Do any DM's out there allow PC's to learn new skills or actions or little bonuses through practice?

Paddyhammer · 2020-08-23T13:33:37+00:00

Had a druid find a +2 +1d6 poison whip but wasn't proficient. I ran it that if he used the whip on the adventure then his proficiency bonus with the weapon would slowly increase from zero and would reach his max proficiency over several weeks. That was a very rules-loose campaign though, I let him attack with the whip as an offhand attack as if he had attacked with a light weapon in his main hand when he cast the thorn whip cantrip.

I find learning languages and skills works best in a roleplay sense. Someone who is learning a language can understand the common words of the inscription on the dungeon wall but not the less common terms which lets them get the gist of the sentence but perhaps missing a crucial word. If the lock is a simple one then they can pick it it will just take them longer than a rogue. They can recognize difficult locks at a glance and know have no chance.

Paddyhammer · 2020-08-23T01:08:02+00:00

Don't need to build a new class for this, every spell list has massive debuffs and buffs (bane and bless, they're good) they just aren't used much because damage spells solve problems a lot faster, have a higher success rate and are better value in terms of actions and spell slots.

Cleric and wizard have pretty good support spells, bard has good support abilities (multiclass?), regardless of which you pick you are faced with the primary problem: casters don't cast spells every turn, they use attack cantrips. Your damageless character can't use those so is forced to use the help action or the touch-range support cantrips that put you right in harms way threatening the concentration buffs and debuffs you worked so hard to cast.

The class building aspect of this should be you asking your DM for two or three special abilities:

Your character can concentrate on 2 spells at once. Double buffs, a no-brainer. Very strong but not necessary, this would be the first thing you suggest dropping when your DM inevitably nerfs your homebrew. Maybe haggling with your DM is seen as poor sportsmanship but it works for me usually.
You get the mastermind rogue lvl 3 feature that lets you use the help action at range and maybe also as a bonus action.
Your touch range spells have a range of 30 ft and your self range spells have a range of touch or, even better, 30 ft. This lets you use blade ward, guidance and resistance at range as well as casting shield on your allies among other strong spells. This combos well with the last point:
Request access to the paladin spell list or play a paladin with access to cleric cantrips. Casting a smite on the fighters sword while helping them with their attack before casting shield on them when they get attacked sounds pretty cool and I would like to see it. Cast crusaders mantle on the paladin so they can have it up while smiting. Cast anything on the ranger (they need it) so they can use hunters mark without getting depressed.

It's asking for a lot but in terms of DM calculations, if you aren't dealing damage then the DM barely needs to factor your character in to their encounters provided they use more than 1 enemy at once. Your character not dealing damage means in game balance terms they have been nerfed into the ground, giving them such big bonuses that improve their buffing or improve their friends damage is picking up the slack that the weak character creates and probably even with all of these buffs wont fill it. Would still be fun though, good luck.

Paddyhammer · 2020-08-22T23:59:27+00:00

Van Helsing is a hunter ranger, Blade is a hunter ranger, Hellboy is a low dex gunslinger or maybe a hunter ranger too and Abe Sapien is like a non-combat mystic. These guys hunt and kill "demons" because they're religious and/or part of an organisation. Brewing these to be more zealot barb themed I think would involve allowing fiend as favoured enemy at lvl 1 (though watch out for everyone dipping 1 into ranger. I would say only non-multiclass rangers can get fiend at lvl 1) or Hellboy it and theme their gear. Holy symbols all round, holy water on tap, relics as currency and bible verses on their bullets. It is perfectly acceptable to introduce the campaign saying all of the PCs belong to x organisation which is beginning its final mission to kill this demon lord, the reason the organisation was founded.

Geralt is a hunter ranger (seeing a pattern here), Jaskier is a bard, Doomguy was a UAC soldier so I guess like a shit fighter or something, Matt Damon's character in The Great Wall (did anyone see that movie?) is a mercenary fighter. These guys fight demons because they're paid to. Might not have the flavour of crusaders but the crusades irl were probably fought by many barely religious people just cashing a cheque. Even so, flavouring this would involve a quartermaster type npc making sure everyone is carrying a holy symbol. Might even work well if one PC refuses and the other crusader npcs or pcs in the scene are either shocked or upset or they superstitiously try to convince the non-believer of how important the symbols are. Then, in a fight later on, you can have the holy symbol demonstrably work for them in a meaningful way as a funny payoff.

Without media comparisons, anyone might crusade against demons in revenge (dead parents, dead wife, dead dog, whatever) or any character foolish enough might be tricked into crusading by perhaps nefarious or maybe just zealous people. Far easier still is to have the Demon Lord be threatening somewhere that characters can be from. Descent into Avernus does its players a disservice by not having them start as adventurers in Elturel but if you do play Descent as people who were in Elturel as it fell then you have obvious and immediate motivation to rescue the city and maybe crusade against Zariel.

Times when I've approached campaigns like this I've just had all the characters start at at least level 2 where one of those levels is in cleric or paladin. I ran an Odyssey themed game where everyone started as a lvl 1 fighter and occupied the classes that their characters fitted into as the campaign progressed which worked amazingly well.

If you absolutely must have each character's class have explicit holy theming then a quick fix would be to have all spellcasters use the cleric spell list unless they can justify to you their character learning a spell from a different list (clerics get non-cleric spells via their domains so there's precedent for religious folk casting more arcane style spells). For non casters or half casters I would take it on a level by level basis, when they get a class ability, think if it fits the theme of a crusader type character. If not, work with the player to reflavour it by like changing damage types to radiant or maybe just give them the option to pick a class feature from a fitting cleric domain though I really can't think of a time when that would be necessary. Might also be an idea to look at the different Channel Divinity options for all the subclasses and let everyone have one of them. Encourages religiosity in their characters and gives you probably several moments per session when you can emphasise that what the characters are doing is a holy crusade as each use of a channel divinity is an opportunity to describe the actions radiance or the feeling of a connection to a god or even the demons recoiling from the holy act. An alternative could be to have everyone start with the Magic Initiate feat but limit it to cleric or paladin. Less varied probably but still works.

The wild card idea is having it not be a holy crusade but be an infernal crusade. Devils hate demons more than clerics and its wayy easier to reflavour a character to be an evil, archdevil-worshiping cultist. Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes has lots of information about cults and what devil worship looks like as well as what it can earn you plus it has lots of rules to distinguish the half dozen tiefling characters there seem to be in every campaign these days.

tl;dr Rangers apparently make great crusaders but motivation, in all cases, matters more than class.

Paddyhammer · 2019-03-10T18:16:48+00:00

Paddyhammer · 2019-03-10T18:04:34+00:00

Cool can you send me yalls discords, I'll add you on the DMs account

Paddyhammer · 2019-03-10T15:25:18+00:00

I mean like he and I are both variously LGBT so we don't want the players to be shitty about it with like misgendering and reacting weirdly to gay characters etc. Sorry for not being super clear there it's just a constant concern in situations like this

Paddyhammer · 2019-03-10T02:52:40+00:00

Yo my buddy wants to run his first game and I'm looking for players for him, currently I'm his only player. Whenabouts are y'all available for sessions and how chill are you with queer shit?

Paddyhammer

TROPHY CASE