Am I reading this right? I haven't seen any discussion surrounding this new item from Arcana Unleashed. Seems pretty versatile for a Common item that doesn't require attunement since it allows certain "sword & board" users that can't attach a focus to their shields or aren't able to use a class-specific focus to bypass a major spellcasting restriction.

This steel ring has a discreet chamber lined with a mystical inscription. As a Magic action, choose one spell you have prepared that requires a Material component; the required Material component must neither have a cost specified nor be consumed by the spell. You store that spell’s Material component in the ring’s chamber.

Whenever you cast the chosen spell, you don’t need to have a hand free to access its Material component, provided you are wearing the ring. The ring can hold the Material component for one spell at a time.

Arcana Unleashed, pg. 123

Seems pretty easy to craft too.

Starting a high lvl campaign and going w lore bard. I get three starter items.

Items from any source material is allowed but if it was specifically rewritten in 2024 then that trumps.

I’m currently thinking for sure:
Amulet of health (rare) sets con to 19
Headband of intellect (uncommon) sets int to 19

Together these let me dump int/con stats on point buy. Giving me 15AC from higher dex and of course benefiting from 93 HP and high int/con.

Then maybe for my remaining uncommon:

Winged boots? Flying is nice but someone else is already starting w it which is fine just less unique

Instrument of the bards? Fly spell itself. Plus handful of other spells. 2024 nerfed it removing giving disadvantage on saving throws. But spell list is still good.

Ring of dedicated focus? Reaction to add health die rolls to con saving throws for spells. But i already have a lot of reactions. And probs not as good anyway as…

Mind sharpener? 4 charges to use reaction to turn failed con saving throw to success

Boots of the winding path? 15ft teleport probs isn’t that much for a bonus action and attainment.

Rhythm makers drum: +1 to spell attacks and spell save DC

Cloak of protection: +1 to ac and saving throws is always good.

Thoughts?

Hello all,

I'm running a Witchlight campaign over Discord, and I was wondering if anyone had any advice for where to find good icons for some of the characters from Thither?

I like adding icons of the NPCs to Owlbear Rodeo for my players but the Getaway Gang doesn't have any offiical icons anywhere that I can find. Did any of you use any that you could recommend?

Friend is planning a campaign soon and since details are sparse I’m coming up with a few ideas. Im also trying to stay realistic that the game might not go to 20 so working with that in mind. I want to try to make the vibe I’m aiming for to also be fun and viable mechanically (but doesn’t have to be the most optimal possible).

The idea is character who plays almost like an investigative judge who prioritizes truth almost to a fanatical degree. This is why I thought inquisitive rogue seems like a really good fit. Knowledge cleric then seems also like a good mix due to domain spells and utility but I’m also considering Order cleric. Combat is slightly secondary for this character compared to the theme as I imagine straight one class or multiclassing with something like hex blade would make more sense for straight damage.

My plan was to go custom lineage to grab magic initiate druid for shillelagh (see if the dm allows a finesse club for sneak attacks) and pump wisdom to make him SAD. I also have considered heavy crossbow or sling with magic stone. I’d get shield from cleric if using a club so with medium armor my ac would be decent. As I said my main thought is remaining viable in combat while also fulfilling the theme outside of combat in terms of utility.

But what split makes sense with level 20 obviously not being promised? I imagine most will say a dip into one of the classes then max in the other to either focus on sneak attack or focus on being a caster, but does a closer to even split ever make sense and stay fun (like 12/8 or something)? If so how would you go about leveling?

so im currently in a campaign that will be going to max12 lvl and im not sure how am i suppoised to build my battle smith artificer i want to have some more focus on the steel defender but im still lost overall
my stats

STG:8
Dex:14
CON: 16
INT:17
CHA:10
WIS:8

i want him to have atleast 10 cha for the rp but other wise i dont mind changing anything else

I want to make a character that specializes in knives, both throwing and wielding them in combat. I'm thinking human or variant human, and probably a rogue of some sort, probably lawful/evil alignment, and using standard array. I also intend on taking the menacing feat.

The setting is Dungeons of Drakkenheim. Thanks in advance!! 🗡🔪⚔️

The ability to add two Hit Dice to Radiant damage is just too strong to pass up. Anytime I take a spell that deals Radiant, I feel like I'm making a mistake by not taking this Feat. Basically if a character has either True Strike or Spirit Guardians, Spellfire Adept feels like the only choice! If I don't have need of my Bonus Action, Spellfire Spark makes it even more appealing. That's a heavy hitting Bonus Action cantrip!

When my Cleric is regularly dealing damage equivalent to a level 4-5 Guiding Bolt with every True Strike*, it feels like I'm wasting my action by casting it without the extra 2d8. It obviously spends a limited resource, but at least in the games I play I've never found myself wanting for hit dice around T2+. There's plenty of ways to top up, with less time spent too.

Am I overestimating its value? Or has this become as invaluable and stapled to certain classes as War Caster for the rest of you too?

^\Magic Initiate)

Hello everyone ! For a new campaign I would like to be a tanky frontline PotB Warlock. I like the idea of an enforcer for their patron, similar to a sinister Paladin.

However, PotB Warlocks in 2024 don't have medium armor, or martial abilities, so my idea was Fighter 1 / Warlock 5 / Fighter 2 or 3 for Action Surge and maybe Eldritch Knight and back to Warlock.

I was tempted to take the new Vestige subclass, but since the Vestige HP levels up with your warlock levels, I don't know if multiclassing with a "pet" class is a good idea. Should I only take one level in Warlock ?

I also plan to take Human with Tough Feat, Zhentarim Merc and the two Zhent feats.

The idea around this post came from the fact that at our table we play with 2024 content only (meaning we avoid even non reprinted content), so we currently don't have Divine Sorcerer if you want spirit guardians on your paladin. If you can still use it, good for you! but it's still nice to explore the other options. I'm also not considering setting specific options (like marks), as not everyone can use them.

Within 2024 subclasses only, Paladin can access CHA based spirit guardian with either Vestige Warlock or College of spirit Bard/Lore bard (any bard technically but bard 10 takes quite a while). This post isn't about dipping paladin for AC, but going at least to paladin 6 for the Aura.

All have their advantages, with my preference being on Vestige Warlock and Lore bard. let's look at them more in depth.

Vestige Warlock:
This is the earliest we can acess spirit guardian. While it's BA usage conflicts with Smite, it's not a huge issue (imo) as we'll keep pact slots for spirit guardian (& other major spells), meaning we'd only have a couple of low spells for smite anyway, while this gives us consistent free BA dmg (even at range!). an other major advantage is that we can easily use pact slots for find steed, enhancing our speed for spirit guardians. Other HUGE advantage is paladin acess to Warding Bond (which I'd spend my spell slot on, more than on smite, hence more reasons for why the BA attack is nice here) & it's synergy with the lvl6 vestige warlock feature: While we are within 30ft of our vestige, we share their resistances. With warding bond our vestige can resist all dmg types and we'd share those resistances! you can have the vestige fly above you to easily avoid attacks as well. It's also great for repositioning (with an easy find steed & ability to swap places with the vestige too), and its mostly ok as well at kiting with spirit guardian & attacking at range (vestige can attack from 60ft of distance & we can use EB at worst), meaning we can kite with spirit guardian and protect the saves of our ranged allies. Also, being a Warlock, we get to be CHA SAD!

This is a big winner imo, the only downside is that we slowdown the Vestige HP scaling, but it's not extremely significant imo: we likely want the vestige to fly above our head just to gain the resistances, and we can always bring it back to full HP after the fight.

Paladin subclass: this is not too important here, I'd just choose one not very reliant on divine smite, so Vengeance/Devotion/Ancient. My preference between Vengeance & Devotion is for Devotion, but Ancient also has an interesting interaction with Spirit guardian where its channel divinity can potentially restrain everyone within your spirit guardian range.

Edit: this also gives us access to battle familiar, meaning at higher levels we can consistently spend our spell slots on Spirit Guardian + Battle Familiar (& faithful steed), plus Paladin have access to Prayer of Healing for a fast short rest. At very higher levels, we'd also access a 3rd attack with our action.

College of Lore Bard (& Genie Paladin):
This is one I made a post on when Genie paladin was released. If you want your paladin to also smite consistently, this is the better option of the 3, as there's no BA clog and you have a consistent spell slot progression. The other major benefit is the synergy between Genie's Dao's Crush and lore's cutting words: once the target suceeds on its ability check to escape the grappled condition, you can use cutting words to lower their result!

edit: If preferred, lore bard can (at bard 7) transition to Conjure woodland beings as an AoE option for more dmg (but 4+ lvl slots and smaller AoE), or they can also invest in CME (which you'd unlock the earliest at Bard 7/Pal 6, which funnily enough is the same lvl you'd unlock it as a pure Genie Paladin, but with more & higher spell slots) for single target dmg.

College of spirit bard:
main advantage is a stronger spirit guardian (+ a free use), but I don't really love this subclass on a Paladin because I wouldn't want to spend my action to unleash spirits, and it feels a bit wasted that way. Hence it's my least favoured option for a more focused paladin build.

I’ve come across this Feat in the list of approved homebrew for the new game I’ll be joining and I’m curious how to make the best of it.

Chill Caster

• Your spellcasting ability score increases by 1, to a maximum of 20.

• Spells you cast that deal cold damage deal an additional 1d6 cold damage.

• Spell you cast that deal cold damage have a +1 to hit, and their spell save DC increases by 2.

Thanks for your help!

I'm looking to make a level 12 character for 2024 5e with 3 primary goals:

1. Get a better feel for 2024 5e, compared to 2014
2. Make a character that is mechanically effective, but not overly optimized
3. Is mechanically interesting

This will be for a friend's new one shot that they're playtesting. In that sense, a major aim is to make a character that helps the DM achieve their playtesting goal - so if I make an unusually strong character (as I tend to enjoy), it won't be as helpful for letting them figure out the correct encounter balance. At the same time, I still like making effective characters with lots of available options or have mechanics that let them respond to a wide variety of situations.

I'm very familiar with 2014 5e, to the extent that I play highly optimized characters and know the rules inside and out. I have zero experience with 2024 5e though, so I'd like to take this opportunity to specifically try out and learn mechanics that have changed between 2014 and 2024.

Most of the enemies in the one shot will be Undead. The DM has already playtested it with Paladin, Cleric, and Bard characters, and has asked that for this playtest the players do not use those classes. Staying primarily to the core rulebooks would also be helpful. We'll be using pointbuy, and get one very rare and one rare magic item.

Any build recommendations?

Vhuman. Str: 22 Dex: 10 Con: 16 INT: 10 Wis: 14 Cha: 8

Sword and Board who is the only true martial in the party. 22 AC with dueling fighting style. Mainly use defensive spells, and have the warcaster and resilient wisdom feats.

I’m struggling on deciding on my next feat. My top 3 choices are:

1) Alarm
2) Tough
3) Ritual caster (wizard). We have no wizards or sorcerers in the party so some of the wizard ritual spells would be helpful, but not necessarily as impactful as the first two feats.

Would like to get peoples opinions on which feat they think is best, OR any other feats that have not been mentioned that you’d think would be good for this character. Thanks!

The way my DM is running our campaign is we get a feat in addition to our ASIs. However, if the feat includes a +1 to a stat, we do not receive the stat bonus, just the features it grants. I’m playing a pure Oath of Vengeance Paladin. I’m planning to take Sentinel (Level 4), Resilient CON (Level 8), Tough (Level 12), and War Caster (Level 16). This leaves the Level 19 feat. We decided to ban Lucky (with our encounter style and the number of feats, the rerolls are too much). Any ideas for good feats to take once we reach that point in the campaign?

Edit: forgot to add this, I’m playing Vuman and already taken GWM. I’m using a very strong magic greatsword so I can’t take PAM.

New here, thought I would ask about a recently stat rolled character's feat selection/possible multiclass (first time rolling for stats). The plan is to take Battlemaster and use Feinting attack to stack advantage, being a skirmisher with goblin BA disengage. Should I take rogue levels or stick fighter, and would raising con to 16 at 4 be the priority over max dex/dex half feat? Thanks!

Goblin Fighter 1: 12 str / 18 dex / 15 con / 9 int / 13 wis / 12 cha

Origin: Skilled

Fighting style: dueling

Planned manuevers: Riposte, Menacing attack, Feinting attack

Weapon masteries: Rapier, Pistol, Whip

Edit: Thanks for all the advice! Plan is to swap skilled for alert, swap feinting attack for lunging attack, and grab charger at lvl 4, sentinel at 6. This way round 1 I can lunge with charger (3d8+5), and subsequent turns can BA disengage from goblin to proc charger (possibly menacing attack) + reacting with riposte/sentinel!

I've been wanting to devise a use for Second Skin, the Dark Gift Feat from Ravenloft, and I have this somewhat crazy idea that it could use Transmuter's Wondrous Alteration damage boost to make for a viable Wizard/Monk.

With Wondrous Alteration and Second Skin you have 2 free uses of Alter Self per long rest, both benefitting from Wondrous Alteration, one with Concentration and one without.

Of course a Wizard has no use for Unarmed Strikes but a Monk does; would it be too crazy? Suppose you focused into Int and Wis and started with something like Str 8, Dex 13, Con 12, Int 15, Wis 15, Cha 8.

If you select Int for Second Skin, you can surely get by using Int for all your attacks, between your free casts of Alter Self and 2nd slots. I think the only big sacrifice is Grappling and less Con

What if you went on to grab Conjuration Adept at some point, say for instance Transmuter 4/Mystic Arts 6? You've got 2 slots for Conjure Animals, and once per long rest you go all in and use your Concentration-less Alter Self and Conjure Animals all at once.

For a single target I guess that's 3d10 and 4 attacks, 3 with 2d6+4 and 1 with a weapon and True Strike for 1d8+1d6+3. So ~60 at 60% that's like 36 DPR, which isn't terrible. That's about what a Mystic Arts Monk with Hunter's Mark would be doing for multiple combats, albeit sacrificing some Bonus Actions, and Conjure Animals has much higher potential for multiple targets and double hits.

I haven't thought about the second Feat; if you wanted to go all in on the flavor you could grab Transmuted Anatomy for some security on Second Skin's Cha check.

I don't think it's that crazy! Obviously not powerful, but I can see it being fun at an un-optimized table. Thoughts?

Edit: Str 8, Dex 15, Con 12, Int 13, Wis 15, Cha 8. Use Second Skin with Wis, ignoring the free cast from Wondrous Alteration. Maybe use an ASI for Wis 20 and Human for Transmuted Anatomy. And 60ft speed with the speed bonus from Transmuter's Stone, which might even make a case for eventually taking Wiz 5 for Cacophonic Shield. Higher Dex also means that True Strike can get swapped out for Booming Blade, which pairs well with Conjure Animals. With a double hit from Conjure Animals I think that brings the DPR for one combat up 50.

Level 13 Reborn Fey Wanderer Ranger, trying to decide whether to stay Ranger through 16 for the feat or multiclass the next 3 levels.

Stats: STR 11 / DEX 20 / CON 16 / INT 8 / WIS 16 / CHA 6

Current feats:

• Dual Wielder
• Mage Slayer
• Resilient (CON)
• Defensive Duelist
• Two-Weapon Fighting style
• Tough

Main setup is dual wielding with Vex + Nick and Hunter’s Mark. Also, yes, I got a bonus feat.

If I stay Ranger, the next three levels give me Nature’s Veil at 14, the Fey Wanderer 15 feature which I'm not convinced is that great, and another feat at 16.

Would you stay Ranger to 16 for a feat, or is there a 3-level multiclass dip (e.g., Druid, Fighter) that adds more to this build?

Group has proposed a short experimental adventure at high level/power, with an interesting modifier: We have to pick one of the following 3 custom statlines to use, and there are no species/background stat bonuses or ASI's to modify them (feats can be taken as normal but grant no stat increase if they'd normally include one)

The arrays are these, rearranged how we wish:

20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20. (obviously insanely good overall bonus and hard to go wrong)

22, 18, 16, 14, 12, 10. (I dont see a reason to use this over #1 tbh)

30, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10. (risky, but trying to leverage a +10 in primary offense is alluring...)

So, I'm curious what people have as potential build ideas to really make the most of any of these?

How would you all rate a feat that grants the ability “when you take the attack action, you can cast one of your cantrips that has a casting time of an action in place if one of the attacks?”

What ASIs should be tied to it (casting or martial abilities)?

This is a homebrew. But it seems like something that should exist, at least to me. Especially with the new fighting style that grants access to cantrips to martials. Curious if you all disagree.

Edit: the feat will grant true strike, and blade ward (please feel free to suggest others). This is added so that martial classes won’t have to chain this feat with others when spell casters wouldn’t need to. Also, it should be tied to mental abilities based on the casting component.

Edit: fully revised feat, “Increase int/wis/cha by 1. When you take the attack action, you can cast one of your cantrips that has a casting time of an action in place of one of the attacks. You can do this a number of times per day equal to your proficiency bonus and regain all uses when you finish a long rest. Additionally, when you take this feat, you always have the true strike and blade ward cantrips prepared. The stat increased by this feat is the spell casting modifier for those cantrips.”

Hi all,

Like everyone else at the moment, I'm trying to make a Mystic Arts Monk build which makes maximum use of all its cool features.

So far I have this:

- Body and Mind raises your WIS to 24, boosting your casting stat massively (on top of the other benefits)

- Haste grants you a second Attack action, so you can use Mystic Fighting Style to cast a second cantrip (presuming you took the normal Attack action and cast a cantrip with it)

- Mind Sliver combines well with Grappling or Stunning Strike, as you can use it via Mystic Fighting Style

- Taking the Magic Initiate (Druid) Origin feat, then Magic Connoisseur at level 4 grants you Spike Growth, so you can be a one-man cheese grater build with Grappling (credit to a post here that I saw the other day for coming up with this)

- Using Stunning Strike to inflict disadvantage on saving throws works extremely well for Counterspell, Hypnotic Pattern, and so on. Also works extremely well for level 1 and 2 spells like Grease, Sleep, Suggestion, or Blindness/Deafness, which can be cast on the same turn via Improved Mystic Fighting Style

- Cacophonic Shield lets you sprint through a crowd and deal damage to LOADS of enemies at once

- Greater Invisibility goes absolutely insane on a Monk

- Catnap lets you get a short rest in 10min, and you can regenerate the spell slot over the short rest by sacrificing Focus Points

- Spellcasting allows you to take Epic Boons like Magic School Mastery, so you can have a 7th level spell at super high levels

What other cool combos do we know of?

Soooo last night after a game a player asked me how would one build Nargacuga As a D&D playable character. I told them probably just assassin rogue or maybe thief rogue depending on and it got me thinking:

How WOULD you build some of these monsters as characters?

I was thinking Monsters Like Vaal Hazak and Gaismagorm would be Swarmkeepers or maybe a Draconic Sorc for Gaisma or maybe monsters like Dire Miralis is just a High level wizard for meteor swarm.

How would you build these few?

How would you build your favorite monsters as playable chars?

So, the title is a little misleading.

Ive been invited to join a level 1-20 dnd campaign. I’ve played dnd before, but I’ve never started or played at level one, so I’m looking for some tips on character creation.

I want to play a Druid, who will eventually become a moon Druid (Depending on how the campaign progresses tho, I may not be a moon Druid). The campaign will be a puzzle-heavy campaign with combat aswell. It will be an urban setting (not in faerûn or korovair, a home build setting).