D&D General Session Zero and Nobody Chose a Spellcaster

[ezo]

I feel it’s a bit of a shame the game is designed this way that you have to actively opt-out of having magic in your build choices so hard.

Honestly, it is a tremendous shame IMO.

 

[Ogre Mage]

I feel it’s a bit of a shame the game is designed this way that you have to actively opt-out of having magic in your build choices so hard.

Give yourself to the Dark Side! BWHAHAHAHAHAHA

 

[FrozenNorth]

I feel it’s a bit of a shame the game is designed this way that you have to actively opt-out of having magic in your build choices so hard.

In my home game, I made rangers and paladins non-casters, and bards half-casters. You end up with 6 non-casting classes, 2 half-casters (including artificers)and 5 fullcasters.

 

[ezo]

In my home game, I made rangers and paladins non-casters, and bards half-casters. You end up with 6 non-casting classes, 2 half-casters (including artificers)and 5 fullcasters.

Sounds great! Would you mind sharing your classes for paladins and rangers? DM me as I would love to see them.

For bards, did you give them anything "extra" for the demotion to half-caster?

 

[OB1]

The first campaign I ran with 5e was close to all martial (Fighter, Monk, Rogue, Ranger) and went to level 20. They took on everything from Dragons to Mind Flayers to Liches to Demons along the way and never seemed to miss having a full caster in the party. The limited healing resources were primarily mitigated by stocking up on healing potions, and in Tier IV they got access to planar travel via an Amulet of the Planes taken from the Lich they defeated. That fight was the most challenging of the campaign (Lich Clone plus Dracolich plus actual Lich).

 

[Voadam]

When I last played a paladin in a year+ long campaign I used spell slots exclusively for smites so I was essentially a magical non caster.

 

[FrozenNorth]

Sounds great! Would you mind sharing your classes for paladins and rangers? DM me as I would love to see them.

For bards, did you give them anything "extra" for the demotion to half-caster?

It gets a little fraught and detailed: I ended up changing a bunch of elements across the full game.

The martial characters get the equivalent of non-magical invocations that they can choose. These provide bonuses like extra movement, extra skills, bonuses of certain checks (like with nobility, or peasantry, or the underworld ), or they can ignore the first level of exhaustion.

As for bards, they get bardsongs, the bardic equivalent of sorcery points to compensate the loss of spellcasting. There are bardsongs that all bards have access to: song of rest, song of protection (bonus to saves), song of skill (bonus to skill checks). Each subclass gets access to its own special bardsong.

 

[Tonguez]

I love all martial groups and so many of these characters already have racial powers or are built for magicked subclasses anyway. They will need lots of healing potions and a few magic items would help but otherwise should be golden

 

[GMMichael]

How we all met: a few years ago, a popular roadside tavern and trading post was destroyed by a storm. The community came together to help them rebuild, and our characters were volunteers: Beedleby helped by, um, sourcing some of the more expensive materials...Savrin donated money from his father's inheritance...Brash and Walker were physical laborers, and Gaelin helped thatch the roof. We worked well together, and became fast friends. . .
. . . Any advice for a group of martials?

The tavern's resident bard might be looking for a change of pace. Wrap him up in leather, chain him, and bring him along for kicks. Literally.

 

[CleverNickName]

So the launch date draws closer, and there have been some changes.

• Beedleby is unchanged; the player is still very excited about playing a "classic D&D thief." Still going with Halfling Rogue, Thief Subclass, and Criminal background.
• Brash (my character) probably changed the most. I'm still playing Barbarian, but I'm going to play it more like a "Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" type character, instead of the stereotypical meathead with an axe. So I'm playing a Human Barbarian with a custom background, and I'm looking more closely at the Berserker and Zealot subclasses.
• Gealien is still excited to play an Eldritch Knight with the Druid spell list, but has decided to go with Human instead of wood elf. That starting feat was just too tempting.
• Savrin is on the fence, going back and forth between Echo Knight and Rune Knight, but he doesn't have to decide that right away. He also chose Shadar-Kai instead of High Elf, and has been pretty tight-lipped about why. I think he and the DM are cooking something up.
• Walks-the-Shore is still a Dragonborn, still a Monk, and still looking at Way of the Four Elements, but has changed their draconic lineage to Black instead of Green because acid > poison, apparently.

Anyway. About 6 weeks to go, and still no spellcasters.