I'm the opposite to a lot of you with how I use Roll20, I guess. I own my campaigns through Roll20 and pay for the premium features. I own the monster manual on the site so I can drag and drop enemies out of the compendium and not need to do any work to make them function. I have a bunch of music I've uploaded to make playlists like Taverns, Calm Social, Tense Social, Paranoia, Battle, Boss Battle, Sorrow, etc. All my players use the digital character sheets with varying complexity macros to give them single button pushes for spells/attacks/skills etc. Combat and skill use is a breeze with all these tools, and we blaze through things like a complex combat in a fourth of the time it seems to take in the physical games I've played. I take the extra time to draw the dynamic lighting on any custom maps, though all the campaign maps come with it already created.
Not that Roll20 is perfect, there are sometimes little hitches like my API sandbox broke for last nights game so I couldn't use my one button macros for assigning token icons, or sometimes music will stop for the players but not myself. Overall though I absolutely don't think I could play without the premium sub, no room for my uploaded music, no dynamic lighting, a relatively tiny storage for maps/tokens/handouts, and losing the API that lets me have some nifty DMing tools would make the game much less fun to run on my end. I also run more than one game so being able to share my compendium to all my campaigns so my players can use the books I own to drag and drop things to their sheets and such is another simple pleasure.
All that said I have the time to do the extra prep running a Roll20 game can take. If I were to play more theater of the mind or didn't have lots of prep time and just wanted to use roll20 as a communal place to see tokens and roll dice, I could see not bothering with any paying into it.
This is what I'm looking to get into. Even before the current quarentine, I moved away from our group, so now we're doing D&D in person maybe twice a year thing now at best. I'd love to really take advantage of what it has to offer but I think I need some sort of starter guide or something. Maybe look into the D&D essentials kit as a starter?
So if I want my friends to be able to see maps and tokens do they need to make an account? One of my friends is not really loving the idea of making yet anther online account.
So if I want my friends to be able to see maps and tokens do they need to make an account? One of my friends is not really loving the idea of making yet anther online account.
That is the way its intended to be used, yes. I guess you could screen share using discord or something so they can only see and not interact with the tokens and maps, but Roll20 is designed for you to invite their account to share in your game and then you can assign tokens and sheets that they can manipulate without the DM needing to hand hold.
So if I want my friends to be able to see maps and tokens do they need to make an account? One of my friends is not really loving the idea of making yet anther online account.
I feel your friends pain, as that was not an insignificant factor in me waiting this long to give online D&D a real try. But it's really a very small hurdle to get over.
Weird campaign concept that popped into my head: All the PCs, regardless of class, are descendants of a powerful spellcaster. An odd side effect of this is they all have the ability to cast a single 9th level spell.
Once. At the cost of a level. If they do this at first level the strain is too much and they just die. They were also left a single message saying they would know when the time had come to use their power..and of course every influential NPC around wants them to do it for them.
Weird campaign concept that popped into my head: All the PCs, regardless of class, are descendants of a powerful spellcaster. An odd side effect of this is they all have the ability to cast a single 9th level spell.
Once. At the cost of a level. If they do this at first level the strain is too much and they just die. They were also left a single message saying they would know when the time had come to use their power..and of course every influential NPC around wants them to do it for them.
Does the DM choose what lvl 9 spell they get?
If so, does the player character know what spell they get?
Weird campaign concept that popped into my head: All the PCs, regardless of class, are descendants of a powerful spellcaster. An odd side effect of this is they all have the ability to cast a single 9th level spell.
Once. At the cost of a level. If they do this at first level the strain is too much and they just die. They were also left a single message saying they would know when the time had come to use their power..and of course every influential NPC around wants them to do it for them.
Does the DM choose what lvl 9 spell they get?
If so, does the player character know what spell they get?
Not knowing what this magical "oh shit" button does sounds interesting. Probably a warlock-style prodding about what it does at best.
So, social distancing means I can't go to my buddy's basement for D&D, but still the urge to roll oddly shaped dice in a social setting is upon me.
So, what's the best/easiest way to run a live game online? Ideally I'd prefer video at a minimum, maps and overlays or dice rollers would be nice but aren't strictly necessary.
Is there any kind of all-in-one application that doesn't require a beast of a machine to run?
Any recommendations or anti-recommendations are appreciated. Ease of setup and use are big pluses.
To pass the time I’m making a setting, something I never do as I’ve long preferred to run sandboxes with lots of player input on what’s there.
But I’ve time on my hands. I’m calling it ‘New Zellatia’, and it’ll be for 5e as it’s fun to get all detailed on the design front sometimes—I mostly play rules light games, but there’s just something nostalgic about the certain way you make things for D&D.
The idea is the final battle of good versus evil was had, and a cosmopolitan city then built on the site of the last battle. Good won, and the story is done. So in place of dungeon crawlers you’ve got the Relighters, folk who want to help pave ways between towns, do supply runs, reawaken old artefacts, fix stuff and bring delight to the common folk with tale and song. Sort’ve a mix between a theatre troop and construction workers.
Here’s a race called the Florettas:
When the young rebel goddess Flora, beloved of the Champion, was slain by the Vilelord her essence was cast to the winds and settled on the unassuming babes of a newborn generation.
Darkvision
Burdened or blessed with a fragment of Flora, your vision can easily cut through darkness. You can see in dim light within 60 feet of you as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light. You can't discern color in darkness, only shades of gray.
Vibrant Resistance
You have resistance to necrotic damage and radiant damage.
Green Hands
As an action, you can touch a creature and cause it to regain a number of hit points equal to your level. Once you use this trait, you can't use it again until you finish a long rest.
Flora’s Whisper
You have the ability to communicate in a limited manner with plants. They can understand the meaning of your words, and you have the ability to understand them in return, such as their limited awareness allows. You have advantage on all Charisma checks you make to influence them.
Petals & Thorns
Starting at 4th level, you gain access to these traits. Choose one:
Crimson Pinpricks
Your skin hardens to bark and thorns crown your head. You have an innate +1 AC bonus, and your unarmed strikes deal piercing damage.
Quietly Weeping Willow
You have advantage on all Stealth checks made in environments where foliage is present, from lightly forested hills to deep wood.
Full Bloom
On your turn, you can create beautiful blooms across your body as a bonus action. Blooming lasts for 1 minute or until you end it on your turn as a bonus action.
While blooming, you gain temporary hit points equal to your level + your Constitution bonus (minimum of 1). You must finish a short or long rest before you can bloom again.
Kiss of Lilies
Regardless of your actual weight you can glide across the surface of still water with barely a ripple, and can walk across fragile terrain such as ice without it cracking.
Deep Roots
When you make no movement on your turn on open ground you root to the spot. You cannot be forced to move until the start of your next turn. Any creature that attempts to move you by physical means takes 1d6 bludgeoning damage through exertion.
At 7th level, choose another trait from the options above.
Last note, in this setting all races get an extra trait at 4th and 7th level. Each has 5 options, though you can’t pick more than 2.
So, social distancing means I can't go to my buddy's basement for D&D, but still the urge to roll oddly shaped dice in a social setting is upon me.
So, what's the best/easiest way to run a live game online? Ideally I'd prefer video at a minimum, maps and overlays or dice rollers would be nice but aren't strictly necessary.
Is there any kind of all-in-one application that doesn't require a beast of a machine to run?
Any recommendations or anti-recommendations are appreciated. Ease of setup and use are big pluses.
For maps there's Roll20 and several online tabletop competitors. Astral Tabletop is one that I've been toying with lately. Roll20 is probably going to be your best bet for easy setup.
For video, Discord is super easy too. You can start a video chat with a group in just a few clicks. Of course there's also competitors here, like Zoom, Jitsi, Skype, etc.
There's lots out there to try but Roll20/Discord is probably going to be the combo you can most easily find help and guides for.
I've got my so-called-finale for ToA tonight! We'd normally be holed up in my friends house in rural Ontario for a weekend of nerdy debauchery, booze and ugly but delicious food (a chef and a former chef are part of this group, yay!) but instead we're giving it the ol' college try with roll20 and discord. I gotta figure out how a discord video chat works still, but all the tokens and maps and assets have be uploaded to Roll20.
Which leads to my early morning freakout in that I've spent all my prep time figuring out the how of playing D&D online that I've neglected what we're playing!!
I've got my so-called-finale for ToA tonight! We'd normally be holed up in my friends house in rural Ontario for a weekend of nerdy debauchery, booze and ugly but delicious food (a chef and a former chef are part of this group, yay!) but instead we're giving it the ol' college try with roll20 and discord. I gotta figure out how a discord video chat works still, but all the tokens and maps and assets have be uploaded to Roll20.
Which leads to my early morning freakout in that I've spent all my prep time figuring out the how of playing D&D online that I've neglected what we're playing!!
throw the countdown trap at them while you prepare stuff behind your screen!
Well, its a pre-published module so its not like I've got to work out the overall plot or anything. More like I haven't given the Gears of Hate chapter enough of a look over to see how each room interacts with the others, or how the Aboleth can actually play into the adventure as the party does what they do. I've actually spent the morning screwing the pooch at work populating DNDBeyonds enounter builder so at least I have the stats ready.
My pet peeve (with myself as a DM) is 2 things: 1) Not having my shit together and needlessly flipping through a MM to find out what an ability does or what the AC of that Troll is again, causing a delay at the table. so I like to have my notes ready. and 2) Not having enough of the big picture in my head so that reading when the party travels through room 1, I don't fuck up the cool thing in room 2 that could have affected room 1, ya know? Which tends to happen running someone else's adventure and I haven't read ahead far enough.
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webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
My DM is cool. As I've said previously I'm playing a Golden retriever wizard in the Avernus campaign. One of the issues of course is that a ton of wizard damage spells are fire based. We just hit level 7 and I have no big damage spells, and Melf's Minute Meteors seemed cool, so he is letting me re-flavor them into bludgeoning damage instead of fire damage, and re-image them into tennis balls instead of meteors. So now when I cast it I have a crown of 6 tennis balls orbiting the peak of my wizards hat.
Any apprentice wizard can cast a boring old magic missile. Sure, it always strikes its target. Yawn. Do away with the drudgery of your grandfather's magic with this improved version of the spell, as used by Jim Darkmagic!
You create three twisting, whistling, hypoallergenic, gluten-free darts of magical force. Each dart targets a creature of your choice that you can see within range. Make a ranged spell attack for each missile. On a hit, a missile deals 2d4 force damage to its target.
If the attack roll scores a critical hit, the target of that missile takes 5d4 force damage instead of you rolling damage twice for a critical hit. If the attack roll for any missile is a 1, all missiles miss their targets and blow up in your face, dealing 1 force damage per missile to you.
At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 2nd level or higher, the spell creates one more dart, and the royalty component increases by 1 gp, for each slot level above 1st.
You create three glowing darts of magical force. Each dart hits a creature of your choice that you can see within range. A dart deals 1d4 + 1 force damage to its target. The darts all strike simultaneously, and you can direct them to hit one creature or several.
At Higher Levels: When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 2nd level or higher, the spell creates one more dart for each slot above 1st.
So, Jim's potentially does more damage, but since you have to roll to hit it might miss and not do damage at all. Also, if you critically fail the roll you get hit instead. On the other hand, if you crit with the roll, it's better than normal.
Also, Jim's has the Royalty component, where the spell takes money to cast (that is delivered through magical means to Jim Darkmagic).
It's got some fun flavor to it, but I think I'd stick with the standard Magic Missile, given the choice. The potential for an extra 3 points of damage per dart doesn't seem worth the risk to me.
My DM is cool. As I've said previously I'm playing a Golden retriever wizard in the Avernus campaign. One of the issues of course is that a ton of wizard damage spells are fire based. We just hit level 7 and I have no big damage spells, and Melf's Minute Meteors seemed cool, so he is letting me re-flavor them into bludgeoning damage instead of fire damage, and re-image them into tennis balls instead of meteors. So now when I cast it I have a crown of 6 tennis balls orbiting the peak of my wizards hat.
It'll be even more cool the first time you use that and he makes you do a wisdom save to not immediately sprint across the battlefield to fetch them all
Narbus on
+4
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webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
My DM is cool. As I've said previously I'm playing a Golden retriever wizard in the Avernus campaign. One of the issues of course is that a ton of wizard damage spells are fire based. We just hit level 7 and I have no big damage spells, and Melf's Minute Meteors seemed cool, so he is letting me re-flavor them into bludgeoning damage instead of fire damage, and re-image them into tennis balls instead of meteors. So now when I cast it I have a crown of 6 tennis balls orbiting the peak of my wizards hat.
It'll be even more cool the first time you use that and he makes you do a wisdom save to not immediately sprint across the battlefield to fetch them all
Oh there's a good Chance of that. For other dog related things he's made me roll to sometimes hilarious results.
Any apprentice wizard can cast a boring old magic missile. Sure, it always strikes its target. Yawn. Do away with the drudgery of your grandfather's magic with this improved version of the spell, as used by Jim Darkmagic!
You create three twisting, whistling, hypoallergenic, gluten-free darts of magical force. Each dart targets a creature of your choice that you can see within range. Make a ranged spell attack for each missile. On a hit, a missile deals 2d4 force damage to its target.
If the attack roll scores a critical hit, the target of that missile takes 5d4 force damage instead of you rolling damage twice for a critical hit. If the attack roll for any missile is a 1, all missiles miss their targets and blow up in your face, dealing 1 force damage per missile to you.
At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 2nd level or higher, the spell creates one more dart, and the royalty component increases by 1 gp, for each slot level above 1st.
You create three glowing darts of magical force. Each dart hits a creature of your choice that you can see within range. A dart deals 1d4 + 1 force damage to its target. The darts all strike simultaneously, and you can direct them to hit one creature or several.
At Higher Levels: When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 2nd level or higher, the spell creates one more dart for each slot above 1st.
So, Jim's potentially does more damage, but since you have to roll to hit it might miss and not do damage at all. Also, if you critically fail the roll you get hit instead. On the other hand, if you crit with the roll, it's better than normal.
Also, Jim's has the Royalty component, where the spell takes money to cast (that is delivered through magical means to Jim Darkmagic).
It's got some fun flavor to it, but I think I'd stick with the standard Magic Missile, given the choice. The potential for an extra 3 points of damage per dart doesn't seem worth the risk to me.
Jim's has some solid things going for it when combined with spells like Greater Invisibility, both spells are great options
If you're a halfling, JMM is definitely better, if not, it kind of can suck when upcast by a bunch (although at our tables we only consider the first 3 d20s to "count" for the 1=explode, otherwise the spell actually gets worse as you uplevel it)
So tomorrow I am running a murder mystery one shot for me group. Never done anything like this before but I think I have got everything ready. I assume I will have to adjust on the fly as they go completely off the rails. I did include an Easter egg that I am not sure how long it will take my players to find. All of the guests are dog breed names: Akita, Basset Fauve de Bretagne, Canaan, Eurasier, Glen of Imaal, Hovawart, Papillon, Rafeiro do Alentejo, Shi Tzu, and Tornjak. Some of them are more obvious breeds that my players will know but I picked some I had never heard of to make them work for it.
The increased movement options of the Monk would help with getting to downed party members to administer healing, if nothing else
[Muffled sounds of gorilla violence]
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WearingglassesOf the friendly neighborhood varietyRegistered Userregular
Soooo, because I found it hard to say no, I got a potential new player again. That brings the total to six confirmed, two in planning. I've told them already that I won't be able to GM for them all, so I'm putting a cap on players per session, and they seemed to go along with that for now.
This new guy wants to be a guildless Loxodon Warlock: librarian by day, he secretly searches for information needed by his Djinn patron. The Djinn's ultimate goal - to defeat Niv Mizzet and end the exploitation of his brethren.
I don't know if the Seeker Patron is unbalanced, though: it's UA. Anyone have any experience with this?
Cleric is wisdom based, monk/cleric is anything but MAD as far as stats go.
Basically the stat priority goes Dex/Wis, Wis/Dex, Con, everything else.
And you prioritize Dex or Wis based on if you wanna focus casting or punching.
You definitely have to eschew strength based attacks as part of the build
I think the cleric domain that goes best with monk is tempest domain. Gives a nice damaging reaction ability should anyone hit you.
For monk, way of the four elements is a straightforward combo with it. However since monk is mostly about its core features I'd say that way of the open hand also goes well. I'd say that the only paths your probably gonna wanna look into are the ones that don't necessarily fix the monk ranged combat issues as you can use sacred flame from cleric to make up for that deficiency.
A forge domain kensi could be a fun combination though.
Ever think of making a joke character or not being min/maxed?
Not to be hostile to anyone's gamestyle, but the small D&D campaign I did with @Firebird 's low WIS monk was one of the most memorable things I've witnessed.
me and two of my players got together complaining about how crap the kensai was and we wanted to make a Kensai that was really fucking good:
1. Your kensai weapon can be any kind of weapon that doesn't have the "loading" or "special" properties, if it's a melee weapon without the Reach property, does 2 times your monk dice in damage instead of what it's normal damage dice would be. Ranged weapons and melee weapons with reach either use their own damage dice or your martial arts dice, whichever is higher.
2. You cannot stunning strike with your kensai weapon, only with unarmed strikes
3. Kensai shot now adds damage equal to your martial arts die instead of a d4. Kensai shot can be used with melee weapons with Reach as well. Needs a cooler name.
4. 6th level: you can spend up to your proficiency bonus in ki points once per turn on a successful attack to add that many martial arts dice of extra weapon damage
5. 11th level: "Unerring strike" - forego your attack action to make a single weapon attack with your kensai weapon. As long as you do not have disadvantage, this attack hits. No crit, no dice roll, it just hits. No resource cost for this ability. No features or abilities that modify your attack bonus and damage bonus (such as sharpshooter) can be used with this class feature.
6. 17th level: "Sword Saint" - whenever you would be eligible to make unarmed strike, you can spend 1 ki point to replace the unarmed strike with a Kensai weapon attack. This also allows you to "flurry of blows" with a ranged weapon as well (it'd be 3 ki points to do so)
Powerful? Yeah! Too powerful? I'm honestly not sure, your monk die becomes d8s at 11th level, when other martials get some sort of spike to damage
the idea is that we were all just looking over kensai and agreeing, it doesn't even do the most damage of monk subclasses consistently, and it should.
Posts
This is what I'm looking to get into. Even before the current quarentine, I moved away from our group, so now we're doing D&D in person maybe twice a year thing now at best. I'd love to really take advantage of what it has to offer but I think I need some sort of starter guide or something. Maybe look into the D&D essentials kit as a starter?
PSN:Furlion
That is the way its intended to be used, yes. I guess you could screen share using discord or something so they can only see and not interact with the tokens and maps, but Roll20 is designed for you to invite their account to share in your game and then you can assign tokens and sheets that they can manipulate without the DM needing to hand hold.
I feel your friends pain, as that was not an insignificant factor in me waiting this long to give online D&D a real try. But it's really a very small hurdle to get over.
I know the devs have said "its going to be buggy, just so you know, seriously, it might crash for like no reason"
but
its so slick looking
Once. At the cost of a level. If they do this at first level the strain is too much and they just die. They were also left a single message saying they would know when the time had come to use their power..and of course every influential NPC around wants them to do it for them.
Does the DM choose what lvl 9 spell they get?
If so, does the player character know what spell they get?
Not knowing what this magical "oh shit" button does sounds interesting. Probably a warlock-style prodding about what it does at best.
(otherwise everyone just picks Wish)
So, what's the best/easiest way to run a live game online? Ideally I'd prefer video at a minimum, maps and overlays or dice rollers would be nice but aren't strictly necessary.
Is there any kind of all-in-one application that doesn't require a beast of a machine to run?
Any recommendations or anti-recommendations are appreciated. Ease of setup and use are big pluses.
But I’ve time on my hands. I’m calling it ‘New Zellatia’, and it’ll be for 5e as it’s fun to get all detailed on the design front sometimes—I mostly play rules light games, but there’s just something nostalgic about the certain way you make things for D&D.
The idea is the final battle of good versus evil was had, and a cosmopolitan city then built on the site of the last battle. Good won, and the story is done. So in place of dungeon crawlers you’ve got the Relighters, folk who want to help pave ways between towns, do supply runs, reawaken old artefacts, fix stuff and bring delight to the common folk with tale and song. Sort’ve a mix between a theatre troop and construction workers.
Here’s a race called the Florettas:
When the young rebel goddess Flora, beloved of the Champion, was slain by the Vilelord her essence was cast to the winds and settled on the unassuming babes of a newborn generation.
Charisma +2, Wisdom +1
[regular speed etc.]
Darkvision
Burdened or blessed with a fragment of Flora, your vision can easily cut through darkness. You can see in dim light within 60 feet of you as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light. You can't discern color in darkness, only shades of gray.
Vibrant Resistance
You have resistance to necrotic damage and radiant damage.
Green Hands
As an action, you can touch a creature and cause it to regain a number of hit points equal to your level. Once you use this trait, you can't use it again until you finish a long rest.
Flora’s Whisper
You have the ability to communicate in a limited manner with plants. They can understand the meaning of your words, and you have the ability to understand them in return, such as their limited awareness allows. You have advantage on all Charisma checks you make to influence them.
Petals & Thorns
Starting at 4th level, you gain access to these traits. Choose one:
Crimson Pinpricks
Your skin hardens to bark and thorns crown your head. You have an innate +1 AC bonus, and your unarmed strikes deal piercing damage.
Quietly Weeping Willow
You have advantage on all Stealth checks made in environments where foliage is present, from lightly forested hills to deep wood.
Full Bloom
On your turn, you can create beautiful blooms across your body as a bonus action. Blooming lasts for 1 minute or until you end it on your turn as a bonus action.
While blooming, you gain temporary hit points equal to your level + your Constitution bonus (minimum of 1). You must finish a short or long rest before you can bloom again.
Kiss of Lilies
Regardless of your actual weight you can glide across the surface of still water with barely a ripple, and can walk across fragile terrain such as ice without it cracking.
Deep Roots
When you make no movement on your turn on open ground you root to the spot. You cannot be forced to move until the start of your next turn. Any creature that attempts to move you by physical means takes 1d6 bludgeoning damage through exertion.
At 7th level, choose another trait from the options above.
Last note, in this setting all races get an extra trait at 4th and 7th level. Each has 5 options, though you can’t pick more than 2.
For maps there's Roll20 and several online tabletop competitors. Astral Tabletop is one that I've been toying with lately. Roll20 is probably going to be your best bet for easy setup.
For video, Discord is super easy too. You can start a video chat with a group in just a few clicks. Of course there's also competitors here, like Zoom, Jitsi, Skype, etc.
There's lots out there to try but Roll20/Discord is probably going to be the combo you can most easily find help and guides for.
Which leads to my early morning freakout in that I've spent all my prep time figuring out the how of playing D&D online that I've neglected what we're playing!!
throw the countdown trap at them while you prepare stuff behind your screen!
Escape from the mindflayer zoo!
My pet peeve (with myself as a DM) is 2 things: 1) Not having my shit together and needlessly flipping through a MM to find out what an ability does or what the AC of that Troll is again, causing a delay at the table. so I like to have my notes ready. and 2) Not having enough of the big picture in my head so that reading when the party travels through room 1, I don't fuck up the cool thing in room 2 that could have affected room 1, ya know? Which tends to happen running someone else's adventure and I haven't read ahead far enough.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
Pizzazz
In a less fluffy, more crunchy context:
As opposed to
So, Jim's potentially does more damage, but since you have to roll to hit it might miss and not do damage at all. Also, if you critically fail the roll you get hit instead. On the other hand, if you crit with the roll, it's better than normal.
Also, Jim's has the Royalty component, where the spell takes money to cast (that is delivered through magical means to Jim Darkmagic).
It's got some fun flavor to it, but I think I'd stick with the standard Magic Missile, given the choice. The potential for an extra 3 points of damage per dart doesn't seem worth the risk to me.
It'll be even more cool the first time you use that and he makes you do a wisdom save to not immediately sprint across the battlefield to fetch them all
Oh there's a good Chance of that. For other dog related things he's made me roll to sometimes hilarious results.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
Jim's has some solid things going for it when combined with spells like Greater Invisibility, both spells are great options
If you're a halfling, JMM is definitely better, if not, it kind of can suck when upcast by a bunch (although at our tables we only consider the first 3 d20s to "count" for the 1=explode, otherwise the spell actually gets worse as you uplevel it)
PSN:Furlion
Cause that sounds like an awesome combo!
This new guy wants to be a guildless Loxodon Warlock: librarian by day, he secretly searches for information needed by his Djinn patron. The Djinn's ultimate goal - to defeat Niv Mizzet and end the exploitation of his brethren.
I don't know if the Seeker Patron is unbalanced, though: it's UA. Anyone have any experience with this?
Eff that I want combat options.
Gonna name my fists Thoughts & Prayers
To borrow from a tweet I saw: Thoughts does Psychic damage, Prayers does Radiant damage.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
You didn't answer the question about whether its for a RP-heavy or crunchy combat game. Generally cleric/monk will be MAD: so not much synergy.
It's for to make the "thoughts and prayers" joke
I thought monks were Wis melee and Clerics were Wis casters?
edit: It looks like Monk is just MAD out of the box, multi-classed or not. Huh.
Basically the stat priority goes Dex/Wis, Wis/Dex, Con, everything else.
And you prioritize Dex or Wis based on if you wanna focus casting or punching.
You definitely have to eschew strength based attacks as part of the build
I think the cleric domain that goes best with monk is tempest domain. Gives a nice damaging reaction ability should anyone hit you.
For monk, way of the four elements is a straightforward combo with it. However since monk is mostly about its core features I'd say that way of the open hand also goes well. I'd say that the only paths your probably gonna wanna look into are the ones that don't necessarily fix the monk ranged combat issues as you can use sacred flame from cleric to make up for that deficiency.
A forge domain kensi could be a fun combination though.
Sorry, shouldn't have written that.
I think @Sleep 's post is good.
Not to be hostile to anyone's gamestyle, but the small D&D campaign I did with @Firebird 's low WIS monk was one of the most memorable things I've witnessed.
1. Your kensai weapon can be any kind of weapon that doesn't have the "loading" or "special" properties, if it's a melee weapon without the Reach property, does 2 times your monk dice in damage instead of what it's normal damage dice would be. Ranged weapons and melee weapons with reach either use their own damage dice or your martial arts dice, whichever is higher.
2. You cannot stunning strike with your kensai weapon, only with unarmed strikes
3. Kensai shot now adds damage equal to your martial arts die instead of a d4. Kensai shot can be used with melee weapons with Reach as well. Needs a cooler name.
4. 6th level: you can spend up to your proficiency bonus in ki points once per turn on a successful attack to add that many martial arts dice of extra weapon damage
5. 11th level: "Unerring strike" - forego your attack action to make a single weapon attack with your kensai weapon. As long as you do not have disadvantage, this attack hits. No crit, no dice roll, it just hits. No resource cost for this ability. No features or abilities that modify your attack bonus and damage bonus (such as sharpshooter) can be used with this class feature.
6. 17th level: "Sword Saint" - whenever you would be eligible to make unarmed strike, you can spend 1 ki point to replace the unarmed strike with a Kensai weapon attack. This also allows you to "flurry of blows" with a ranged weapon as well (it'd be 3 ki points to do so)
Powerful? Yeah! Too powerful? I'm honestly not sure, your monk die becomes d8s at 11th level, when other martials get some sort of spike to damage
the idea is that we were all just looking over kensai and agreeing, it doesn't even do the most damage of monk subclasses consistently, and it should.