Dungeons and Dragons 5e

[Boo the Gentleman Caller]

Are there any other players of D&D 5e?

I'm currently several weeks into a new campaign. I've always played rogue characters, but this new campaign we were asked by our DM to build based on our rolls. He then gave us the choice to either:

1.) Do a point buy to switch our stats (but had to keep the total of all rolls the same).
2.) If we didn't change anything, we got an extra feat at level 1.

I was originally going to play as a rogue/swashbuckler or rogue/scout (new subclasses thanks to Xanathar's Guide to Everything), but I ended up rolling insanely high WIS/INT/CHA. I knew my buddy was really wanting to be a bard, so I opted to go a spellcaster route for the very first time.

Despite this being the first time I'm a spell caster in almost any game based on or around d20 rules (this includes video games like Baldur's Gate, Dragon Age, etc), this was originally super overwhelming. I chose to be a warlock/hexblade, so there's ton to manage -- special feature curses, spells, invocations, level bonuses, etc. It sounded fun to have a patron deity in conflict with my NPC and the whole hexblade (aka lightsaber) aspect made it sound fun. A mage that is high physical DPS? Sign me up!

So my current character ended up being:

Grimm Alghetty
Dragonborn (Gold Dragon family history)
Warlock-Hexblade (likely to go Pact of the Blade)
Archaeologist background

His egg was found by archaeologists, who ended up taking him in and made him one of their troupe. Eventually, they were all exploring some ruins in search of a particularly high level artifact, when an evil sorcerer attacked, murdered most of the group, and bound Grimm to his Shadowfell patron (intentionally inspired by Frog/Cyrus' storyline in Chrono Trigger).

Grimm is now bound to some sort of entity from the Shadowfell, an entity of green that constantly forces Grimm to act against his normal, generous nature. This entity makes him greedy and constantly pursue physical wealth.

Grimm is also on a hunt for both the villainous sorcerer and the artifact, which is sort of his end-game type campaign material. The sorcerer also has three lackeys to conquer between now and then, inspired mostly by Ozzie, Flea, and Slash.

To keep the character more charming (he does have a level 1 CHA of 19!) and akin to my light-hearted playstyle, I am making the interactions between both the PC and NPCs light. As a dragonborn AND a warlock, he's naturally distrusted everywhere he goes and combats the stigma with a flair for overdone friendliness (constantly smiles and shakes hands, hugs strangers, often going overboard).

He also has a goal to help drive his pursuit of money -- he is saving money to buy a folding boat and a bag of holding so he can build a traveling pop-up bar/food boat (essentially the D&D equivalent of the food truck). He only has about 200G right now, so he has a long way to go!

[Mauron]

I've played a little D&D 5e. I can see why people like it, but I prefer 3.5.

Thinking of party consistency? What is this madness?

Your character doesn't live up to his name.

[Boo the Gentleman Caller]

Thinking of party consistency? What is this madness?

Right?!? And I'm the only true DPS spellcaster. We have a bard, who is mostly support, as well as a druid. But no other sorcerer/wizard/etc. We're a also a good sized group with 6 players!

Your character doesn't live up to his name.

That's quite intentional. All his comrades were actually killed ten years prior, and he adopted a somber persona and wandered for some time. His name is actually Tehr, but he has kept that quiet and was later nicknamed 'Grimm' by locals who always saw him as a brooding loner who never opened up.

Regardless, recently he's had a change of mindset and has resolved himself to no longer brood and instead take a more proactive outlook. He's joined up with an Adventurer's Guild (as our entire party has, as this is how our party has come together) in the hopes that he can both increase his standing and develop contacts he can utilize to find the sorcerer that cursed him and killed his "family." My idea is sort of to gradually shed the Grimm nickname as the campaign goes, and we're planning on this being a level 1 to 20 campaign.

It's gonna be fun. We've been playing for a year and a half or so; spent a year on a level 1 to level 5 campaign that was focused on a single storyline. We then played a 4-month custom campaign I built in which a new party (with a few PCs from the previous campaign) were trapped on a cursed city-isle (akin to Mont Saint-Michel in France) and forced to survive and solve the mystery of the curse.

I wouldn't say that his overly amicable personality is fake, but it's definitely a role he's willing to play in order to get what he wants. Revenge on a personal level, wealth driven from his hexblade patron.

[Mauron]

Right?!? And I'm the only true DPS spellcaster. We have a bard, who is mostly support, as well as a druid. But no other sorcerer/wizard/etc. We're a also a good sized group with 6 players!

I'm used to small groups and doubling up. One campaign had like four wizards in it.

That'll be quite the journey. Best of luck to Tehr on his journey.

[tushantin]

I've never played Dungeons and Dragons before. Does one need to be physically present to play it?

[Mauron]

It can be played in person or online. Some people use virtual tabletops, others will do play by post on a forum.

[Razig]

I'm a big fan of 3.5e. So I expected to like 5e since it's back to being D&D instead of whatever 4e was, but when I finally got around to checking it out, I didn't like it one bit. In fact, I was mildly insulted by it. To me it seemed like the designers were saying, "Our audience is too dumb to handle double-digit addition and subtraction."

[Boo the Gentleman Caller]

I've never played Dungeons and Dragons before. Does one need to be physically present to play it?

Nope! Some people play virtually via Skype or another means. My group places face to face seated at a table together (and we have a dinner party while we play), although when someone can't make it, they'll sometimes Skype it in.

I'm a big fan of 3.5e. So I expected to like 5e since it's back to being D&D instead of whatever 4e was, but when I finally got around to checking it out, I didn't like it one bit. In fact, I was mildly insulted by it. To me it seemed like the designers were saying, "Our audience is too dumb to handle double-digit addition and subtraction.

I get this, though. I actually bought quite a few 3.5e .pdf files on sale once somewhere around the time 5e came out. I always intended to play D&D, just never go around to it and didn't have a core group of friends/people I knew that I could play with.

Once I saw the first D&D episode of Community, however, I was hooked on the idea and spent several years connecting before I could finally dive in.

But I'm off topic. I have some of the 3.5e modules, but haven't actually played a game of it live. I see the merits of it though for sure. To me it's 5e>3.5e>4e. I have to rate 5e higher simply because I don't have the full exposure to 3.5e in real gameplay, so I can't really judge it beyond the books I have. I do prefer them both to 4e, though -- 4e felt like a MMORPG-turned-tabletop.

[Mauron]

I've only played 4e at a D&D Adventure League thing, because no one wants to run it, they just had their arm twisted by Wizards of the Coast.

[Razig]

My beef with 4e wasn't with the game itself. Taken on its own merits, 4e would just have been a system I didn't enjoy... No big deal there, different strokes and all that.

No, my beef was with the fact that it was called Dungeons & Dragons when it had no right to be. 4e wasn't the fourth edition of anything—it was the first edition of a brand new game. Nothing wrong with a brand new game, but to call it by the name of a well-established game was dishonest in the extreme. 4e was New Coke.

(I'm showing my age here...) 

Now, some people actually liked New Coke and they're allowed to have their (inscrutable) opinions. But the stuff in the can was most definitely not Coke, regardless of what was printed on the label. I'm not saying 4e was bad, just that it didn't have any business calling itself D&D.

[Boo the Gentleman Caller]

Minor update...

Grimm, my 5e Warlock Hexblade archaeologist, has finally reached level 3 and chosen the Path of the Blade.

So this whole campaign is a semi-open world. Our party are members of an Adventurer's Guild and have been tasked to go to some backwater village, set up shop for the Guild, and do what we can to make the village and surrounding lands better (with 10% of all profits getting send back to HQ).

Since he's a Dragonborn and I did not do point buy (I let my stat rolls determine what class/build I played as), I got a level 1 feat, and I chose the race-specific wings. As a hexblade, I have tons of proficiencies in armor and weapons, including light and heavy armor (although I cannot fly with heavy armor).

Thus far is definitely our DPS party member. I get to use my charisma modifier for physical and magical damage attack roles, and with a charisma of 17, that's a +4 to all. Plus I get a few heavy hitting spells (but not many spell slots).

All in all, a fun time... Even though he is quite squishy and has pretty low HP. He has died every battle thus far except for the last one, and that was only because I was able to leverage Misty Step. I did finally get to upgrade me armor, though, so my AC went up to 17.

At Level 4 I get a second feat and I'm thinking about going with Mobile, which adds 10 feet to my speed and makes it so enemies can't get opportunity attacks. Since my character is still somewhat squishy, I plan to make him use guerrilla warfare tactics. Jump in, attack the enemy, and jump back out. And then, at Level 5, I get to choose an invocation that allows me to attack twice each round.

From a gameplay character, I'm at a loss at what to do with him. He is a Hexblade and thus has a pact (against his will) with an unknown creature from the Shadowfell realm, who pushes him to acquire wealth and power... sometimes against his Neutral Good nature.

My original plan was to acquire a folding boat, slap on some wheels, and make it a mobile popup bar (like a fantasy version of a food truck). However, one of my party members had a similar idea and chose the Gourmand background, and his whole shtick is to become the best chef in the realm and open a 5-star restaurant. He's competed in several competitions (and, in my opinion, spend too much time letting him go do this own thing while we aren't able to participate) and has amassed about 10x the gold as the rest of us.

Not only is my character sort of miffed (since he's supernaturally greedy), but I am, too. For taking my idea and making it even better. Hahaha!

So my new idea is for Grimm to want to become Mayor... and end up being a land baron. And OWNING the entire town, forcing the restaurant to pay me rent. Gwah ha ha!