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[Trekkin]

I want a bard that performs exclusively flag-based acts, like the guys on old ships and air fields

They still do that.

What ship today even has a place to look at another place on another ship where a flag person might be waving at them? Seems easier to just use radio.

You mean like a deck? Because ships still have those.

[Kagus]

Dramatic semaphore, you say?

So, what kind of wizard specialties do y'all like? Divination seems pretty snazzy, and Evocation has got some crazy nonsense as well (including a curious buff to save-based cantrips, which is uncommon but intriguing)...

[Hanslanda]

I want a bard that performs exclusively flag-based acts, like the guys on old ships and air fields

They still do that.

What ship today even has a place to look at another place on another ship where a flag person might be waving at them? Seems easier to just use radio.

All of them. Especially most navy vessels. Iirc the USN often practices flag signalling to prepare for the possibility of downed communication or radio silence.

[Kagus]

Been fiddling around with the idea of a Monk with the Magic Initiate feat picking up Hex from the Warlock list.

Originally the idea was to inflict disadvantage on saving throws versus the avatar Monk's elemental abilities, as well as the obvious synergy with Flurry... Buuut, really; even with disadvantage on the save, the bender abilities don't seem particularly great for how much they cost (level-wise and ki-wise). I'm thinking a better fit would probably just be Open Hand and giving them disadvantage on the DEX save to not be knocked prone during a flurry.

Monks having low CHA doesn't mean much since Hex is a no-save, no-roll spell. As for the two cantrips, you can go for similarly stat-independent things like Mage Hand or Prestidigitation (...or Blade Ward).

[scriver]

I want a bard that performs exclusively flag-based acts, like the guys on old ships and air fields

They still do that.

What ship today even has a place to look at another place on another ship where a flag person might be waving at them? Seems easier to just use radio.

All of them. Especially most navy vessels. Iirc the USN often practices flag signalling to prepare for the possibility of downed communication or radio silence.

Pssh, people are far too small to be able to be seen from one space ship to another!

[Biowraith]

Been fiddling around with the idea of a Monk with the Magic Initiate feat picking up Hex from the Warlock list.

Originally the idea was to inflict disadvantage on saving throws

Note: Hex doesn't give disadvantage on saving throws, only ability checks (which does include skill checks).

[Kadzar]

Dramatic semaphore, you say?

So, what kind of wizard specialties do y'all like? Divination seems pretty snazzy, and Evocation has got some crazy nonsense as well (including a curious buff to save-based cantrips, which is uncommon but intriguing)...

I'm playing a conjuration wizard currently. It's still early levels, but I think Minor Conjuration is a pretty interesting ability, though I'm definitely not using it enough. I think I need to talk with my DM about how whether or not I could conjure several tiny objects of the same kind (probably not, but, now that I think of it, I could probably make a bunch of caltrops that are tied together), or if I can conjure substances (which could get crazy broken if that means I can conjure up valuable poisons). I think a lot of my problems also come from running into it's size and weight limits (so I can't conjure up hunting traps, because they're too heavy, and, while I could create some kind of cover for myself, being a halfling and therefore under 3 feet tall, I don't know how hard of a cover it could be at only 10 pounds). What I'm really looking forward to now, though, is getting to 6th level and getting free teleports.

Besides that, I'd say abjuration wizard can be fun. The first character I played in 5th edition was a dwarven abjuration wizard, before I switch to a barbarian because we needed more melee fighters. That said, if I had the knowledge then that I do now, I probably could have turned it into a decent frontline fighter, especially if I could get permission from my DM at the time to change my mountain dwarf into a hill dwarf (I was mostly intrigued at the time that, in this edition, wizards can learn to wear armor, but I now think it's better to use mage armor or take a level in fighter rather than go mountain dwarf). Then I'd focus on some sort of melee cantrip and take the toughness feat when I get the chance. Also, the idea is a little better nowadays since there's things like Sword Coast Guide cantrips and spells from Xanathar's like shadow blade or steel wind strike.

Been fiddling around with the idea of a Monk with the Magic Initiate feat picking up Hex from the Warlock list.

Originally the idea was to inflict disadvantage on saving throws versus the avatar Monk's elemental abilities, as well as the obvious synergy with Flurry... Buuut, really; even with disadvantage on the save, the bender abilities don't seem particularly great for how much they cost (level-wise and ki-wise). I'm thinking a better fit would probably just be Open Hand and giving them disadvantage on the DEX save to not be knocked prone during a flurry.

Monks having low CHA doesn't mean much since Hex is a no-save, no-roll spell. As for the two cantrips, you can go for similarly stat-independent things like Mage Hand or Prestidigitation (...or Blade Ward).

Unfortunately, hex doesn't give disadvantage on saving throws, only ability checks, which are basically skill checks (but also includes things like initiative and counterspell and dispel magic rolls). If you do want to give disadvantage on saving throws, you'll need bestow curse, though unfortunately that's a 3rd level spell, so not usable with Magic Initiate. Though it's not quite disadvantage, bane achieves something similar, and also, nicely, works off a charisma save, which most things don't have much defense against, and it can be cast on multiple targets at once.

Bane is also on the cleric list (as is bestow curse), so it synergies pretty well ability score-wise with monk, though, looking at hex (which is unfortunately not in the SRD), it uses a bonus action instead of an action and lasts an hour and can be transferred to a new target if the old one dies, so I can see why you'd want it as a magic initiate spell. Hunter's mark does a similar thing (mostly the only difference between the spells is that hunter's mark helps with tracking them), but unfortunately hunter's mark isn't available for magic initiate because rangers don't have cantrips.

PREEDIT: Slightly ninja'd

[Kagus]

Been fiddling around with the idea of a Monk with the Magic Initiate feat picking up Hex from the Warlock list.

Originally the idea was to inflict disadvantage on saving throws

Note: Hex doesn't give disadvantage on saving throws, only ability checks (which does include skill checks).

Ach! Indeed, I seem to have misread that one. Might've mixed it up with Bestow Curse or something... Hex is still pretty baller, even without imposing saving throw disadvantage. Guess that pushes the focus for Hex-dipping even further away from Elemonk, eh?


Reading about some of the rules clarifications that have bounced back and forth between the community and WoTC... Stuff like how Crossbow Expert only works for one shot if you're wielding a crossbow together with another weapon since you "can't reload it" (but that it works just fine when used by itself), and how nets are specifically made to always be at a disadvantage. And then there's the weirdness with using bonus actions between primary action attacks if you have Extra Attack from somewhere... Always nice when the official answers end up talking past the question that gets posed.

And then there are the questions as to what happens when an Eldritch Knight tries to use Weapon Bond on, say, a net. Or bend the definitions of "improvised weapon" and bond a boulder. Or a dead body.

-snip-

I dunno, for me Conjurer primarily seems to be about A) conning merchants with a limited-time-offer lump of pure gold, and B) being able to retain concentration on conjuration spells regardless of taking damage.

That first point is bound to backfire sooner or later, if it fires at all, but the second point is pretty solid if you're using your concentration on conjurations. As for minor conjuration cover, yeah, dunno... A 3' by 3' sheet that's a quarter-inch in thickness would apparently weigh slightly over 92 pounds, if we're going by the values Google presents for their real-world weights, heh. You'd also have had to have seen the "item" before, and I don't know if that specifically defines the material of the item or not... Otherwise you could go for a really thin sheet of mithral (1/2 the weight of iron, if going by comparative armor weights), despite never having seen "mithral" and "sheet" qualities in the same object.

Seems to mainly be about copying keys, fooling the gullible (it's visibly magical, so make an amulet of invisibility and sell it to someone. When it disappears an hour later, tell them it's working), and causing banana peels to suddenly pop into existence in front of marching soldiers. For cover, I'd just as soon use Minor Illusion (...sure, it doesn't actually stop anything going through it, but the archer looking for you doesn't need to know that).

And as for Hex vs. Bane/Bestow Curse, the biggie is of course that there's no save offered. The fact that it's also a bonus action, and can be re-applied with a bonus action during its 1-hour duration if the previous target drops to 0 HP, well... That's just gravy, and makes it very nice for the limited nature of the Magic Initiate slot. The fact that it doesn't give saving throw disadvantage is honestly fine, being able to pump out +1d6 necrotic damage with every attack is still huge.

Abjuration specialty, eh... The ward seems a bit flimsy to be honest, but every little bit helps, I guess. But the level 10 of adding proficiency to ability checks when casting spells is awesome. At level 10 that's a +4 increase, which is pretty sizeable when using Dispel Magic/Counterspell to break something down. The level 14 bonus is some ridiculous spell defense, and further solidifies the Abjurer's role as a wizard duel champion.

Personally, for a Xanathar-imbued melee caster, I think I'd rather go sorcerer due to being able to use Twinned/Quickened metamagic with melee spells. I've been looking at the dwarf angle for that myself, hehe... A level of fighter is of course going to give the better stuff overall, but if levels are tight I can see dwarfiness being useful instead. Xanathar also allows for the Divine Soul sorcerer, which is all sorts of silly.

[KingofstarrySkies]

oi lads pitch me some suggestions for what pact i should pick as a 5e warlock, i'm leaning towards the Blade pact

[Kagus]

oi lads pitch me some suggestions for what pact i should pick as a 5e warlock, i'm leaning towards the Blade pact

Depends. Which books are you running with? With Xanathar's, a Bladelock can do just fine with the Hexblade subclass, getting up to some pretty funny damage potentials all depending on how you run with it. Pretty squishy, but at higher levels you can stack damage boosts for some good times.

Without Xanathar, Bladelock doesn't really have much of anything going for it. The subclasses aren't particularly synergistic, and lots of good blade invocations  (Improved Pact Weapon, Eldritch Smite, optionally stuff like Aura of Flies) just don't exist, meaning Blade pact without Xanathar can't do much of anything except take Fiend's Sight, cast darkness on themselves, and poke people with a reach weapon.

Chain pact has... I'm not sure, really. You can make an attack with the familiar, which isn't something you'd want to do pretty much ever. The different forms have some interesting applications though, such as the imp with its resistances and immunites (and speech), minor shapechanging, and invisibility. As for invocations, there's ah... Well, not a whole lot. It's basically just a way of getting Find Familiar without burning a feat on it. Except...

Tome pact has an invocation that lets you learn and cast rituals, meaning you can learn Find Familiar as a ritual and then cast it. You don't get the special forms or the ability to make an attack, but eh. Tome also gives you three bonus cantrips from any spell list, which is pretty sweet. When taking the aforementioned invocation, you also learn two rituals of your choice to get your collection started. Aspect of the Moon invocation (Xanathar's) prevents you from being magically forced to sleep, and you can stand watch for an entire long rest and still gain benefits from it, but... Well, I'd call it situational.

[IcyTea31]

Pssh, people are far too small to be able to be seen from one space ship to another!

Oh, but you don't need to see the person, only the flags. Petition to make 100 km-wide semaphore flags standard equipment on spacecraft now!

[Trekkin]

Pssh, people are far too small to be able to be seen from one space ship to another!

Oh, but you don't need to see the person, only the flags. Petition to make 100 km-wide semaphore flags standard equipment on spacecraft now!

Actually, you do; there are a couple sets of signs in flag semaphore (Q/V, J/P/U, Z/W, and H/O, I think) that have the flags in the same position relative to each other, differing only in their orientation to the ground and operator. There being no ground in space, seeing the operator would be even more important, if less practical.

[KingofstarrySkies]

we're using all the books available (i am an undying warlock)

[Kagus]

we're using all the books available (i am an undying warlock)

Without the Hexblade's ability to use CHA for attack/damage, Blade pact loses a lot of its shine unless you're neglecting CHA in favor of your physical stats. So, if you are dropping CHA, then I guess you might as well go Blade pact. You'll be able to use your spell slots for smiting, since your offensive spellcasting won't be particularly great (lots of buffs still work fine with low spellcasting stats though, so there's that). I'd recommend picking up Devil's Sight in any case and laying down the odd Darkness here or there. Darkness doesn't care about CHA, and that combo is one of the few really good/useful things warlocks have a claim on besides just pew pewing eldritch blast. ...and your pew-pewing of eldritch bolt won't be optimal, so, yeah.

[KingofstarrySkies]

I've got fairly solid Cha- it's my highest- but I thought I already could use it as my attack stat without being a hexblade? I'll check again, but alas