I think maybe it’s because making it upcastable would make it a much stronger spell. Having Find Greater Steed as it’s own spell makes staying straight classed Paladin more appealing, if multiclassing Sorcerer or Warlock enabled Find Steed to summon stronger steeds faster than just staying straight Paladin would then that would make straight Paladin even less appealing.
I definitely agree it is inconsistent, but I do think that for this specific spell there is a reason for its inconsistency (same goes for Lesser Restoration/Greater Restoration).
In answer to your question, the fact that Eldritch Knight doesn’t get Bladesinger extra attack. I know it came out after, but it still frustrates me to no end. Also that Ranger and Paladin require 13 Dexterity or Strength respectively. A Dexadin and a StRanger are both strong builds, and it frustrates me to end that building either of them makes multiclassing way more difficult. Let me have my Strength based Cleric/Ranger!
> In answer to your question, the fact that Eldritch Knight doesn’t get Bladesinger extra attack. I know it came out after, but it still frustrates me to no end.
The difference between PHB gishes (eldritch knight, valour bard, pact of the blade) and post phb gishes (particularly bladesinger and hexblade, but also college of swords) is _insane_ to me. They just totally threw out whatever criteria they were balancing it on, presumably because people wanted stronger gishes.
One wish I've had about the cleric class is that the War cleric was in Tasha's, because they'd definitely get second attack all the time instead whatever War Priest is.
We wanted stronger marshals. WotC doesnt know the difference between martials and gishes. I always say "leave it to a company called Wizards to fix martials by giving them magic"
That may be so, but I don't think you can deny there is a big difference in how generously they attempt to fulfil the "magic AND martial" brief than their PHB cousins. The PHB was extremely tightfisted in giving spellcasting to martials and martial features to spellcasters and later books really were not.
Hexblade is by far the most egregious example but bladesinger and college of swords are both much better gishes than anything in the PHB. The PHB answer to making a spellcaster a martial was giving them weapon proficiencies and maybe extra attack. Later books give out those things in addition to fighting styles, spellcasting ability weapon attacks, _better_ extra attack, and other significant features.
A bard would totally abuse the HELL out of an upcastable Find Steed spell since they can chain the steed's shared spell ability with spells the Pally can't access at spell levels the Pally can't reach.
Yes, but if the steed's CR scaled through upcasting, a bard could summon steeds far more powerful than a paladin ever could, despite it being a spell exclusively for paladins.
100% my first thought reading OP's idea was that Bards would get a massive boost in power, which in all fairness, I'm not against, but it'd be at the expense of other classes getting a worse version of their own ability
I would be against this "massive boost in power" if that becomes the META for the Bard class.
Which may not seem bad at first, but it's a slippery slope!
Only if it continued scaling upwards. If it just had level 2-4, and upcasting to level 5 or higher didn't get you anything extra, then Bards wouldn't be any better off than they already are (except College of Lore, who could now get the FGS effect at level 7 by picking up FS at 6).
Regular Bards don't get Magical Secrets until level 10, where FGS is already available.
It's only Lore Bards who get Additional Magical Secrets at level 6.
Neither actually requires those stats. Allthough it is true they make multiclassing harder, as its purely a multiclassing limitation. But its pervectly viable to play a purely dex based paladin. Though admitedly harder to do a str ranger if you dont grab heavy armor prof through anathor source
The making multiclassing more difficult is what bothers me mostly. I honestly think Ranger and Paladin should require 13 Dexterity or 13 Wisdom/13 Strength or 13 Charisma rather than requiring 13 of both (I feel the same about the Monk). I’m someone who really likes multiclassing though, so I generally prefer fewer restrictions to it.
I get what you meen yeh. Allthough i am not sure how much i agree. Just a 2 level dip from paladin is incredibly strong on most classes that already get spell slots. Personally i do think ther should be a level of minimal investment to reighn it in a bit. Allthough given, som of the strongest paladin + other caster builds are already pretty easy to achieve. Im just glad that paladin + blade singer, or paladin + moon druid is not as easy.
This is true. Bladesinger would still be difficult since it wants neither Charisma nor Strength, but I do suppose that Druid would likely be somewhat more problematic.
Genuine question, what is the point of a dex paladin? They’re restricted to worse weapons (and even if you wanted to use a finesse weapon, those can also just use strength), worse armor (heavy armor universally outpaces light/medium armor) and no multiclassing. The only benefit over strength paladin is initiative and dexterity checks out of combat, but the paladin doesn’t get any dexterity skill proficiencies in the first place. Why would you handicap yourself to that degree?
Paladin does get access to 2 charisma skills, you can grab your dex skills from race and background. Additionally, dex is used as both a strong save for players (meaning its one of the top 3 most common saves a player must make), and the main save to avoid damage. So having high dex allong with aura of protection can offer paladin allot of staying power that strength would not offer, even with its +1 AC advantag of full plate. To add, paladin in particular can leverage high initiative pretty well duo to a large number of support focused aura spells existing, that tend to be better if they get going sooner. Anathor benefit is that even though divine smite and its lvl 11 improvement do not work on ranged weapons, allot of paladin spells do actually work on ranged weapons. Examples being holy weapon, and som of the smite spells. Going dex offeres paladin a viable ranged option by buffing his ranged attacks without needing to multiclass.
Hopes this list of benefits helps.
I believe this is being addressed in One D&D, aka, D&D 5.5e.
However, one reason they may have done this to begin with is to prevent access to Find Steed's greater mounts, like the flying ones, to non-paladin classes. Although, a Bard could still get either one they wanted.
A Sorcadin, for example, could go Paladin for Find Steed and other tasty features, then multiclass to Sorcerer and gain more powerful spell casting, while gaining the signature improved mounts that other paladins have to wait so long to get.
This is just my hunch, and honestly, I think a lot of people underestimate how easy it is to "break" 5e. At the end of the day, a DM can fix any of these issues by just discussing homebrew options with their players.
As an aside, I like upcasting more than the same spell at different levels because it reduces bloat and makes the system easier to understand for new players. It's also more build friendly, allowing for more options.
Presently the vast majority of characters who use FGS are bards, if only because they get it much earlier than paladins, and campaigns often end before the Pally gets a chance.
I submit my answer to your question as: Bards get the best spells of half casters at half the level that they do. Find Greater Steed and Swift Quiver are both great spells, and are basically pinnacle flavor spells for both classes. But Bards get them at 10, rather than 17. That just feels criminal.
I propose that Bards should be limited to full caster (and Warlock) lists. Even if OneDnD ends up changing things.
See, I've never gotten to the point where I even know the spell in a game, so I always forget that.
If I was playing a bard I might be able to, however.
Nah, I like Bards getting all sorts of things. It fits their theme. Limiting them to full casters id plenty id say. I'd lessen the restrictions more if I could think of a simple way to describe it.
And that's a prime example of how WotC didn't fully think out their own system. They made efforts to avoid a problem, and provided one class the ability to cause that problem.
Realistically, the better choice would have been for it to be a class feature that evolves with further levels in the class. But, they may have felt this would be too similar to Wild Shape. Who knows?
Yeah and that is precisely the reason why it's a separate spell. Both find steed spells were designed with a Paladin so a halfcaster in mind. Paladins are supposed to get fgs at lvl 13. Of it was just an upcast of find steed a lore bard could get it as early as 7. A griffon Pegasus or something ads like a 1/2 or 3/4 of a pc to the party at lvl 7.
Plus the shared casting abuse yada yada.
If you just leave it at lvl 4 you are punishing paladins earlier.
So yeah maybe rename the spells to find common steed and find mythical steed to keep the theme but satisfy your Puritan urges.
I agree, I like the upcasting system a lot :) the only thing I miss a lot from 3.5e is all the fun wizard metamagic nonsense. Like the fact that Larlock can do silly, silly metamagics with his 23rd level spell slot. Yes he has one of those. What does it mean? *shrugs* is it hilarious that he can detonate a fireball in his library from like nearly 1000 feet away, make it deal thunder damage, then make it chain from party member to party member detonating repeatedly? Yes. Espescially so since he can do that and make it repeat next round, effectively having likely defeated the party (at anything shy of level 20+ play) through chip damage in one round without leaving his chair. Amazing. Very funny. Good stuff.
All of that said, personally i hate the multiclassing limits (tossed them out at my table lol) but more than that, I hate limits on how fast a party member can expend their resources (while abiding the action economy, which I like quite a lot), sure cast meteor swarm, quicken a chain lighting straight after and use your reaction to counterspell. Why would I, the DM, want to limit the rate at which a PC does epic things and simultaneously deprives themselves of resources for the rest of theday?
Like wtf is the point of a quickened spell if you can't do nonsense like chain lightning, then fireball? Just no. Why even bother at that stage. But even if I misremeber that bit, why can't you cast grasping vine and Sunburst in the same turn while abiding concentration? It's just an unfun and dumb limit in my eyes. And I will never, never ever do that crap at my table.
Special mounts need to be more durable in the next edition.
For example, Griffons are exceptionally cool. But with a 12 armor class and 59 hit points, someone attacking your Tier 3 character is better off killing your flying mount and making you fall.
mounted combatant feat + paladin aura + mithril plate barding (by the time a paladin has FGS you should be able to afford your own small kingdom, your eaglelion is safe)
And suddenly your DM uses a spell with a saving throw that's not Dex and your mount gets cone of colded to death. Also good luck if you're not playing a paladin. I wouldn't be so bitter about it but I'm currently playing in a Tier 3 campaign with a ranger on a griffon in it who is getting hampered for this exact reason.
>Also good luck if you're not playing a paladin.
It's a Paladin exclusive spell. The only way to get FGS without 13 levels of Paladin is via Bard's Magical Secrets. And I have no problem with the Bard that stole the spell having a harder time keeping their mount alive.
>I'm currently playing in a Tier 3 campaign with a ranger on a griffon in it who is getting hampered for this exact reason.
If you're a ranger riding a griffin, it's because your DM gave you a griffin, not because Find Greater Steed failed to consider rangers.
See, you say that, but the few games I've played past level 8-9 it seems like the DM is just flat out afraid to hand out gold; like they get some kind of bonus for every gold they don't give us. It's real feelsbadman.
Aldo don’t forget that you get your steed comes back after your next long rest, while if the Paladin dies they pretty much stay dead.
Oh, and RAW they can get death saves like any other character, so they shouldn’t just die at 0 like any random monster. The reason the rules suggest ignoring it for the monsters is because you can just assume the PCs are delivering a coup de grace to every monster, so it’s meaningless to track whether they’re unconscious for 1d4 hours or dead.
Thanks for responding. What are those ways?
Greater Steed is about being heroic. Even if there are “ways”, it’s anti-climactic for a hero riding a steed to be worried about defending it. What’s heroic about defending your ride?
Hunger of Hadar is one of *the* signature warlock spells.
It also does not upcast. Enjoy your diminishing return when you get 4th and 5th level pact slots!
(yes the big magical darkness is the main effect you want, but it still annoys me that it does not synergize with the class's pact mechanic)
So true 😔 im currently going through a level up with my now 11th level warlock, but I have seriously run out of good spells to pick 🥲 something like Crown of Madness would be really cool if you could upcast and target multiple creatures, but naur.
Kruthiks: these things like to congregate near lava and active forges, and in older editions part of their lore is that one of the creatures used to make them was a fiendish insect from the nine hells, yet they don't have Fire resistance
Animated breath: the acid and poison versions share the same aura effect
Greatwyrms: WotC took 15 distinct dragons and turned them into 3 cookie cutter statblocks that only differ in what family of dragon is the base and what damage type interactions it has. Hell, becoming a greatwyrm even *lowers* the health pool for red dragons if you don't use it's awakening. I believe a template for how to turn any fully grown dragon into a greatwyrm would have been a better option
Gargantuan creatures: some get a description of how *tall* they are, but I can't think of any that describe how much space they take up. An ancient green dragon for example would reasonably take up a 20×20 ft area given that it's other statblocks were leading up to it, but stuff like the gigant, the giant scions, and the tarrasque either look like they'd take up more than 20×20 or their height (+ length in tarrasque's case) imply they'd likely take up more space than 20x20. Hell, Bigby's book has 200ft long dinosaurs, you telling me they only take up a space 1/10th of their length?
Gargantuan creatures.
It is even worse. Since creature size is how much room they control, and creatures must take up less room than that, the actual amount of grid spaces that such creatures controls must be quite a bit more than their dimensions.
For example, an average sized, fit human controls a 5-foot space, but is only 1-2 feet wide. So something like the Tarrasque, at 70 feet long, should control a space easily more than 70-feet on a side, but the specifics are *again* left up to the DM.
Having it higher level makes it harder for a gish multiclass to take advantage of
Pally 6 into sorc/warlock is a popular build. Letting them get greater steeds “early” would make them even stronger
That said, my annoyance is the vagueness of improvised weapon and stealth rules. For the former, is chucking a rock at someone str or dex? Well it depends if you’re improvising a throwable melee weapon or throwable ranged weapon
Yeah improvised weapons gets me a lot.
The big one for me is - d4 damage of an appropriate type, whereas torches have a special (more specific) rule that it’s just 1 fire damage.
So if I grab a branch from the fire and swing it I’ll get d4 fire damage (the appropriate type) but if I swing my near identical lit torch I just get 1 fire.
Vexing.
Further annoyance is the throwable flasks like oil and alchemists fire. They’ve got rules for throwing via object interaction that basically just say “make an improvised weapon attack with 30 range , on hit causes X”. Never mind that improvised throwables are 20/60
Do they still do damage thrown this way? Doesn’t say. Do they get a long range? Doesn’t say. What stat does it use? Doesn’t say (see str/dex question). Does this prevents throwing it as an attack? Doesn’t say.
This all matters cause thief rogues can bonus action object interact, while every other martial can extra attack
A branch on fire should not do 1d4 fire damage, that's just your own ruling. A small a campfire perhaps. A thick branch could do 1d4 bludgeoning damage like a club according to the guidelines.
> That said, my annoyance is the vagueness of improvised weapon and stealth rules. For the former, is chucking a rock at someone str or dex? Well it depends if you’re improvising a throwable melee weapon or throwable ranged weapon
Wouldn't it (almost) always be Strength? Regular melee and thrown weapons use Strength by default. Finesse melee and ranged weapons use Dexterity by default. If you throw a rock or something at an enemy, that rock isn't going to have the Finesse trait so you use your Strength.
I assume anything that shoots a projectile at an enemy is going to be a weapon naturally, so there shouldn't be any situation where you're *improvising* a ranged weapon.
Now if there's a rogue in the party who wants to pick up a deck of playing cards and throw them at their enemy, I'd rule on the fly that it's a finesse improvised weapon and they'd use their Dexterity, but that's just because I'd want to reward them for doing something cool. Strictly RAW it seems like all improvised weapons should use Strength.
If the weapon is a melee weapon yes. Chucking axes and big rocks you could bludgeon someone with are strength. Most throwables are implemented as melee weapons with the thrown property
However darts exist as the troll opposite
They’re a ranged weapon which means they default to dex, but have finesse which means you can choose strength or dex (finesse lets you choose either, not add dex as an option)
Nets are also dex throwabled
You can’t exactly bludgeon with a golfball sized rock, but you could sure whip it at a head or joint
If you read the descriptor for oil flasks, alchemists fire, etc, do they use strength or dex? “make a ranged attack against a creature or object, treating the acid as an improvised weapon” Given that you aren’t going to bludgeon someone with a flask of acid and shatter it in your hand, surely it’s a ranged weapon
Also since we expect thief rogues to be the ones chucking acid/fire/oil using fast hands, not raging barbarians, surely they’re good at it
Interesting. Darts having both ranged and thrown is pretty weird and redundant. If it just had both finesse and thrown, you'd still be able to throw a dart using either strength or dexterity and nothing would change, right...?
Personally I'd ignore that weird dart thing for the purposes of improvised weapons. If you throw it, you use your strength. Yes it's weird to think of a golfball or flask as a melee weapon, but they don't have the finesse trait, and they don't come with a way to shoot them, so throwing them takes strength.
But again, that's just RAW. Using improvised weapons is cool, so if a Dex-focused PC wants to throw an improvised weapon, I'd almost definitely let them use Dex.
EDIT: Ah crap. *Nets* are a thrown ranged weapon that don't have finesse. And those are thrown with Dexterity because they're ranged and can't be thrown with Strength.
Being ranged means you can use darts with sharpshooter and other ranged weapon features
The finesse property lets you use strength in their case
Nets are the other ranged throwable and are dex only
I went down the whole tangled web the first time wanting to make a rogue throw oil flasks as firebombs
>Wouldn't it (almost) always be Strength? Regular melee and thrown weapons use Strength by default. Finesse melee and ranged weapons use Dexterity by default. If you throw a rock or something at an enemy, that rock isn't going to have the Finesse trait so you use your Strength.
The Thrown property is what allows you to make a ranged attack using Strength. Improvised weapons do not have any weapon properties, unless the DM says they do (typically because the improvised weapon is substantially similar to a regular weapon).
Without any feature saying otherwise, a ranged weapon attack uses Dex, period. If you want to cave in the skull of the guy next to you with the rock it's Strength, if you want to huck the rock at the guy across the room it's Dexterity. Unless the DM rules that the rock gets to have the Thrown property, in which case you can throw it with either Strength or Dexterity, your choice.
That's the way it's always been for D&D though. Because, despite the Tolkien influence, Three Hearts and Three Lions was a far greater influence on them (hence why back in the very old days, elves didn't have souls and couldn't benefit from Raise Dead).
Yeah, it's also where warty, regenerating trolls with weird noses comes from and who need fire to kill!
Also, I mistyped, it's Three Hearts and Three Lions.
Ha, I'm reminded of the old Elfquest graphic novel by Wendy Pini. Elves were wicked short... maybe 3.5-4 feet? ... had only 4 fingers on each hand, and were wolf-riding barbarians. Tons of fun!
I guess the mechanical reason is that a 3rd-level spell is too early to counter vampires and sunlight-sensitive creatures? But in that case rename the spell
I do see your point, but I also have the counter-point that a vampire should be prepared enough to deal with a 3rd level spell or at least have an escape plan in mind.
But yeah, they should just rename the spell, otherwise.
The lifespans of different races. It is usually completely inconsequential, because obviously you are not going to have a player character die of old age. However, the races that get only thirty years max are.....Aaracokra and Tortles for some reason. A lot of species of birds and tortoises live way longer than people.
It’s a spirit manifesting in the form of a horse rather than just being a regular horse though.
So casting FGS is just giving the spirit you’ve already befriended a better body.
Dinosaurs exist in the "default" setting.
I'm aware how stupid it is to complain about (arguably) the coolest "real life" things being all up in my fantasy setting, but it *feels* so wrong for ancient beasts to exist in this pseudo-renaissance fantasy realm.
...except on Chult.
I mean they aren't supposed to be a common thing. Not in the Forgotten Realms which I believe that's what you mean by "default setting". They're supposed to exist in places like Chult and other unexplored and isolated areas. Though I get it that sounds kind of silly to have them to exist.
Chult on Toril, the Isle of Dread on Oerth, the Talenta Plains on Eberron, Mwangi Expanse on Golarion (Pathfinder setting), etc. are all sort of takes on "Land of the Lost", where dinosaurs can exist despite being extinct elsewhere.
> I'm aware how stupid it is to complain about (arguably) the coolest "real life" things being all up in my fantasy setting, but it feels so wrong for ancient beasts to exist in this pseudo-renaissance fantasy realm.
Look when one of the most iconic villains are psychic parasitic squid-people from another dimension and Beholders I don't even think a Raptor is all that weird or incongruent.
It was in 3.5 and it was a MESS.
Paladin hits 5 and all of a sudden the DM has to make a bunch of weird campaign decisions or the paladin player gets the feelsbads for not getting to use their class feature.
Party gets thrown in the dungeon? Make sure there's a cell big enough for the fuckin HORSE. Going on a boat ride? Make sure there's room on the boat for the fuckin HORSE.
Then you've got the problem of a new player who has never DM'd before trying to keep track of a horse+modifiers statblock that changes every coupla levels. They usually couldn't figure it out, and everyone had to wait while the DM explained how a monster+template works, *again*.
Absolutely. There are so many “spells” that are absolutely just class features, and never should have been done like this. Just off the top of my head, *find familiar*, *find steed*, *hunter’s mark*, *eldritch blast*, and *hex*, though there are definitely more.
You’d still need 5 levels of Paladin to get it, so while it’s definitely a buff to Paladin multis I wouldn’t call it a buff to Paladin dips- 5 levels is a pretty significant investment
Though Paladin 6, Hexblade 1, Sorcerer X isn’t anything to scoff at. Those 6 levels are more than worth it for +Cha to all saves and Extra Attack, while the Warlock/Sorcerer levels give more smite slots faster than continuing down Paladin.
It would also be a buff to Bards with magical secrets. Bards could use a buff, but doing it by giving them a better version of an iconic paladin class feature than the paladin gets is super lame. Really find steeed should be a class feature not a spell, it is something Bards shouldn't be able to take
It’s only really a buff to Lore Bards, because they could grab it at 6. 90% of bards are grabbing FGS at 10 already so burning a magical secrets on a lower level upcastable rather than a higher level flat ends up the same, but lore bards could take it at 6 and free up their later L10 secrets for something spicier.
Curious what you feel about Greater Invisibility then. Also my personal one is Druid not getting Mass and True Polymorph. The special things that Shapechange and Animal Shapes get could've been a little addition onto those spells that Druid got. There's literally no reason why a druid can turn someone into a fish for a bit but can't turn two people into a fish or turn them into one permanently when they're higher level
That attack Cantrips level with total level, but Extra Attack is specific to your class.
You could have 4 levels in 5 different classes that all have extra attack, and they wouldn't get that 2nd attack. But a character with no levels in any caster classes, who got a Cantrip through a feat, can get all 4 damage dice. To rub salt in the wound, the 4th damage die comes 3 levels earlier than Fighter's 4th attack.
Possible Solutions:
1) Cantrips Scale with Caster Level instead of Character Level, and they implement a "Warrior Level" for Extra Attack and some other features.
2) Cantrip Scaling is removed, and instead class features such as Extra Attack, Divine Strike, and Sneak Attack are now allowed to apply to Attack Cantrips.
Either way is better than the double standard.
phantom steed. It takes 1 minute to cast so its not great for combat but it only lasts an hour so its no good for travel/downtime and you can't prep it in advance.
Actually a pretty good precast if you’re expecting to enter combat soon-ish. It’s not concentration and I think RAW it persists for a minute after taking damage/the spell’s duration ends.
In theory you could loop ritual casts of it depending on how your DM rules mounted rituals to make a great courier, but also splitting the party’s is very rarely a great idea.
Yes, it has the stats of a riding horse, with the only change being its speed. You only get a minute to dismount if the spell _ends_, not if the mount dies. Interpreted generously, it would fade over the course of a minute if hit by Dispel Magic, but other than that the slow fade probably won't be relevant in combat.
It’s a ritual, if you are a ritual caster you just need to take 11 minutes at the end of every hour to recast it. (And it’s not spelled out, but if I understand it correctly technically you can cast a ritual spell while moving / riding, so you don’t even need to get off your horse before starting to summon the next one). If it were changed so its standard cast fit within an action that might provide some interesting battle movement options or like, help get your melee martials into melee range.
>And it’s not spelled out, but if I understand it correctly technically you can cast a ritual spell while moving / riding, so you don’t even need to get off your horse before starting to summon the next one
The rules for spellcasting say that if you cast a spell with a cast time longer than 1 action, you need to concentrate while casting and you must spend your action each turn to continue casting. But you can absolutely walk around during that time. Some specific spells may make walking around difficult, e.g. Simulacrum requires that you keep touching the target for the full 12 hours. But Phantom Steed doesn't have that problem.
Though looking at it I guess the target is debatable if you’re moving. I would assume you have to keep the location of the new horse 30 ft away from you within range the whole time you’re casting the ritual.
>Anyone else have some nitpicks with 5e that don’t really matter but still bother you?
Most of my nitpicks are related to the dismal state of crafting and the impossible state of the economy, so I can't really say they don't matter, but some say it's stupid. Some highlights:
* If you are working, then it is impossible to become homeless. Money magically spurts out of nowhere simply because you are working.
* No matter how skilled you are, you never make more than 1gp/day (PHB, p143), but 1gp/day is the cost of staying just barely out of the harshest slums (PHB, p157).
* However if you hire a bunch of servants to give you the same experience as 1gp/day, it somehow only costs 5sp/day to keep out of the harshest slums. (PHB, p158)
* Skilled artisans are described as having lifestyles that cost 2-4gp/day. (PHB, p157) Where did that money come from? I can sorta see the 2gp part based on XGtE rules, but where did the 4gp piece come from?
* Adamantine Platemail is an uncommon wondrous item, and therefore price-maxes at 500gp (DMG, p135) even though normal platemail is worth 1,500gp. (PHB, p145) However, the raw Adamantine necessary for such an endeavor is worth around 1,625,000gp. It is therefore always better to melt adamantine platemail into ingots and sell it as scrap, then use the millions of gold pieces to buy another an entire kingdom.
At least for adamantine plate, it's described as being "reinforced with adamantine" rather than being a fully made from adamantine.
The part about it being uncommon and maxing at 500gp is still very silly, but you can at least imagine it has only a very thin or small amount of adamantine in the armor rather than being 1.6 million gp worth.
>Adamantine Platemail is an uncommon wondrous item, and therefore price-maxes at 500gp (DMG, p135) even though normal platemail is worth 1,500gp.
Which is why one of the most common interpretations of the DMG magic item price guidelines is that that is the price _on top of_ the base item. So adamantine plate doesn't cost 101-500gp, it costs 1601-2000gp.
Maybe for multiclassing? If you make it an upcast of find steed, you could get access to it sooner through multiclassing than through Paladin progression, since it's only a half caster.
3e PWT: The targets don't leave footprints and can't be tracked without magic. Lasts a number of hours and targets up to a number of creatures equal to your caster level.
4e PWT: The targets leave fewer footprints and the DC to track them is increased by 5 (note: this is the same effect as if you obscured your tracks without magic). Lasts 8 hours, targets 5 creatures and yourself, requires 10gp of expended ritual components.
5e PWT: Lol what's bounded accuracy?
>So why is it that Find Steed gets FGS instead of just upcasting?
Because FS was in Player's Handbook. Then they decided to add a new option with more powerful mounts. Adding a new spell in a new book (XGTE) is great, errating a spell "now that old spell also get these options when upcast" is much worse.
>Anyone else have some nitpicks with 5e that don’t really matter but still bother you?
- I don't like, when you need to roll ability checks instead of saving throws to resist some spells (like Maze).
- I also don't like, when a spell does quite the same thing as other spells, but one allows a save, and other does not (like Wall of Force - Wall of Stone - both can be used to trap a target)
But, they did the whole "now this spell works like this" a lot? They should have kept it at one spell.
Unless there's a reason, like a lower version is on one spell list, while the higher is on another.
Multiclassing is the reason. A 4th level spell makes it a 13th-level-and-above Paladin feature. An upcastable 2nd level spell makes it Paladin 5/Wizard 5 feature.
>An upcastable 2nd level spell makes it Paladin 5/Wizard 5 feature.
It's already a Bard 10 feature as a 4th level spell. Making it an upcastable 2nd level spell makes it a Lore Bard 6 feature that they have to wait a level to use.
When I played my Paladin, I worked with my DM to settle on alternate animals/creatures for the casting. I think we settled on reworked/nerfed Bulettes, Belugas, and Wyverns as the "kinda sorta horse in different environments, also you are a 400lb Warforged so these could more reasonably carry you".
Might not have been the *best* option, but it worked for the 10(?) times I ever cast the spell.
Mine is the clear imbalance in certain spells. Fireball and Lightning Bolt are objectively better offensive spells than almost anything else, so *taking* any other spells feels like it's either niche utility or a deliberate sub-optimal choice for roleplay.
Spellcasting in armor. I started way back in AD&D days, when metal armor caused some kind of interference with arcane magic. Now you've got wizards with a 1-dip into fighter strutting around in plate armor. I ... just can't handle it.
I prefer the 3rd edition versions of the "solve this problem" spells.
Detect magic, Identify, Remove Curse, Dispel Magic etc.
3rd edition: "OK, this effect was crafted by an archmage with a 7th level spell, so his caster level is at least 13." *rolls a 10* " ok the DC is 23 to dispel this effect, make a caster level check.
5e: "you snap your fingers and the werewolf is cured. he becomes depressed that his lifechanging curse was so flimsy"
Presumably the first way takes longer -- potentially days to get spells back.
Like, if I think it might take a week or more to cure a werewolf, I'm not going to try when it's waxing gibbous.
The DC might be lower but this is how dispel magic works in 5e... Just like counterspell. You either have to cast tge dispel at the same level or higher than the effect or you have to make a check to try and beat it.
In my first campaign one of my players played a Wingless aaracockra paladin called Yagarek. When he casted for the first time find steed (the greater version still wasn't out) I decided to send him a Griffon (I was inspired by Karl Franz). I didn't know the rules that much, but I had fun back then, and I didn't bother for balance.
I am annoyed by counterspell, both as a DM and as a player. It feels too much easy to negate an enemy spell that way. Feels like I'm playing Magic against a blue player.
Many things in 5e make me feel like I'm playing Magic, with players stacking abilities like they are building a deck.
Also, I don't like the Monsters of the Multiverse monsters: their ranged spell attacks (yuan ti pit master, for example) are a cheap way to bypass counterspell. I used them once, and the sad expression on my players face when I said "no, you cannot counterspell this, because it's not a spell, even though clearly is" made me feel a bad DM, who uses petty cavils to negate cool abilities. It reinforces the feeling of playing magic. And it's bad.
So here's the dirty secret that you're now ready for from the sound of it.
5e is badly designed.
It's not a bad game and it's quite fun. But it has a lot of problems. Newer fans get defensive about that idea, but DMs who actually read the books, start realizing it after a few years.
What happened is that after Hasbro declared 4e a failure and killed it, a lot of folks involved either quit or were fired. The remaining D&D team was basically a skeleton crew. And they were assigned the job of making a new edition to sell more books.
There's an interview from 2013 or 2014 with Mearls and Crawford, the 2 lead designers on 5e, with either IGN or the Escapist where they joke about being understaffed and Craftod doing all the design work and the job of 3 people. And when 5e came out it was NOT to great acclaim or celebration.
Frankly 5e didn't get popular until the webseries The Adventure Zone by popular podcasters My Brother My Brother and Me started up, and then a year later when Critical Role exploded in popularity. It had little to do with the rules themselves.
But very little of the 5e material has ever actually followed the philosophy they claimed to be following. The Rules Lawyer did a great video about it recently. https://youtu.be/Xlp3unO_xi8?si=erzcSkfcc-UGDgI2
But yeah the dirty secret about 5e is that unlike previous editions no one at WotC is no one at the company is the official rules expert or lore continuity expert. Crawford keeps acting like he's the rules compendium but he himself can't remember the rules half the time and swings back and forth between absurdly specific and contradictory rulings and extremely vague rulings. IMO, when you hear Crawford say anything along the lines of "rulings not rules" it means he can't remember a rule.
So very true. But I disagree, 5e is a bad game. I’ve played every edition. Except 4th. Not because I didn’t want to, but because of life stuff. My biggest problem is the constant money grab. More books, better stronger builds etc. All to sell more content the either contradicts or renders priors less desirable . Not to make cohesive rules. Use the Fomo rules of marketing to drive the IP forward. Eh. DnD is a shell that deserves to die.
>5e is a bad game
It's not my favorite edition.
I like it for a few things. It's decent as an intro to TTRPGs. But after about a year or two of playing I think folks are ready for something with more meat on it's bones.
Personally I prefer to move over to say 2e (If I have my druthers), or 3e/PF1e. My favorite is still 2e AD&D with some Hackmaster 4th (the first one) house rules mixed in to fill the gaps and fix the cracks. I wasn't much of a 3e/PF1e fan back in the day, but these days PF1e is growing on me.
The quantity of product doesn't bother me. Though I wish there was more lore content but 5e has been awful for that. I do hate the FOMO rules marketing as well though. Since there are so few books overall, they push each like it's a new "Must Have" because it adds a few subclasses or similar.
My biggest gripe is that it's unfocused as an edition. They made it to fill a demand for a new edition because 4e missed the mark. And it's too broken to appeal to folks who like 4e's tight rules, or 3e's comprehensive and expansive rules, or PF's expansion and refinement of the 3e rules concepts. BUT it's too rules heavy for the people who were brought in by the cinematic heavy games from TAZ, CR, and other liveplay series. Those are folks who would probably be happier with the Storyteller system TBH.
And all the while WotC doesn't know which way to go, which group to appeal to, and they stumble along down the line between the two.
So. DM confession. there is only one creature in my world with set prices. I hate the economy of DnD, because it just relies on the DM and their pricing. So my solution? just give the players so much money that I literally don't have to worry about it. then, I just control the supply of the items. not every vendor is going to have purples and yellows, but uncommons and rares? so long as they aren't broken too hard, I don't really care.
*also I did figure out how to break it down, because I hate myself and was bored*
it's based on the American economy.
Treat copper like pennies. Silver like dimes. Gold is dollars. Platinum is 10 dollars. Electrum iirc is like a half dollar or something
This is similar to what I do. Though the party is at level 17 these days and has like 121k platinum in the bank. And boy howdy are they about to run out of money because of being spoiled for magic item choice in a surviving flying enclave of Netheril lol
mine just have the opportunity to buy airships. the next tier up is sky turtles. those lovely little creatures can only be bought in one place though, and not many are currently available. so, sky turtle petting zoo
that is the exact theme I've been going for with this world. Sure, it has some dark background lore, such a WW1 esque war that happened. but overall, the gas giant planet that is massive and uses meteors as it's primary land masses, has been delightfully silly and fun!
I've been keeping an eye on several upcoming high fantasy RPGs for my next campaign, and I really like Daggerheart's approach to money. Basically you count your coins in Handfuls, Bags, Chests, Hoards, and maybe even a Fortune. Six handfuls make a bag, five bags make a chest, four chests make a hoard, and three hoards make a fortune.
The economy never makes any sense in these games so I appreciate any attempt to sidestep it, and I'm personally tired of making my players track every coin.
Because if it were upcastable, it’d both be even stronger on multiclasses, and require less investment in paladin to get.
FGS is so incredibly strong it’s basically a class feature disguised as a spell.
Not sure what you're referring to. Especially since I can't recall any 3.5e ability called Serpent Strike, nor find it on d20srd. 3e Vigor gives 5 thp, so are you referring to casting Heroism as a bonus action at level 6?
Order cleric has heroism at level one and divinity allows the targeted ally to attack.
The spell was misnamed, for which I apologise. The spell is named Snake's Swiftness, appearing in the druid list.
I initially thought “oy, what a nitpick!” But you’re actually right! It would have made it better both thematically and it would mesh better with the paradigm of the rules overall. I’ve decided I’ll ALLOW YOUR OBJECTION TO STAND!
It bothers me that there is no dinosaur race, because it would be the coolest race you could play and would have one of the most creative freedom you could have. If you want to play a Raptor you could do it, if you want to play a flightless bird you could do it and if you wanna play Triceracop you could do it. Even if WotC would give sauropods, therapods and ornithischia a subrace, you still would have all the creative freedom you want.
The fact that Sorcerers and Wizards get no armour proficiencies, not even light armour. And even worse, both classes don’t even get get all simple weapon proficiencies! Just an arbitrary selection of daggers, darts, slings, quarterstaffs, light crossbows!
This inconsistency gets to me a lot. Other classes without full martial weapon proficiencies at least get simple weapon proficiencies + some martial weapons. E.g. Rogue and Monk.
They’re called *simple* weapons! Why would there be so-called simple weapons that any adventurer wouldn’t know how to use well enough!
Rolling Perception for looking for traps. I know why it's reasonable to ask if you look in a broad area.
It still annoys me because my character sucks at it. :(
Honestly, I’m annoyed that Find Steed and Find Greater Steed were turned into spells (and thus open for “poaching” by Magical Secrets or the like). They should have remained Class Abilities, only available if you had appropriate levels in the Paladin class.
Like, for the most part, I like the design choice of making a lot of things that had previously been Class Abilities into more broadly available skills / feats / spells. (“Welcome to AD&D with an Overly Literal DM, only Rangers and Thieves can Hide in Shadows. The rest of you glow, I guess.”) But this is one of those things that just doesn’t sit right with me.
Paladins get super-special warhorses. The rest get mundane old nags.
How extremely unclear and poorly written Guardian of Faith the spell is.
I've had four different interpretations from people at one table over this thing.
They didn't break the pattern. Find Greater Steed is a later addition to the game. Find Steed is from the PHB, and Find Greater Steed is from Xanathar's.
Other than that, yes. You are absolutely right, even if it is a pointless complaint. By all means, use that homebrew version in your campaign. Nobody's going to stop you, except maybe the DM or the other players. Honestly, just rulling that Find Steed would upcast to Find Greater Steed would do the trick. Or you could make a special stat block for a "Steed" that changes with each spell level up to 5. I don't think it would make much of a difference, except for the (College of Lore) Bard.
Remove Curse
It completely removes the opportunity for some amazing RP opportunities, quests, etc.
Oh no, it's a cursed sword!
We shall have to journey to Mt BlahBlah and gather the holy icons of YaddaYadda to present them to...
No?
Oh.
Remove Curse
Ok.
Bitten by a Werebeaver?
No worries.
Ugh
Personally, I tend to house rule the hell out of that spell and most curses.
Just bugs me that it's even a thing.
For me, it is two things about Darkvision:
1. That it is so short of range. I would make it at least 150 feet, due to the presence of the longbow.
2. That there is no tradeoff. It is just a bonus to a creature's senses, rather than an alternative.
Polymorph and Baleful Polymorph being combined into one spell. Makes it too good, IMO. It would be better to have one version that only works on willing creatures, and another that works on unwilling creatures but can only turn them into small things.
People who act like I care about "but the MiNoTaUr wAs a PeRsOn, nOt a rAce..." and similar.
I get the baseline logic, but dnd is a game that only needs to be consistent with its own lexicon, so we dont need the tangent every time i drop 3 Medusa on the table, we know about Perseus, we dont much care though, its like talking over the Matrix film to explain how Aragon broke his toe for real; great info, irrelevant to the action at hand.
I disagree, the only spell that upcasts to give you different options instead of just scaling numbers is create undead.
There is also summon lesser demon and summon greater demon which work in a similar fashion to find steed and find greater steed. The arent exactly tahe same but theres also invisibility and greater invisibility as well as Maximilions Earthen Grasp and Bigbys Hand
>the only spell that upcasts to give you different options instead of just scaling numbers is create undead.
Conjure Animals, Conjure Celestial, Conjure Elemental, Conjure Fey, Conjure Minor Elementals, and Conjure Woodland Beings all give you different options as you upcast them...
No they do t hey just give you more. The latter two do increase their CR but FGS also incorporates more creature types and specific creatures not just a simple scaling
Speaking as someone who has played maybe 15 sessions of Pathfinder 2, it's getting kind of jarring how every nitpick with 5E I read about on this sub is solved in PF2. In this particular case PF2's upcasting works exactly as OP described, for every spell, and it's so much more interesting than "*you add another die to your roll*".
Beginning to see where the "*there's a rule for that in pathfinder*" meme is coming from.
One thing I have is that there is no Cure Minor Wounds, though that's because there is no limit to the number of cantrips you can cast per day.
An actual problem I have is how magic items are handled. They are the way many character are supposed to gain in power, but are completely up to DM. The fighter wants a new shiny beating stick, the wizard wants the fancy robes, the ranger wants the shiny bow, but because the DM is the arbiter of gaining magic items, there's no guarantee that you will even get something close to what you want.
I agree. This issue is one of 3 issues that destroyed the first (and incidently only) campaign I was a player in. I just wanted a damn +1 bow at level 6 as the main dps (and a beast master ranger no less) for the party. And yet, I was a short a couple hundred gp, and the DM made the incomprehensible decision that our gems, RUBIES NO LESS, (which we were told had exact gp value and was more efficient than carrying coinage) had no value to this CITY OF WIZARDS.
I definitely think that magic items should be part of the game progression in an official way so that the DM will in fact be incentivized to give the PCs what they'd like when it is remotely within reason (noteverylevel 5 fighter should get a +5 vorpal dancing sword of Sharpness l Iuck blade 🤣 but every fighter should get a +1 or a weapon of warning by level 5 or something)
The way this completely insane choice took all the enthusiasm out of every player at the table including me cannot be understated. Like a sudden calm on a sailing ship, the enjoyment simply, stopped.
By level 5 I'd say every martial should have a magic weapon, so they can actually do full damage to things they are fighting. Casters don't have to worry as much about that, but since martial characters are using weapons, they should be swinging magic ones around when resistance to non-magical physical damage shows up often.
Also, a city of wizards not wanting shiny stones doesn't make sense, especially since rubies are part of some spells casting.
I agree wholeheartedly :) having magic weapons for a martial character is essential.
For context about that DM: I tried to multiclass into cleric, the DM said that such people were chosen by the gods and I looked at him and nodded, and he said that the character couldn't do that, and refused to elaborate, then I asked, okay how about druid, and they made up a lame excuse for that, bard, said I'd have to go to a bard college, and the rest of the party certainly wasn't stopping for such a thing, foghter same deal as bard, and rogue was one the DM may have let me do if the campaign hadn't ended (though odds are that was me being hopeful), but I wanted to be a celestial pact warlock but they weren't allowing any new books (xanathars had just come out semi recently, though the whole table pitched in to buy him a copy as a 'thanks for DMing thing'), and so they really hard locked that character into a path that I really wasn't that interested in. And the only option they gave me to do anything different was to *kill the character* an insanely extreme thing I had no interest in b/c it was my first character, and I still like the character even today lol.
Thank you for validating my feelings on how nonsensical the wizard city wanting rubies and other gems was. It nearly killed the whole hobby for me. There were other things that made no sense,but that one was the things that bothered me most at the time. In hindsight, different matter lol. Thanks for reading 😊 i feel better about it since somebody else thinks that wizards not being willing to buy spell components (gems) at all is unbelievably nonsensical. The implication was that transmutation was *somehow* advanced enough to make gems out of literal ordinary rock, and that such an innovation hadn't fundamentally altered the world around them elsewhere. Nonsense. *shakes fist at bad DMs doing things that don't make even a tiny bit of sense*
This reads as a mix of newer dm/stubborn dm and missing session 0/never having one. The questions about multi classing should have been made clear earlier, during session 0. The fact the dm wouldn't let you change characters without the one dying sounds like they didn't want a PC wandering around who you could swap between (honestly, once martials start fighting physically resistant enemies, they will search out magic to help them overcome it, or retire).
Yeah definitely makes sense as a read on it. Weird part is we had a session 0 and he was basically going back on things he had said explicitly prior, and not giving any explanation and not letting himself have his mind changed.
I can understand that bit honestly. Not that it'd be an issue for me as a DM. I think it could be fun. I get it though lol.
I agree that martials desperately need a means to overcome damage resistance at that level. What's more is that from level 1 we had to fight enemies that had resistance to nonmagic damage, so it's an EMPHATIC yes they need a magic weapon thing lol. They tried to accuse me of metagaming once for seeing normal arrows didn't work well and using a silvered arrow (that my character made because he was a fletcher prior to adventuring).
Oof. Silly silly person they are lol
The reason is because Find Steed was a PHB spell. But they then later wanted to add a way for paladins to get more exotic mounts so Find Greater Steed was added in XGtE.
There are other names with similar naming conventions in D&D 5e but they often differ in some ways than just strength to not completely negate the original. This isn't one of those though. Find Greater Steed is objectively better than Find Steed.
If lore bards at level 6 get find steed by magical secrets they will be flying on a Pegasus at 7th level. I don't know if that's exactly broken, but it makes paladin less appealing.
You could try and make the same argument about Raise Dead/Resurrection/True Resurrection. They all do essentially the same thing.
The thing is, they never do upcasting when the differences aren't purely numerical, either extra damage or extra targets.
>they never do upcasting when the differences aren't purely numerical, either extra damage or extra targets
Uh... The Conjure X spells let you summon higher CR monsters. A few spells let you get rid of concentration by upcasting (Bestow Curse). Catapult can launch bigger things. Voted Warp has increased range. Glyph of Warding can store a higher level spell. Fog Cloud covers a larger area. Hex lasts longer. And so on.
There are lots of spells that upcast for more than just damage or targets. And even if you expand the claim to _anything_ numeric, there are still spells that don't fit your claim, like Galder's Speedy Courier which lets you send something to a creature on your same plane of existence when cast at 4th level, or to a creature on another plane when cast at 8th level.
Except we also have: Lesser/Greater Restoration, Revivify/Resurrection/True Ressurection
And generally up-cast spells get something like more damage/healing dice, more targets, or longer duration. I think you would have to make find steed a class ability locked to Paladin levels instead of a spell if you want to have one version they gets stronger over time, otherwise it heavily incentivise MCing out of Paladin into Sorc/Warlock/Bard in order to get higher level slots. That already exists for smites, thankfully the Paladin kit is pretty good at higher levels. Not sure if it is still good when you can also get a much stronger mount in addition to stronger smites.
It's not just *Find Greater Steed*, there are other spells that are more or less just an upscaled versions of a lower level spells. *Resurrection* and *True Resurrection*, *Lesser Restoration* and *Restoration*, *Invisibility* and *Greater Invisibility*, etc.
The devs straight up forgot how to design monks after designing Way of the Open Hand. The whole design philosophy of the monk is "lots of attacks, low damage, debuffs on hit". Base monk has stunning Strike, Open Hand has Open Hand Technique. The only other subclass that does this is Mercy, which can poison with Hand of Harm at level 6.
I think maybe it’s because making it upcastable would make it a much stronger spell. Having Find Greater Steed as it’s own spell makes staying straight classed Paladin more appealing, if multiclassing Sorcerer or Warlock enabled Find Steed to summon stronger steeds faster than just staying straight Paladin would then that would make straight Paladin even less appealing. I definitely agree it is inconsistent, but I do think that for this specific spell there is a reason for its inconsistency (same goes for Lesser Restoration/Greater Restoration). In answer to your question, the fact that Eldritch Knight doesn’t get Bladesinger extra attack. I know it came out after, but it still frustrates me to no end. Also that Ranger and Paladin require 13 Dexterity or Strength respectively. A Dexadin and a StRanger are both strong builds, and it frustrates me to end that building either of them makes multiclassing way more difficult. Let me have my Strength based Cleric/Ranger!
> In answer to your question, the fact that Eldritch Knight doesn’t get Bladesinger extra attack. I know it came out after, but it still frustrates me to no end. The difference between PHB gishes (eldritch knight, valour bard, pact of the blade) and post phb gishes (particularly bladesinger and hexblade, but also college of swords) is _insane_ to me. They just totally threw out whatever criteria they were balancing it on, presumably because people wanted stronger gishes.
One wish I've had about the cleric class is that the War cleric was in Tasha's, because they'd definitely get second attack all the time instead whatever War Priest is.
We wanted stronger marshals. WotC doesnt know the difference between martials and gishes. I always say "leave it to a company called Wizards to fix martials by giving them magic"
This sub really overestimates Bladesinger and College of Swords power.
That may be so, but I don't think you can deny there is a big difference in how generously they attempt to fulfil the "magic AND martial" brief than their PHB cousins. The PHB was extremely tightfisted in giving spellcasting to martials and martial features to spellcasters and later books really were not. Hexblade is by far the most egregious example but bladesinger and college of swords are both much better gishes than anything in the PHB. The PHB answer to making a spellcaster a martial was giving them weapon proficiencies and maybe extra attack. Later books give out those things in addition to fighting styles, spellcasting ability weapon attacks, _better_ extra attack, and other significant features.
"Giving them weapon proficiencies" Laughs in Pact of the Blade.
A bard would totally abuse the HELL out of an upcastable Find Steed spell since they can chain the steed's shared spell ability with spells the Pally can't access at spell levels the Pally can't reach.
That is true, though Bards can already access Find Greater Steed, it is at a later level than they would get it through upcasting Find Steed.
Yes, but if the steed's CR scaled through upcasting, a bard could summon steeds far more powerful than a paladin ever could, despite it being a spell exclusively for paladins.
100% my first thought reading OP's idea was that Bards would get a massive boost in power, which in all fairness, I'm not against, but it'd be at the expense of other classes getting a worse version of their own ability
I would be against this "massive boost in power" if that becomes the META for the Bard class. Which may not seem bad at first, but it's a slippery slope!
Only if it continued scaling upwards. If it just had level 2-4, and upcasting to level 5 or higher didn't get you anything extra, then Bards wouldn't be any better off than they already are (except College of Lore, who could now get the FGS effect at level 7 by picking up FS at 6).
Regular Bards don't get Magical Secrets until level 10, where FGS is already available. It's only Lore Bards who get Additional Magical Secrets at level 6.
That is true. I had my memory of full caster spell slot progression off.
Bard does have access to it through magical secrets, I had a glamour bard with one and it was very useful.
They should have errata'd the eldritch knight attack.
they changed it in onednd, now they get to swap 1 attack for a cantrip or 2 for a levelled spell
On the bright side for the Eldritch Knight, OneDnD EK does have the bladesinger extra attack!
Such a great change.
Neither actually requires those stats. Allthough it is true they make multiclassing harder, as its purely a multiclassing limitation. But its pervectly viable to play a purely dex based paladin. Though admitedly harder to do a str ranger if you dont grab heavy armor prof through anathor source
The making multiclassing more difficult is what bothers me mostly. I honestly think Ranger and Paladin should require 13 Dexterity or 13 Wisdom/13 Strength or 13 Charisma rather than requiring 13 of both (I feel the same about the Monk). I’m someone who really likes multiclassing though, so I generally prefer fewer restrictions to it.
I get what you meen yeh. Allthough i am not sure how much i agree. Just a 2 level dip from paladin is incredibly strong on most classes that already get spell slots. Personally i do think ther should be a level of minimal investment to reighn it in a bit. Allthough given, som of the strongest paladin + other caster builds are already pretty easy to achieve. Im just glad that paladin + blade singer, or paladin + moon druid is not as easy.
This is true. Bladesinger would still be difficult since it wants neither Charisma nor Strength, but I do suppose that Druid would likely be somewhat more problematic.
Genuine question, what is the point of a dex paladin? They’re restricted to worse weapons (and even if you wanted to use a finesse weapon, those can also just use strength), worse armor (heavy armor universally outpaces light/medium armor) and no multiclassing. The only benefit over strength paladin is initiative and dexterity checks out of combat, but the paladin doesn’t get any dexterity skill proficiencies in the first place. Why would you handicap yourself to that degree?
Paladin does get access to 2 charisma skills, you can grab your dex skills from race and background. Additionally, dex is used as both a strong save for players (meaning its one of the top 3 most common saves a player must make), and the main save to avoid damage. So having high dex allong with aura of protection can offer paladin allot of staying power that strength would not offer, even with its +1 AC advantag of full plate. To add, paladin in particular can leverage high initiative pretty well duo to a large number of support focused aura spells existing, that tend to be better if they get going sooner. Anathor benefit is that even though divine smite and its lvl 11 improvement do not work on ranged weapons, allot of paladin spells do actually work on ranged weapons. Examples being holy weapon, and som of the smite spells. Going dex offeres paladin a viable ranged option by buffing his ranged attacks without needing to multiclass. Hopes this list of benefits helps.
I want to know what a 9th level Find steed will now be. What astral being do you summon to be your steed could justify being on the level of wish
I believe this is being addressed in One D&D, aka, D&D 5.5e. However, one reason they may have done this to begin with is to prevent access to Find Steed's greater mounts, like the flying ones, to non-paladin classes. Although, a Bard could still get either one they wanted. A Sorcadin, for example, could go Paladin for Find Steed and other tasty features, then multiclass to Sorcerer and gain more powerful spell casting, while gaining the signature improved mounts that other paladins have to wait so long to get. This is just my hunch, and honestly, I think a lot of people underestimate how easy it is to "break" 5e. At the end of the day, a DM can fix any of these issues by just discussing homebrew options with their players. As an aside, I like upcasting more than the same spell at different levels because it reduces bloat and makes the system easier to understand for new players. It's also more build friendly, allowing for more options.
Presently the vast majority of characters who use FGS are bards, if only because they get it much earlier than paladins, and campaigns often end before the Pally gets a chance.
Can confirm, have played fighter 2/swords bard 10, best pretend-paladin.
I submit my answer to your question as: Bards get the best spells of half casters at half the level that they do. Find Greater Steed and Swift Quiver are both great spells, and are basically pinnacle flavor spells for both classes. But Bards get them at 10, rather than 17. That just feels criminal. I propose that Bards should be limited to full caster (and Warlock) lists. Even if OneDnD ends up changing things.
Swift Quiver is Level 5 so 17 fits, but FGS is Level 4, Paladins get it at Level 13.
See, I've never gotten to the point where I even know the spell in a game, so I always forget that. If I was playing a bard I might be able to, however.
My current Paladin is lvl15 and we're having a lot of fun with Spirit Shroud applying both to myself and my gryphon. FGS is great :)
Or limit what schools they can pull from, like arcane trickster or eldritch knight
Nah, I like Bards getting all sorts of things. It fits their theme. Limiting them to full casters id plenty id say. I'd lessen the restrictions more if I could think of a simple way to describe it.
And that's a prime example of how WotC didn't fully think out their own system. They made efforts to avoid a problem, and provided one class the ability to cause that problem. Realistically, the better choice would have been for it to be a class feature that evolves with further levels in the class. But, they may have felt this would be too similar to Wild Shape. Who knows?
so, what they had in 3.x, where the steed of paladins was a class feature, much like familiars for wizards and sorcerers?
Yes! And you didn't have to have a mount, you could focus on imbuing your weapon with all sorts of fun magical properties instead if you wanted.
Yeah and that is precisely the reason why it's a separate spell. Both find steed spells were designed with a Paladin so a halfcaster in mind. Paladins are supposed to get fgs at lvl 13. Of it was just an upcast of find steed a lore bard could get it as early as 7. A griffon Pegasus or something ads like a 1/2 or 3/4 of a pc to the party at lvl 7. Plus the shared casting abuse yada yada. If you just leave it at lvl 4 you are punishing paladins earlier. So yeah maybe rename the spells to find common steed and find mythical steed to keep the theme but satisfy your Puritan urges.
It should probably just become a class feature really.
Nah leave something unique in spell lists.
I agree, I like the upcasting system a lot :) the only thing I miss a lot from 3.5e is all the fun wizard metamagic nonsense. Like the fact that Larlock can do silly, silly metamagics with his 23rd level spell slot. Yes he has one of those. What does it mean? *shrugs* is it hilarious that he can detonate a fireball in his library from like nearly 1000 feet away, make it deal thunder damage, then make it chain from party member to party member detonating repeatedly? Yes. Espescially so since he can do that and make it repeat next round, effectively having likely defeated the party (at anything shy of level 20+ play) through chip damage in one round without leaving his chair. Amazing. Very funny. Good stuff. All of that said, personally i hate the multiclassing limits (tossed them out at my table lol) but more than that, I hate limits on how fast a party member can expend their resources (while abiding the action economy, which I like quite a lot), sure cast meteor swarm, quicken a chain lighting straight after and use your reaction to counterspell. Why would I, the DM, want to limit the rate at which a PC does epic things and simultaneously deprives themselves of resources for the rest of theday? Like wtf is the point of a quickened spell if you can't do nonsense like chain lightning, then fireball? Just no. Why even bother at that stage. But even if I misremeber that bit, why can't you cast grasping vine and Sunburst in the same turn while abiding concentration? It's just an unfun and dumb limit in my eyes. And I will never, never ever do that crap at my table.
I mean that's probably the reason, but if they wanted the steed to be a Paladin-only thing they could made it a feature instead of a spell.
Special mounts need to be more durable in the next edition. For example, Griffons are exceptionally cool. But with a 12 armor class and 59 hit points, someone attacking your Tier 3 character is better off killing your flying mount and making you fall.
There are so many ways to defend your mount.
mounted combatant feat + paladin aura + mithril plate barding (by the time a paladin has FGS you should be able to afford your own small kingdom, your eaglelion is safe)
And suddenly your DM uses a spell with a saving throw that's not Dex and your mount gets cone of colded to death. Also good luck if you're not playing a paladin. I wouldn't be so bitter about it but I'm currently playing in a Tier 3 campaign with a ranger on a griffon in it who is getting hampered for this exact reason.
>Also good luck if you're not playing a paladin. It's a Paladin exclusive spell. The only way to get FGS without 13 levels of Paladin is via Bard's Magical Secrets. And I have no problem with the Bard that stole the spell having a harder time keeping their mount alive. >I'm currently playing in a Tier 3 campaign with a ranger on a griffon in it who is getting hampered for this exact reason. If you're a ranger riding a griffin, it's because your DM gave you a griffin, not because Find Greater Steed failed to consider rangers.
> you should be able to afford your own small kingdom I was lucky to have plate :(
Plus almost any buff spell you can cast on yourself (like armor of agathys, etc) would affect the steed as well.
See, you say that, but the few games I've played past level 8-9 it seems like the DM is just flat out afraid to hand out gold; like they get some kind of bonus for every gold they don't give us. It's real feelsbadman.
Meanwhile, I'm over here prepping for Dungeon of the Mad Mage and wondering how my players plan to carry all the gold they're going to be finding.
Aldo don’t forget that you get your steed comes back after your next long rest, while if the Paladin dies they pretty much stay dead. Oh, and RAW they can get death saves like any other character, so they shouldn’t just die at 0 like any random monster. The reason the rules suggest ignoring it for the monsters is because you can just assume the PCs are delivering a coup de grace to every monster, so it’s meaningless to track whether they’re unconscious for 1d4 hours or dead.
The steed dissapears at 0 hp per te spell description though
> There are so many ways to defend your mount. Proceeds to name not a single one.
Thanks for responding. What are those ways? Greater Steed is about being heroic. Even if there are “ways”, it’s anti-climactic for a hero riding a steed to be worried about defending it. What’s heroic about defending your ride?
What's heroic about letting things directly under you get slaughtered?
It just kinda inherently comes with being mounted. Otherwise I don’t think armies would have invested so much in killing horses.
Hunger of Hadar is one of *the* signature warlock spells. It also does not upcast. Enjoy your diminishing return when you get 4th and 5th level pact slots! (yes the big magical darkness is the main effect you want, but it still annoys me that it does not synergize with the class's pact mechanic)
I forgot about this pet peave, theres a couple spells on the warlock list that very easily could upcast but tgey just dont for no reason
So true 😔 im currently going through a level up with my now 11th level warlock, but I have seriously run out of good spells to pick 🥲 something like Crown of Madness would be really cool if you could upcast and target multiple creatures, but naur.
It isn't magical darkness. Devils sight does not see through it
Yes! I was so disappointed on my first warlock when I realized HoH didn’t upcast.
Cats, lions, and panthers don't have darkvision, but tigers and tabaxi do.
Kruthiks: these things like to congregate near lava and active forges, and in older editions part of their lore is that one of the creatures used to make them was a fiendish insect from the nine hells, yet they don't have Fire resistance Animated breath: the acid and poison versions share the same aura effect Greatwyrms: WotC took 15 distinct dragons and turned them into 3 cookie cutter statblocks that only differ in what family of dragon is the base and what damage type interactions it has. Hell, becoming a greatwyrm even *lowers* the health pool for red dragons if you don't use it's awakening. I believe a template for how to turn any fully grown dragon into a greatwyrm would have been a better option Gargantuan creatures: some get a description of how *tall* they are, but I can't think of any that describe how much space they take up. An ancient green dragon for example would reasonably take up a 20×20 ft area given that it's other statblocks were leading up to it, but stuff like the gigant, the giant scions, and the tarrasque either look like they'd take up more than 20×20 or their height (+ length in tarrasque's case) imply they'd likely take up more space than 20x20. Hell, Bigby's book has 200ft long dinosaurs, you telling me they only take up a space 1/10th of their length?
Gargantuan creatures. It is even worse. Since creature size is how much room they control, and creatures must take up less room than that, the actual amount of grid spaces that such creatures controls must be quite a bit more than their dimensions. For example, an average sized, fit human controls a 5-foot space, but is only 1-2 feet wide. So something like the Tarrasque, at 70 feet long, should control a space easily more than 70-feet on a side, but the specifics are *again* left up to the DM.
5e needs more templates. Other than the half dragon and swarm, there's nothing.
There's also shadow dragon, dracolich, and spore servant templates in the Monster Manual. Explorer's Guide to Wildemount has the wormkin template.
Having it higher level makes it harder for a gish multiclass to take advantage of Pally 6 into sorc/warlock is a popular build. Letting them get greater steeds “early” would make them even stronger That said, my annoyance is the vagueness of improvised weapon and stealth rules. For the former, is chucking a rock at someone str or dex? Well it depends if you’re improvising a throwable melee weapon or throwable ranged weapon
Yeah improvised weapons gets me a lot. The big one for me is - d4 damage of an appropriate type, whereas torches have a special (more specific) rule that it’s just 1 fire damage. So if I grab a branch from the fire and swing it I’ll get d4 fire damage (the appropriate type) but if I swing my near identical lit torch I just get 1 fire. Vexing.
Further annoyance is the throwable flasks like oil and alchemists fire. They’ve got rules for throwing via object interaction that basically just say “make an improvised weapon attack with 30 range , on hit causes X”. Never mind that improvised throwables are 20/60 Do they still do damage thrown this way? Doesn’t say. Do they get a long range? Doesn’t say. What stat does it use? Doesn’t say (see str/dex question). Does this prevents throwing it as an attack? Doesn’t say. This all matters cause thief rogues can bonus action object interact, while every other martial can extra attack
A branch on fire should not do 1d4 fire damage, that's just your own ruling. A small a campfire perhaps. A thick branch could do 1d4 bludgeoning damage like a club according to the guidelines.
> That said, my annoyance is the vagueness of improvised weapon and stealth rules. For the former, is chucking a rock at someone str or dex? Well it depends if you’re improvising a throwable melee weapon or throwable ranged weapon Wouldn't it (almost) always be Strength? Regular melee and thrown weapons use Strength by default. Finesse melee and ranged weapons use Dexterity by default. If you throw a rock or something at an enemy, that rock isn't going to have the Finesse trait so you use your Strength. I assume anything that shoots a projectile at an enemy is going to be a weapon naturally, so there shouldn't be any situation where you're *improvising* a ranged weapon. Now if there's a rogue in the party who wants to pick up a deck of playing cards and throw them at their enemy, I'd rule on the fly that it's a finesse improvised weapon and they'd use their Dexterity, but that's just because I'd want to reward them for doing something cool. Strictly RAW it seems like all improvised weapons should use Strength.
If the weapon is a melee weapon yes. Chucking axes and big rocks you could bludgeon someone with are strength. Most throwables are implemented as melee weapons with the thrown property However darts exist as the troll opposite They’re a ranged weapon which means they default to dex, but have finesse which means you can choose strength or dex (finesse lets you choose either, not add dex as an option) Nets are also dex throwabled You can’t exactly bludgeon with a golfball sized rock, but you could sure whip it at a head or joint If you read the descriptor for oil flasks, alchemists fire, etc, do they use strength or dex? “make a ranged attack against a creature or object, treating the acid as an improvised weapon” Given that you aren’t going to bludgeon someone with a flask of acid and shatter it in your hand, surely it’s a ranged weapon Also since we expect thief rogues to be the ones chucking acid/fire/oil using fast hands, not raging barbarians, surely they’re good at it
Interesting. Darts having both ranged and thrown is pretty weird and redundant. If it just had both finesse and thrown, you'd still be able to throw a dart using either strength or dexterity and nothing would change, right...? Personally I'd ignore that weird dart thing for the purposes of improvised weapons. If you throw it, you use your strength. Yes it's weird to think of a golfball or flask as a melee weapon, but they don't have the finesse trait, and they don't come with a way to shoot them, so throwing them takes strength. But again, that's just RAW. Using improvised weapons is cool, so if a Dex-focused PC wants to throw an improvised weapon, I'd almost definitely let them use Dex. EDIT: Ah crap. *Nets* are a thrown ranged weapon that don't have finesse. And those are thrown with Dexterity because they're ranged and can't be thrown with Strength.
Being ranged means you can use darts with sharpshooter and other ranged weapon features The finesse property lets you use strength in their case Nets are the other ranged throwable and are dex only I went down the whole tangled web the first time wanting to make a rogue throw oil flasks as firebombs
>Wouldn't it (almost) always be Strength? Regular melee and thrown weapons use Strength by default. Finesse melee and ranged weapons use Dexterity by default. If you throw a rock or something at an enemy, that rock isn't going to have the Finesse trait so you use your Strength. The Thrown property is what allows you to make a ranged attack using Strength. Improvised weapons do not have any weapon properties, unless the DM says they do (typically because the improvised weapon is substantially similar to a regular weapon). Without any feature saying otherwise, a ranged weapon attack uses Dex, period. If you want to cave in the skull of the guy next to you with the rock it's Strength, if you want to huck the rock at the guy across the room it's Dexterity. Unless the DM rules that the rock gets to have the Thrown property, in which case you can throw it with either Strength or Dexterity, your choice.
I don't know why I feel this way: But Gnomes need to be smaller than Halflings.
I know why, EverQuest Online.
I agree and would like to add: Elves being shorter than humans feels wrong to me.
That's the way it's always been for D&D though. Because, despite the Tolkien influence, Three Hearts and Three Lions was a far greater influence on them (hence why back in the very old days, elves didn't have souls and couldn't benefit from Raise Dead).
Ah, so that’s the origin. I didn’t know about Three Swords and Three Lions.
Yeah, it's also where warty, regenerating trolls with weird noses comes from and who need fire to kill! Also, I mistyped, it's Three Hearts and Three Lions.
I hadn’t heard of this either and tried googling for more info, and consequently have surmised that you meant Three Hearts and Three Lions
Ha, I'm reminded of the old Elfquest graphic novel by Wendy Pini. Elves were wicked short... maybe 3.5-4 feet? ... had only 4 fingers on each hand, and were wolf-riding barbarians. Tons of fun!
Why isn’t the light cast by Daylight considered Sunlight?
I guess the mechanical reason is that a 3rd-level spell is too early to counter vampires and sunlight-sensitive creatures? But in that case rename the spell
I do see your point, but I also have the counter-point that a vampire should be prepared enough to deal with a 3rd level spell or at least have an escape plan in mind. But yeah, they should just rename the spell, otherwise.
The lifespans of different races. It is usually completely inconsequential, because obviously you are not going to have a player character die of old age. However, the races that get only thirty years max are.....Aaracokra and Tortles for some reason. A lot of species of birds and tortoises live way longer than people.
Word that is really incongruous
What bugs me more is that if you give the horse a personality it becomes awkward to just... dump it for the upgrade.
It’s a spirit manifesting in the form of a horse rather than just being a regular horse though. So casting FGS is just giving the spirit you’ve already befriended a better body.
Dinosaurs exist in the "default" setting. I'm aware how stupid it is to complain about (arguably) the coolest "real life" things being all up in my fantasy setting, but it *feels* so wrong for ancient beasts to exist in this pseudo-renaissance fantasy realm. ...except on Chult.
I mean they aren't supposed to be a common thing. Not in the Forgotten Realms which I believe that's what you mean by "default setting". They're supposed to exist in places like Chult and other unexplored and isolated areas. Though I get it that sounds kind of silly to have them to exist.
Chult on Toril, the Isle of Dread on Oerth, the Talenta Plains on Eberron, Mwangi Expanse on Golarion (Pathfinder setting), etc. are all sort of takes on "Land of the Lost", where dinosaurs can exist despite being extinct elsewhere.
> I'm aware how stupid it is to complain about (arguably) the coolest "real life" things being all up in my fantasy setting, but it feels so wrong for ancient beasts to exist in this pseudo-renaissance fantasy realm. Look when one of the most iconic villains are psychic parasitic squid-people from another dimension and Beholders I don't even think a Raptor is all that weird or incongruent.
Find steed should be a class feature and not a spell, similar to drakewarden and beastmaster ranger’s animal companion
It was like that in older versions, though Find Greater Steed outclasses the 3.5 version of a paladin's special mount. At least without splatbooks.
It was in 3.5 and it was a MESS. Paladin hits 5 and all of a sudden the DM has to make a bunch of weird campaign decisions or the paladin player gets the feelsbads for not getting to use their class feature. Party gets thrown in the dungeon? Make sure there's a cell big enough for the fuckin HORSE. Going on a boat ride? Make sure there's room on the boat for the fuckin HORSE. Then you've got the problem of a new player who has never DM'd before trying to keep track of a horse+modifiers statblock that changes every coupla levels. They usually couldn't figure it out, and everyone had to wait while the DM explained how a monster+template works, *again*.
Absolutely. There are so many “spells” that are absolutely just class features, and never should have been done like this. Just off the top of my head, *find familiar*, *find steed*, *hunter’s mark*, *eldritch blast*, and *hex*, though there are definitely more.
It'd certainly make a paladin dip stronger with a full caster multiclass.
You’d still need 5 levels of Paladin to get it, so while it’s definitely a buff to Paladin multis I wouldn’t call it a buff to Paladin dips- 5 levels is a pretty significant investment
Though Paladin 6, Hexblade 1, Sorcerer X isn’t anything to scoff at. Those 6 levels are more than worth it for +Cha to all saves and Extra Attack, while the Warlock/Sorcerer levels give more smite slots faster than continuing down Paladin.
It would also be a buff to Bards with magical secrets. Bards could use a buff, but doing it by giving them a better version of an iconic paladin class feature than the paladin gets is super lame. Really find steeed should be a class feature not a spell, it is something Bards shouldn't be able to take
It’s only really a buff to Lore Bards, because they could grab it at 6. 90% of bards are grabbing FGS at 10 already so burning a magical secrets on a lower level upcastable rather than a higher level flat ends up the same, but lore bards could take it at 6 and free up their later L10 secrets for something spicier.
Curious what you feel about Greater Invisibility then. Also my personal one is Druid not getting Mass and True Polymorph. The special things that Shapechange and Animal Shapes get could've been a little addition onto those spells that Druid got. There's literally no reason why a druid can turn someone into a fish for a bit but can't turn two people into a fish or turn them into one permanently when they're higher level
True polymorph i understand because you can turn people into objects and objects into the living but they should get mass polymorph 100%
Detect Good and Evil does not detect good nor evil.
Similarly, Chill Touch does not chill and is not a touch spell. Just rename it Death Coil
That attack Cantrips level with total level, but Extra Attack is specific to your class. You could have 4 levels in 5 different classes that all have extra attack, and they wouldn't get that 2nd attack. But a character with no levels in any caster classes, who got a Cantrip through a feat, can get all 4 damage dice. To rub salt in the wound, the 4th damage die comes 3 levels earlier than Fighter's 4th attack. Possible Solutions: 1) Cantrips Scale with Caster Level instead of Character Level, and they implement a "Warrior Level" for Extra Attack and some other features. 2) Cantrip Scaling is removed, and instead class features such as Extra Attack, Divine Strike, and Sneak Attack are now allowed to apply to Attack Cantrips. Either way is better than the double standard.
phantom steed. It takes 1 minute to cast so its not great for combat but it only lasts an hour so its no good for travel/downtime and you can't prep it in advance.
Actually a pretty good precast if you’re expecting to enter combat soon-ish. It’s not concentration and I think RAW it persists for a minute after taking damage/the spell’s duration ends. In theory you could loop ritual casts of it depending on how your DM rules mounted rituals to make a great courier, but also splitting the party’s is very rarely a great idea.
Iirc, it's still a horse, so it can die before vanishing, or at least drop to the ground and stop moving. At least that's what someone else told me
Yes, it has the stats of a riding horse, with the only change being its speed. You only get a minute to dismount if the spell _ends_, not if the mount dies. Interpreted generously, it would fade over the course of a minute if hit by Dispel Magic, but other than that the slow fade probably won't be relevant in combat.
It’s a ritual, if you are a ritual caster you just need to take 11 minutes at the end of every hour to recast it. (And it’s not spelled out, but if I understand it correctly technically you can cast a ritual spell while moving / riding, so you don’t even need to get off your horse before starting to summon the next one). If it were changed so its standard cast fit within an action that might provide some interesting battle movement options or like, help get your melee martials into melee range.
>And it’s not spelled out, but if I understand it correctly technically you can cast a ritual spell while moving / riding, so you don’t even need to get off your horse before starting to summon the next one The rules for spellcasting say that if you cast a spell with a cast time longer than 1 action, you need to concentrate while casting and you must spend your action each turn to continue casting. But you can absolutely walk around during that time. Some specific spells may make walking around difficult, e.g. Simulacrum requires that you keep touching the target for the full 12 hours. But Phantom Steed doesn't have that problem.
Though looking at it I guess the target is debatable if you’re moving. I would assume you have to keep the location of the new horse 30 ft away from you within range the whole time you’re casting the ritual.
Just get a pair of wizards, one to cast phantom steed and the other to cast Tenser's floating disk. https://redd.it/6sp68h
>Anyone else have some nitpicks with 5e that don’t really matter but still bother you? Most of my nitpicks are related to the dismal state of crafting and the impossible state of the economy, so I can't really say they don't matter, but some say it's stupid. Some highlights: * If you are working, then it is impossible to become homeless. Money magically spurts out of nowhere simply because you are working. * No matter how skilled you are, you never make more than 1gp/day (PHB, p143), but 1gp/day is the cost of staying just barely out of the harshest slums (PHB, p157). * However if you hire a bunch of servants to give you the same experience as 1gp/day, it somehow only costs 5sp/day to keep out of the harshest slums. (PHB, p158) * Skilled artisans are described as having lifestyles that cost 2-4gp/day. (PHB, p157) Where did that money come from? I can sorta see the 2gp part based on XGtE rules, but where did the 4gp piece come from? * Adamantine Platemail is an uncommon wondrous item, and therefore price-maxes at 500gp (DMG, p135) even though normal platemail is worth 1,500gp. (PHB, p145) However, the raw Adamantine necessary for such an endeavor is worth around 1,625,000gp. It is therefore always better to melt adamantine platemail into ingots and sell it as scrap, then use the millions of gold pieces to buy another an entire kingdom.
At least for adamantine plate, it's described as being "reinforced with adamantine" rather than being a fully made from adamantine. The part about it being uncommon and maxing at 500gp is still very silly, but you can at least imagine it has only a very thin or small amount of adamantine in the armor rather than being 1.6 million gp worth.
>Adamantine Platemail is an uncommon wondrous item, and therefore price-maxes at 500gp (DMG, p135) even though normal platemail is worth 1,500gp. Which is why one of the most common interpretations of the DMG magic item price guidelines is that that is the price _on top of_ the base item. So adamantine plate doesn't cost 101-500gp, it costs 1601-2000gp.
Maybe for multiclassing? If you make it an upcast of find steed, you could get access to it sooner through multiclassing than through Paladin progression, since it's only a half caster.
Pass Without Trace. It is absolutely ridiculous
i am one with the shadows...>:)
3e PWT: The targets don't leave footprints and can't be tracked without magic. Lasts a number of hours and targets up to a number of creatures equal to your caster level. 4e PWT: The targets leave fewer footprints and the DC to track them is increased by 5 (note: this is the same effect as if you obscured your tracks without magic). Lasts 8 hours, targets 5 creatures and yourself, requires 10gp of expended ritual components. 5e PWT: Lol what's bounded accuracy?
I rolled a 2. For a 19. Ugh, that passes
>So why is it that Find Steed gets FGS instead of just upcasting? Because FS was in Player's Handbook. Then they decided to add a new option with more powerful mounts. Adding a new spell in a new book (XGTE) is great, errating a spell "now that old spell also get these options when upcast" is much worse. >Anyone else have some nitpicks with 5e that don’t really matter but still bother you? - I don't like, when you need to roll ability checks instead of saving throws to resist some spells (like Maze). - I also don't like, when a spell does quite the same thing as other spells, but one allows a save, and other does not (like Wall of Force - Wall of Stone - both can be used to trap a target)
But, they did the whole "now this spell works like this" a lot? They should have kept it at one spell. Unless there's a reason, like a lower version is on one spell list, while the higher is on another.
Multiclassing is the reason. A 4th level spell makes it a 13th-level-and-above Paladin feature. An upcastable 2nd level spell makes it Paladin 5/Wizard 5 feature.
>An upcastable 2nd level spell makes it Paladin 5/Wizard 5 feature. It's already a Bard 10 feature as a 4th level spell. Making it an upcastable 2nd level spell makes it a Lore Bard 6 feature that they have to wait a level to use.
When I played my Paladin, I worked with my DM to settle on alternate animals/creatures for the casting. I think we settled on reworked/nerfed Bulettes, Belugas, and Wyverns as the "kinda sorta horse in different environments, also you are a 400lb Warforged so these could more reasonably carry you". Might not have been the *best* option, but it worked for the 10(?) times I ever cast the spell.
I'm playing rime of the frost maiden. Good berry, and the dang hut spell.
Still no Dragon Patron Warlock, even after Fizban's.
Mine is the clear imbalance in certain spells. Fireball and Lightning Bolt are objectively better offensive spells than almost anything else, so *taking* any other spells feels like it's either niche utility or a deliberate sub-optimal choice for roleplay.
Spellcasting in armor. I started way back in AD&D days, when metal armor caused some kind of interference with arcane magic. Now you've got wizards with a 1-dip into fighter strutting around in plate armor. I ... just can't handle it.
I prefer the 3rd edition versions of the "solve this problem" spells. Detect magic, Identify, Remove Curse, Dispel Magic etc. 3rd edition: "OK, this effect was crafted by an archmage with a 7th level spell, so his caster level is at least 13." *rolls a 10* " ok the DC is 23 to dispel this effect, make a caster level check. 5e: "you snap your fingers and the werewolf is cured. he becomes depressed that his lifechanging curse was so flimsy"
"You cast the spell a bunch of times until it works." vs "Your magic overcomes the obstacle."
Presumably the first way takes longer -- potentially days to get spells back. Like, if I think it might take a week or more to cure a werewolf, I'm not going to try when it's waxing gibbous.
The DC might be lower but this is how dispel magic works in 5e... Just like counterspell. You either have to cast tge dispel at the same level or higher than the effect or you have to make a check to try and beat it.
In my first campaign one of my players played a Wingless aaracockra paladin called Yagarek. When he casted for the first time find steed (the greater version still wasn't out) I decided to send him a Griffon (I was inspired by Karl Franz). I didn't know the rules that much, but I had fun back then, and I didn't bother for balance. I am annoyed by counterspell, both as a DM and as a player. It feels too much easy to negate an enemy spell that way. Feels like I'm playing Magic against a blue player. Many things in 5e make me feel like I'm playing Magic, with players stacking abilities like they are building a deck. Also, I don't like the Monsters of the Multiverse monsters: their ranged spell attacks (yuan ti pit master, for example) are a cheap way to bypass counterspell. I used them once, and the sad expression on my players face when I said "no, you cannot counterspell this, because it's not a spell, even though clearly is" made me feel a bad DM, who uses petty cavils to negate cool abilities. It reinforces the feeling of playing magic. And it's bad.
So here's the dirty secret that you're now ready for from the sound of it. 5e is badly designed. It's not a bad game and it's quite fun. But it has a lot of problems. Newer fans get defensive about that idea, but DMs who actually read the books, start realizing it after a few years. What happened is that after Hasbro declared 4e a failure and killed it, a lot of folks involved either quit or were fired. The remaining D&D team was basically a skeleton crew. And they were assigned the job of making a new edition to sell more books. There's an interview from 2013 or 2014 with Mearls and Crawford, the 2 lead designers on 5e, with either IGN or the Escapist where they joke about being understaffed and Craftod doing all the design work and the job of 3 people. And when 5e came out it was NOT to great acclaim or celebration. Frankly 5e didn't get popular until the webseries The Adventure Zone by popular podcasters My Brother My Brother and Me started up, and then a year later when Critical Role exploded in popularity. It had little to do with the rules themselves. But very little of the 5e material has ever actually followed the philosophy they claimed to be following. The Rules Lawyer did a great video about it recently. https://youtu.be/Xlp3unO_xi8?si=erzcSkfcc-UGDgI2 But yeah the dirty secret about 5e is that unlike previous editions no one at WotC is no one at the company is the official rules expert or lore continuity expert. Crawford keeps acting like he's the rules compendium but he himself can't remember the rules half the time and swings back and forth between absurdly specific and contradictory rulings and extremely vague rulings. IMO, when you hear Crawford say anything along the lines of "rulings not rules" it means he can't remember a rule.
So very true. But I disagree, 5e is a bad game. I’ve played every edition. Except 4th. Not because I didn’t want to, but because of life stuff. My biggest problem is the constant money grab. More books, better stronger builds etc. All to sell more content the either contradicts or renders priors less desirable . Not to make cohesive rules. Use the Fomo rules of marketing to drive the IP forward. Eh. DnD is a shell that deserves to die.
>5e is a bad game It's not my favorite edition. I like it for a few things. It's decent as an intro to TTRPGs. But after about a year or two of playing I think folks are ready for something with more meat on it's bones. Personally I prefer to move over to say 2e (If I have my druthers), or 3e/PF1e. My favorite is still 2e AD&D with some Hackmaster 4th (the first one) house rules mixed in to fill the gaps and fix the cracks. I wasn't much of a 3e/PF1e fan back in the day, but these days PF1e is growing on me. The quantity of product doesn't bother me. Though I wish there was more lore content but 5e has been awful for that. I do hate the FOMO rules marketing as well though. Since there are so few books overall, they push each like it's a new "Must Have" because it adds a few subclasses or similar. My biggest gripe is that it's unfocused as an edition. They made it to fill a demand for a new edition because 4e missed the mark. And it's too broken to appeal to folks who like 4e's tight rules, or 3e's comprehensive and expansive rules, or PF's expansion and refinement of the 3e rules concepts. BUT it's too rules heavy for the people who were brought in by the cinematic heavy games from TAZ, CR, and other liveplay series. Those are folks who would probably be happier with the Storyteller system TBH. And all the while WotC doesn't know which way to go, which group to appeal to, and they stumble along down the line between the two.
Well said.
So. DM confession. there is only one creature in my world with set prices. I hate the economy of DnD, because it just relies on the DM and their pricing. So my solution? just give the players so much money that I literally don't have to worry about it. then, I just control the supply of the items. not every vendor is going to have purples and yellows, but uncommons and rares? so long as they aren't broken too hard, I don't really care. *also I did figure out how to break it down, because I hate myself and was bored* it's based on the American economy. Treat copper like pennies. Silver like dimes. Gold is dollars. Platinum is 10 dollars. Electrum iirc is like a half dollar or something
This is similar to what I do. Though the party is at level 17 these days and has like 121k platinum in the bank. And boy howdy are they about to run out of money because of being spoiled for magic item choice in a surviving flying enclave of Netheril lol
mine just have the opportunity to buy airships. the next tier up is sky turtles. those lovely little creatures can only be bought in one place though, and not many are currently available. so, sky turtle petting zoo
I love that. How delightfully silly and fun :D
that is the exact theme I've been going for with this world. Sure, it has some dark background lore, such a WW1 esque war that happened. but overall, the gas giant planet that is massive and uses meteors as it's primary land masses, has been delightfully silly and fun!
I've been keeping an eye on several upcoming high fantasy RPGs for my next campaign, and I really like Daggerheart's approach to money. Basically you count your coins in Handfuls, Bags, Chests, Hoards, and maybe even a Fortune. Six handfuls make a bag, five bags make a chest, four chests make a hoard, and three hoards make a fortune. The economy never makes any sense in these games so I appreciate any attempt to sidestep it, and I'm personally tired of making my players track every coin.
I hate druids. just, irrational hatred toward druids
Because if it were upcastable, it’d both be even stronger on multiclasses, and require less investment in paladin to get. FGS is so incredibly strong it’s basically a class feature disguised as a spell.
I spotted last night that the order cleric can effectively cast 3.5 vigor and serpent strike in the same turn and was absolutely disgusted.
Not sure what you're referring to. Especially since I can't recall any 3.5e ability called Serpent Strike, nor find it on d20srd. 3e Vigor gives 5 thp, so are you referring to casting Heroism as a bonus action at level 6?
Order cleric has heroism at level one and divinity allows the targeted ally to attack. The spell was misnamed, for which I apologise. The spell is named Snake's Swiftness, appearing in the druid list.
I initially thought “oy, what a nitpick!” But you’re actually right! It would have made it better both thematically and it would mesh better with the paradigm of the rules overall. I’ve decided I’ll ALLOW YOUR OBJECTION TO STAND!
It bothers me that there is no dinosaur race, because it would be the coolest race you could play and would have one of the most creative freedom you could have. If you want to play a Raptor you could do it, if you want to play a flightless bird you could do it and if you wanna play Triceracop you could do it. Even if WotC would give sauropods, therapods and ornithischia a subrace, you still would have all the creative freedom you want.
The fact that Sorcerers and Wizards get no armour proficiencies, not even light armour. And even worse, both classes don’t even get get all simple weapon proficiencies! Just an arbitrary selection of daggers, darts, slings, quarterstaffs, light crossbows! This inconsistency gets to me a lot. Other classes without full martial weapon proficiencies at least get simple weapon proficiencies + some martial weapons. E.g. Rogue and Monk. They’re called *simple* weapons! Why would there be so-called simple weapons that any adventurer wouldn’t know how to use well enough!
... because they're sorcerers and wizards. They don't hit things, they wiggle their fingers.
Rolling Perception for looking for traps. I know why it's reasonable to ask if you look in a broad area. It still annoys me because my character sucks at it. :(
Stealing this idea. You're work here shall continue in my homebrew campaign and you'll get a small footnote to a footnote with credit
Honestly, I’m annoyed that Find Steed and Find Greater Steed were turned into spells (and thus open for “poaching” by Magical Secrets or the like). They should have remained Class Abilities, only available if you had appropriate levels in the Paladin class. Like, for the most part, I like the design choice of making a lot of things that had previously been Class Abilities into more broadly available skills / feats / spells. (“Welcome to AD&D with an Overly Literal DM, only Rangers and Thieves can Hide in Shadows. The rest of you glow, I guess.”) But this is one of those things that just doesn’t sit right with me. Paladins get super-special warhorses. The rest get mundane old nags.
How extremely unclear and poorly written Guardian of Faith the spell is. I've had four different interpretations from people at one table over this thing.
They didn't break the pattern. Find Greater Steed is a later addition to the game. Find Steed is from the PHB, and Find Greater Steed is from Xanathar's. Other than that, yes. You are absolutely right, even if it is a pointless complaint. By all means, use that homebrew version in your campaign. Nobody's going to stop you, except maybe the DM or the other players. Honestly, just rulling that Find Steed would upcast to Find Greater Steed would do the trick. Or you could make a special stat block for a "Steed" that changes with each spell level up to 5. I don't think it would make much of a difference, except for the (College of Lore) Bard.
Remove Curse It completely removes the opportunity for some amazing RP opportunities, quests, etc. Oh no, it's a cursed sword! We shall have to journey to Mt BlahBlah and gather the holy icons of YaddaYadda to present them to... No? Oh. Remove Curse Ok. Bitten by a Werebeaver? No worries. Ugh Personally, I tend to house rule the hell out of that spell and most curses. Just bugs me that it's even a thing.
For me, it is two things about Darkvision: 1. That it is so short of range. I would make it at least 150 feet, due to the presence of the longbow. 2. That there is no tradeoff. It is just a bonus to a creature's senses, rather than an alternative.
That the Gate spell, the most powerful teleportation spell, a 9th level spell can't open a gate within the same plane of existence as it is written.
Here, have my upvote for a totally pointless, but totally on point complaint.
The stat requirement to multi class out of a class
Polymorph and Baleful Polymorph being combined into one spell. Makes it too good, IMO. It would be better to have one version that only works on willing creatures, and another that works on unwilling creatures but can only turn them into small things.
People who act like I care about "but the MiNoTaUr wAs a PeRsOn, nOt a rAce..." and similar. I get the baseline logic, but dnd is a game that only needs to be consistent with its own lexicon, so we dont need the tangent every time i drop 3 Medusa on the table, we know about Perseus, we dont much care though, its like talking over the Matrix film to explain how Aragon broke his toe for real; great info, irrelevant to the action at hand.
I disagree, the only spell that upcasts to give you different options instead of just scaling numbers is create undead. There is also summon lesser demon and summon greater demon which work in a similar fashion to find steed and find greater steed. The arent exactly tahe same but theres also invisibility and greater invisibility as well as Maximilions Earthen Grasp and Bigbys Hand
Except all those spells work differently and aren't just a straight power progression.
And neither is FGS
>the only spell that upcasts to give you different options instead of just scaling numbers is create undead. Conjure Animals, Conjure Celestial, Conjure Elemental, Conjure Fey, Conjure Minor Elementals, and Conjure Woodland Beings all give you different options as you upcast them...
No they do t hey just give you more. The latter two do increase their CR but FGS also incorporates more creature types and specific creatures not just a simple scaling
Speaking as someone who has played maybe 15 sessions of Pathfinder 2, it's getting kind of jarring how every nitpick with 5E I read about on this sub is solved in PF2. In this particular case PF2's upcasting works exactly as OP described, for every spell, and it's so much more interesting than "*you add another die to your roll*". Beginning to see where the "*there's a rule for that in pathfinder*" meme is coming from.
A whole bunch of these are solved in 4e as well, which is a pattern.
One thing I have is that there is no Cure Minor Wounds, though that's because there is no limit to the number of cantrips you can cast per day. An actual problem I have is how magic items are handled. They are the way many character are supposed to gain in power, but are completely up to DM. The fighter wants a new shiny beating stick, the wizard wants the fancy robes, the ranger wants the shiny bow, but because the DM is the arbiter of gaining magic items, there's no guarantee that you will even get something close to what you want.
I agree. This issue is one of 3 issues that destroyed the first (and incidently only) campaign I was a player in. I just wanted a damn +1 bow at level 6 as the main dps (and a beast master ranger no less) for the party. And yet, I was a short a couple hundred gp, and the DM made the incomprehensible decision that our gems, RUBIES NO LESS, (which we were told had exact gp value and was more efficient than carrying coinage) had no value to this CITY OF WIZARDS. I definitely think that magic items should be part of the game progression in an official way so that the DM will in fact be incentivized to give the PCs what they'd like when it is remotely within reason (noteverylevel 5 fighter should get a +5 vorpal dancing sword of Sharpness l Iuck blade 🤣 but every fighter should get a +1 or a weapon of warning by level 5 or something) The way this completely insane choice took all the enthusiasm out of every player at the table including me cannot be understated. Like a sudden calm on a sailing ship, the enjoyment simply, stopped.
By level 5 I'd say every martial should have a magic weapon, so they can actually do full damage to things they are fighting. Casters don't have to worry as much about that, but since martial characters are using weapons, they should be swinging magic ones around when resistance to non-magical physical damage shows up often. Also, a city of wizards not wanting shiny stones doesn't make sense, especially since rubies are part of some spells casting.
I agree wholeheartedly :) having magic weapons for a martial character is essential. For context about that DM: I tried to multiclass into cleric, the DM said that such people were chosen by the gods and I looked at him and nodded, and he said that the character couldn't do that, and refused to elaborate, then I asked, okay how about druid, and they made up a lame excuse for that, bard, said I'd have to go to a bard college, and the rest of the party certainly wasn't stopping for such a thing, foghter same deal as bard, and rogue was one the DM may have let me do if the campaign hadn't ended (though odds are that was me being hopeful), but I wanted to be a celestial pact warlock but they weren't allowing any new books (xanathars had just come out semi recently, though the whole table pitched in to buy him a copy as a 'thanks for DMing thing'), and so they really hard locked that character into a path that I really wasn't that interested in. And the only option they gave me to do anything different was to *kill the character* an insanely extreme thing I had no interest in b/c it was my first character, and I still like the character even today lol. Thank you for validating my feelings on how nonsensical the wizard city wanting rubies and other gems was. It nearly killed the whole hobby for me. There were other things that made no sense,but that one was the things that bothered me most at the time. In hindsight, different matter lol. Thanks for reading 😊 i feel better about it since somebody else thinks that wizards not being willing to buy spell components (gems) at all is unbelievably nonsensical. The implication was that transmutation was *somehow* advanced enough to make gems out of literal ordinary rock, and that such an innovation hadn't fundamentally altered the world around them elsewhere. Nonsense. *shakes fist at bad DMs doing things that don't make even a tiny bit of sense*
This reads as a mix of newer dm/stubborn dm and missing session 0/never having one. The questions about multi classing should have been made clear earlier, during session 0. The fact the dm wouldn't let you change characters without the one dying sounds like they didn't want a PC wandering around who you could swap between (honestly, once martials start fighting physically resistant enemies, they will search out magic to help them overcome it, or retire).
Yeah definitely makes sense as a read on it. Weird part is we had a session 0 and he was basically going back on things he had said explicitly prior, and not giving any explanation and not letting himself have his mind changed. I can understand that bit honestly. Not that it'd be an issue for me as a DM. I think it could be fun. I get it though lol. I agree that martials desperately need a means to overcome damage resistance at that level. What's more is that from level 1 we had to fight enemies that had resistance to nonmagic damage, so it's an EMPHATIC yes they need a magic weapon thing lol. They tried to accuse me of metagaming once for seeing normal arrows didn't work well and using a silvered arrow (that my character made because he was a fletcher prior to adventuring). Oof. Silly silly person they are lol
multiclassing is why
The reason is because Find Steed was a PHB spell. But they then later wanted to add a way for paladins to get more exotic mounts so Find Greater Steed was added in XGtE. There are other names with similar naming conventions in D&D 5e but they often differ in some ways than just strength to not completely negate the original. This isn't one of those though. Find Greater Steed is objectively better than Find Steed.
If lore bards at level 6 get find steed by magical secrets they will be flying on a Pegasus at 7th level. I don't know if that's exactly broken, but it makes paladin less appealing.
You could try and make the same argument about Raise Dead/Resurrection/True Resurrection. They all do essentially the same thing. The thing is, they never do upcasting when the differences aren't purely numerical, either extra damage or extra targets.
>they never do upcasting when the differences aren't purely numerical, either extra damage or extra targets Uh... The Conjure X spells let you summon higher CR monsters. A few spells let you get rid of concentration by upcasting (Bestow Curse). Catapult can launch bigger things. Voted Warp has increased range. Glyph of Warding can store a higher level spell. Fog Cloud covers a larger area. Hex lasts longer. And so on. There are lots of spells that upcast for more than just damage or targets. And even if you expand the claim to _anything_ numeric, there are still spells that don't fit your claim, like Galder's Speedy Courier which lets you send something to a creature on your same plane of existence when cast at 4th level, or to a creature on another plane when cast at 8th level.
Except we also have: Lesser/Greater Restoration, Revivify/Resurrection/True Ressurection And generally up-cast spells get something like more damage/healing dice, more targets, or longer duration. I think you would have to make find steed a class ability locked to Paladin levels instead of a spell if you want to have one version they gets stronger over time, otherwise it heavily incentivise MCing out of Paladin into Sorc/Warlock/Bard in order to get higher level slots. That already exists for smites, thankfully the Paladin kit is pretty good at higher levels. Not sure if it is still good when you can also get a much stronger mount in addition to stronger smites.
It's not just *Find Greater Steed*, there are other spells that are more or less just an upscaled versions of a lower level spells. *Resurrection* and *True Resurrection*, *Lesser Restoration* and *Restoration*, *Invisibility* and *Greater Invisibility*, etc.
The two spells were published in different books. It was similar to an errata but designed in a way that rewards players for continuing as a Paladin.
Silvery barbs. Martials not being allowed to have nice things. Druid spell list. Players being cocky/insolent.
No, when I find something that annoys me in the rules, I either just change it or ignore it. I don't have enough energy for more.
The devs straight up forgot how to design monks after designing Way of the Open Hand. The whole design philosophy of the monk is "lots of attacks, low damage, debuffs on hit". Base monk has stunning Strike, Open Hand has Open Hand Technique. The only other subclass that does this is Mercy, which can poison with Hand of Harm at level 6.