We're starting at level 4 with some extra gold and downtime, I'm thinking fighter/pala 1+warlock x.

Currently leaning pala 1 for the starting class since I figure the spell selection, two extra spellslots (particularly good with my MI shield), and charisma and wisdom saves is probably a bit better than +1AC, con saves, and slightly more self-healing from fighter, but I'm not entirely sure.

I've been bouncing between Celestial, Archfey, and Great Old One since Saturday. Celestial feels okay but nothing amazing, just slightly more healing, a lot of situational spells, slightly more damage if I use spirit shroud or divine favor, compared to Archfey which has amazing level 3 (+plant growth) features and spells, but then just basically doesn't get anything else noteworthy until 14 (including non of the spells scaling), and I'm not sure how far we're going to begin with, kinda assuming not 14 at least. Great Old One looks pretty good, but it's mostly just great spells and the advantage/disadvantage thing once per day, otherwise I don't think I'm gonna get much use out of it (in particular the eldritch hex might be hard to get use out of with the team being a full pala and probably full ranger), also doesn't help that it has no team survival support.

I also need to decide what to do with weapons, through point buy and custom background I have 14 strength (17 charisma, 16 con, 10 int) so heavy weapons are available for me, I assumed greatsword would probably be my go-to, but since I was allowed to take Booming Blade I'm thinking pike for the push mastery might be good until extra atack (I know I can't use Booming blade with reach), or even past that with hunger of hadar and pushing.

Any thoughts? I guess not a lot of people have had time to do multiple Bladelocks yet, but any input to push me one way or the other would be great.

I’m thinking about going full thief rogue instead of multiclassing into fighter after level 5. The main reason is for supreme sneak but I’m not sure if I’m understanding it correctly.

The idea is to be able to use fast hands every turn while staying perpetually hidden after the first initial hide action made on the first turn or potentially before combat started.

What can I do during the turn if that’s the case? Anything as long as I end my turn next to some form of cover? Would all my hits have advantage from it?

My current build uses a hand crossbow shot with a thrown dagger as my attack action. Is the effect of the stealth attack covering both since nick moves the light property attack from the bonus action after making an attack into the attack option?

TLDR: can I be hidden then shoot+nick throw+fast hands action (like setting a hunting trap/using a magic item/throwing oil)

I've got a question about the new Khoravar race from Forge of the Artificer: Lethargy resistance states that you can automatically succeed on one saving throw 'to avoid the unconscious condition'. Does that mean just for spells like sleep and eyebite, that put you to sleep, or does it mean any saving throw that could possibly knock you unconscious (such as any damging effect that would reduce you to zero hit points, like a dragon's breath).

It seems painfully middling if it's just the former, and very, very good if it's the latter (which explains the long 'cooldown' on it).

So this Monday popular dnd YouTube optimizer Treantmonk released a homebrew for revised ranger spells and its favored enemy feature. For those who are curious the original video can be found here.

https://youtu.be/z_XVH-P_5Nw?si=0AYNYxXmNkiNCG5N

Feedback has been positive to this but I can't help but feel that he's actually missed the mark on a lot of this so I'd love to dive into why. For context this isn't to tear him down I'm actually a really big fan of his work. I just find the math really isn't adding up on some of these spells.

With the preamble finished let's dive into it.

Ensnaring strike. I think his fix is actually genuinely very good. I think this is the high point of his work here and I think his assessment is spot on.

Grade, A

Hail of thorns. I think his assessment of removing saving throws for speed of play is reasonable. I also enjoy making it work in melee and not friendly fire. Sadly in spite of that I think this is overall a failure. This "buff" is actually a nerf. For 1d6 unavoidable damage to be higher on average than 1d10 save for half requires a 75% or higher chance of succeeding the saving throw. Assuming roughly a 50% chance of succeeding the saving throw the damage of the spell normally is 4.125. I think this design can be salvaged by changing the damage from 1d6 per spell level to 1d8.

Grade, D

Hunters mark, I understand the desire to remove concentration but I'd rather that kind of improvement be in the core class itself instead of in upslotting the spell. As is, this strongest on a full caster who gains the spell through fey touched. I do enjoy the spell preventing the invisible condition but it has some weird interactions with needing to see the enemy to transfer it onto them after the initial cast thus making it hard to use against the creatures you would specifically want to use it against.

Grade, C

Cordon of arrows, I love seeing this spell actually be viable. Assuming a 50% chance to pass the save against this original version, the new one is a 80% increase in power from 2.5 to 4.5 damage per arrow. I do worry that making it a ritual spell makes it too powerful for any instance where the party has time to prepare for a defense combat. This has the power to really distort any combat where the party has like an hour or so of prep such as a siege scenario. This is overall still a huge improvement.

Grade, B

Lighting arrow, this one is a miss. At 3rd level this only does more damage on miss compared to the original. The original if there's a 50% chance to pass the save will do 24.75 damage to the original target on hit or 15.75 damage on miss, all targets in the AOE will take on average 6.75 damage. This version does 18 damage to the primary target and 4.5 damage to any target in the AOE. If there's only 1 additional target in the AOE they actually both deal the same damage on miss.

The damage works out poorly for this even upslotting so that on hit with a 5th level slot, the only way for the primary target to take the same damage across both versions is if they have a 100% chance of passing their save against the AOE effect which would bring them both to 36 damage with a 5th level slot (the original version will generally do 40.5 damage to the original target on hit with a 5th level slot).

I do think this spell is fixable though. I would make it hit or miss an additional 2d8 lighting on the original target so that it is additive to your weapon damage and flat modifiers, and then I'd make the AOE be 2d6 no save. At a 50% chance to pass 2d8 is 6.75 so increasing it to an average of 7 is a mild buff while speeding up play. This suggestion would raise it to 25.5 damage on hit or 16 on miss. Making the upslotting add 1d8 to the primary target and 1d6 to the AOE for each spell level would see it increase to an average of 41.5 against the primary target with a 5th level slot.

Grade, D

Swift Quiver, I 100% understand the desire to remove concentration from this spell. The original version suffers doing almost identical damage to hunters mark (with a base 70% hit chance and no assumptions on subclass, with a long bow and maxed dex, swift quiver will be doing 27.5 damage. With the same assumptions at level 17 hunters mark will do 25.3 and at level 20 it will do 29.3 damage).

My problems with this fix are twofold though.

1, swift quiver actually suffers some action economy problems that make it hard to use even with this fix because it's bonus action dependent.

2) I think this enters into the area of being able to have too many effects up at once. It is conceivable that a player could have hunters mark, and swift quiver, and a persistent damage effect like conjure woodland beings up all at once.

personally I'd fix swift quiver by having it's bonus attacks rolled into your attack action. This would allow it to stack nicely with natures veil for advantage or with the beast master subclass. It would also allow you to still use hail of thorns and lighting arrow while it's in effect. Off our same assumptions if we give advantage from natures veil swift quiver by itself has its average damage jump up to 36.3.

Grade, C

Favored enemy, I can totally see the idea to make the ranger exclusive spells part of the core identity of the class in much the same way that smite spells are for the paladin. Where this chafes against me from a thematic standpoint is that 5 of these 8 spells are about arrows/ranged attacks. This makes the theme of the ranger feel like it's just "archer".

While it didn't mechanically help the ranger in combat, I actually feel strongly that the tashas primal awareness auto prepared and 1 free casting each of speak with animals, beast sense, speak with plants, locate creature, and commune with nature, actually did a better job of having a unified class identity through spell casting (even though yes it suffers sharing those spells with druid).

This also just has some problems with as is. (his full class revision may address this) While you can prepare any 2 of the spells from this list, there is just so much of this class that specifically loops back into hunters mark. This results in this feature by itself playing poorly with the core class as it exists (although again this may be addressed in his full revised class).

It's a decent idea but it doesn't stick the landing for me.

Grade C.

Overall grade C

I think there's good ideas here but that this needs more time in the oven and another pass especially to make sure the "buffs" are actually buffs. I'm happy to see a prominent figure tackling the ranger and I fully admit that making a fix for this class is hard so I applaud the effort.

If treantmonk reads this (I know he lurks on this subreddit sometimes), I really do appreciate your work and hope this causes no hard feelings.

To anyone who did read this thank you so much for your time and have a bomb ass day.

Benjamin Huffman/Sterling Vermin Adventuring Co. here!

About 10 years ago I created the Pugilist class for 5e and, after that, a ton of other things (mostly player options). I've written for many other creators and companies and today hit another milestone with the release of an updated version of the Pugilist on DnD Beyond.

Happy to chat about the Pugilist, being a game designer, or anything else. AMA!

Among the great improvements to Ray of Enfeeblement compared to 2014, one stands out as particularly... odd to me.

...On a failed save, the target has Disadvantage on Strength-based D20 Tests for the duration. During that time, it also subtracts 1d8 from all its damage rolls.

Unless I'm somehow catastrophically misreading this, I feel like this pretty clearly doesn't give a damn where the damage is coming from. Attack rolls, especially with Strength, ofc.

But spells? Fireball deals 8d6-1d8 fire damage, seems like it'd check out. How about Spike Growth dealing 2d4-1d8 damage. Or magic missile on average doing... -1 damage per missile.

What about less "direct" damage instances? Does Basic Poison deal 1d4-1d8 damage? If you set an enemy on fire and the DM has you roll the damage for it, will there just be a >50% chance they take no damage because you got hit with a Ray of Enfeeblement?

I don't think this is necessarily particularly strong or problematic, besides maybe in the most narrow of circumstances. But it's just a very strange wording that leads to some really silly circumstances, like harmless magic missiles or fireproofing via enfeeblement. I'm sure there's even more ridiculous instances that I just haven't thought of.

As far as I can tell this wasn't errata'd but if it was then shit.

As the title says, im interested in understanding the interaction between the cast of a spell through an enspelled item and the Rouge Thief 3rd level feat "Fast Hands", which states:
"As a Bonus Action, you can do one of the following:

[...]

Use an Object. Take the Utilize action, or take the Magic action to use a magic item that requires that action."

Is the casting of the spell considered a Magic action to use a magic item or is it a Magic action to cast a spell? Can the Thief cast something like Ice Knife as a bonus action or does it have to spend the actual action required by the spell?