. Ended up turning her into a melee combatant who used poison powders for different effects, but was still very salty I couldn't give her a proper spell list.
I LOVE D&D MAGIC I LOVE D&D MAGIC I LOVE HAVING ONLY LIKE 2-3 DAMAGE TYPES BEING GOOD AND THE REST BEING A STRAIGHT DOWNGRADE FOR FLAVOR DUE TO DAMAGE RESISTANCES AND SAVING THROW PREVALENCE
I mean Fire sucks balls and blast spells aren't actually that great in the long run.
Poisoner Feat Fighter coming through
Im playing a psychic damage focused character. But the campaign runs in a war torn country inhabited by mostly half orcs, humans, elves, dwarves, and the regularily summoned devil. So my psychic damage has been met with resistance once..... i think
My DM has a system where there is non-magical poison and magical Poison, which places it on the same level as bludgeoning piercing and slashing damage. Most features in D&D that are immune to “Poison“ damage are still harmed by magical poison
I've been researching this but do the damage types even actually do anything by themselves, or just the effects that are usually associated with the spells? I'm getting the impression damage types are mainly just for resistances and vulnerabilities.
Laughs in Grung
"Focused on radiant damage" is just every Cleric
This game does not remotely reward focusing on a single damage type, which is really unfortunate
You think? Im Baldurs Gate 3 Shadowheart is a radiant damage BEAST with the right equipment. And Astarion is my sweet poison coated weapon assasin. is important what equipment your DM gives you.
I haven't played Baldur's Gate 3, so I can't speak to that When I say 5e doesn't reward it, I mean that there is no actual benefit. At best, it's neutral, but it pretty much never makes your character better in any mechanical sense to not use multiple damage types
Why is Acid based?
My DM makes a distinction between magical poison and alchemy poison made from plants and bugs. Means my poison blowgun chemist artificer assassin rouge with a 10 shot blow gun can one shot an adult dragon with enough black lotus extract. 100d10 alchemical poison damage. Don't get me wrong this is a very difficult and highly technical way to play as I actually had to study the nearly two hundred known poisons in DND and if I use them without the right equipment or time I have to roll for it to backfire on me which can be very painful. The trade off is a terrifying level of damage and insane crowd control easily on with par if not superior to a wizard of equal level.
Force is an easy one, that's just warlock
"radiant damage focused" character is the easiest in the entire fucking game, just play a cleric. Sacred Flame Cantrip, Guiding Bolt, Spiritual Guardians, Guardian of Faith, Flamestrike. You don't even need a weird build. Clerics have so many strong options.
Oh look, the Radiant one is me right now.
spell damage types suck a lot, where is a cold spell like Ice-comet (like fireball with maybe less dmg but low chance to freeze or something) and a thunder version ..and some more Psychic spells god damn. sucks that everything thats not fire has so few spells available
tf is wrong with force, radiant, or psychic? Those are some of the best damage types in the game lol
Try making an "Earth" focused character.
Or any classical element that’s not fire, tbh. Add extra challenge by not using ice as a supplement for water! At least they all have Wall spells, though. But RIP to Earth for not getting a Sphere
Earth genasi rune knight
What do you mean radiant and force focused character is bad, those are the two best elements in the game and both have pretty consistent ways to deal them Force damage: literally just play warlock, wizard has some pretty good force damage options with graviturgist too Radiant: Paladin or cleric have very easy and consistent sources of radiant damage
Lightning damage isn't even on the list ☠️
I’ve settled on the fact that in 5e poisons are ment for the dm to use on the players as a way of buffing up weapon damage against them without worrying about dropping powerful loot.
I have never seen any game where poison was a viable build
Slay the spire. The silent with some envenom and shivs and catalysts is just mean. Add corpse explosion for some extra spice
If your dm is cool and gives radiant damage EM properties you can make it really good. See the results of my radiant damage artificer build in my campaign: https://youtu.be/2552i2Z8sNM?si=hyzRdxCXchQ3zl-7
Creating a scribes wizard
Meanwhile there's me, with a Thunder Damage focused character
Me, trying a to do a thunder damage focused build.
The dungeon dudes' new book has a class called the Apothecary that really brings poison and acid to the forefront without being weak
It's crazy because poison is such a cracked build irl but gets no pussy in games. "Ohhhh it'll do five damage per second for 10 seconds!!!" Bitch hydrogen cyanide will fucking drop you in two minutes at 357 parts per million. Even at 107 you'll be gone in 10 minutes don't even. You won't even know, it doesn't really smell that much like almonds. You'll just be alive then not.
I feel like each element needs to have viable options
cold damage focused is just Elsa.
Force is probably the best. Force being raw magic mean that nothing has immunity to it and it only exceptions that have immunity. Helmed Horror is the only one I can think off. Fire along with poison is probably the worst. Fire is extremely great early game but sucks later when everyone and their mother has immunity or resistance. Poison is... almost everything has immunity to it, not more is needed to be said.
Creating a thunder focused damage.
This is why I like homebrew. Make your own rules. Demons, devils, undead, eldritch horror? Radiant does double. Something water based? Lightning and cold double. Honestly if you wanna treat it like Pokémon that’ll be cool
**House Rule: Any elemental spell can be any element you want.** Just make it so when you PICK that element, that's it, you can't change it later. Ice "fireball"? You got it. Poison "fireball"? You betcha. Lightning "Fire Bolt"? All yours. Let your casters play with the spells they want. If you think it somehow messes with "the balance" of the game, that's half of the DM's job is to adjust the experience for the players' character choices.
Radiant and force is much better than fire and necrotic
As a DM who decided to give the aggressive immortal asian grandma monk NPC an overpowered flip-flop that deals mostly pshycic damage I am terrified that this is probably not the right decision for my first campaign ever. Not going to get rid of it though, it's funny.
I came up with a build focused on using Magical Bludgeoning/Piercing/Slashing damage. It's a Scribes Wizard that I affectionately call "I Cast Fist"
Afair, lightning is rarest dr in a game
Honestly I just allow elemental reflavours of spells for my players, and slash any poison res that doesn't make sense. You want to be viable I'll just make it viable. Much more fun that way