D&D 5E Help playtest my fantasy stat draft!

[Snarf Zagyg]

Eldritch Blast, while mechanically solid, plays no part in why I love the Warlock class so much.

BINGO! The class and mechanics are awesome. Really, it's one of my favorites ... if not my favorite, certainly at the top.

They do set it up so EB is incredibly attractive, and either you go "all-in" with it (and invocations) or you don't.

 

[Fenris-77]

BINGO! The class and mechanics are awesome. Really, it's one of my favorites ... if not my favorite, certainly at the top.

They do set it up so EB is incredibly attractive, and either you go "all-in" with it (and invocations) or you don't.

That's about where I'm at. If you go Eldritch Blast heavy you don't have room to do much else in terms of invocations. I find EB spam a boring as dirt character to play, so I don't go that route. Mask of Many Faces might be my favorite low level invocation.

 

[el-remmen]

1. Feats are fine. The table banned a few (PAM, GWM, SS, CX) just because they were too appealing, but most of them are nice flavor and aren't overpowering or must-haves.

2. MCing, if anything, usually makes you weaker- it's mostly for flavor.

Oh, I allowed both of these right away!

D&D without multiclassing is like brie without a nice slice of pear.

 

[Fenris-77]

I allowed MCing right away because it's often integral to how I build D&D characters generally. I start with a concept separate from class or mechanics and then I try to figure out how to best realize the concept, and I often end up MCing to get the right mix of mechanics and rules in place for that initial concept. I don't really care about 'classes' as separate things per se outside of the mechanics that accompany them.

 

[akr71]

So, @TwoSix ... pretty sure @akr71 completely volunteered you to run a one-shot.

And @Fenris-77 seconded that motion. I mean, I'm not saying that it was legally binding, but I'm also not ... not saying that.

 

[TwoSix]

This thread has turned into evidence for why I keep a tight rein on what I allow in my games, because I have no friggin' idea what most of you are talking about and don't have much enthusiasm about doing the reading I'd need to do to get it.

I wonder if this is in part because because I only started with 5E in very late 2019 - and thus the core rules still provide enough new stuff for me. I literally read the rogue class for the first time last week (no one in my groups have played one) and I have no idea how warlock powers work (I banned them for now from my current games because I did not want to deal with a third way of dealing with spells and am playing with mostly newbies who look to me to explain stuff).

Totally fair, but I'm definitely in the opposite boat. I've been playing 5e steadily with multiple groups since 2014, and most of our games are relatively short (about 9-18 months), so I've played or seen played pretty much everything in the PHB, and a good portion of the stuff in Xanathar's and Tasha's at this point. I'm also just a rules sponge and our resident rules expert, so just seeing stuff in a play for a few sessions generally makes me feel I've got a good grasp of what it does.

It's why I'm so pro-homebrew and have a large list of allowed material I've carefully curated; I just need that dopamine hit of seeing novel material in play. I had mentioned gamer motivations in one of the other currently moving threads, my #1 motivation for any kind of game is embracing and mastering complex rules.

 

[Blue]

I should add if wasn't completely apparent that Doc is all about the range (Pistol). That, plus the skill-monkey.

It was really, really hard for me to build the pistol concept adequately. I've been noodling with it since I saw the Tasha's gunner feat, and there just isn't adequate support (outside of Mercer's stuff). Originally I was going to go Warlock 3/Rogue 1, and have a pact of the blade and invocation to make the pistol more ghostly/summonable ...

But I really like the Phantom rogue subclass. That's an underused gem, IMO.

Ah, between hexblade and taking Armor of Agathys I had assumed you were melee. I should have known.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Ah, between hexblade and taking Armor of Agathys I had assumed you were melee. I should have known.

Im always looking for the non-obvious.

And then trying to make it, um, non-obviouser.

 

[Fenris-77]

The obfuscatorialness of you dictionality is something to behold.

 

[TwoSix]

Necro-bump!

So, I actually got to do a fantasy stat draft IRL last night, and it went swimmingly.

I slightly simplified it from what we tested in this thread. It was 36 total picks, 6 players, 6 rounds. For every stat, there was a 17, 15, 13, and +2 option. A few multiple stat bumps, a few feat combinations, and 2 random rare magical items.

The group overall really liked the "extra stuff" options, all of the feat options and magic item options were off the board in the top half of the draft. I'm definitely going to add a few more miscellaneous options next time I do this, and I think this might be my go-to option for doing stats from now on in RL games.