Hi all! I'm fairly new to 5e and I noticed there's no option for knuckledusters/brass knuckles in the official rules as far as I can see. In my current campaign I'm playing a Paladin who uses holy knuckledusters named Thoughts and Prayers that deal psychic and radiant damage respectively (not my idea, saw a tweet about it and thought it was funny and my DM agreed). I'd like to find a way to make them work with D&D Beyond because the site is super useful, but I'm a bit out of my depth with the Homebrew stuff and not sure how to go about it.
So, how would you all Homebrew knuckledusters for 5e, and/or is there already a good Homebrew out there y'all can point me towards?
Well currently you can't make custom weapon types of give items actions.
You can create a custom action on your character sheet manually. I think you can at least change a weapon's damage type, so you can take an existing weapon and change its name and damage type (damage dice and weapon features don't change, so pick one that already matches).
Otherwise you could potential just write up a homebrew magic item (which I think make sense since they don't deal bludgeoning damage). You can just set them as being common magic items if you want them to seem more commonplace.
I would make sure it has the "light" property in order to ensure that you can use Two-weapon fighting if you have two of them. Not sure what you and the DM have planned already, but it might also make more sense to have the psychic and radiant damage be a magical effect of the knuckledusters that you can trigger, as opposed to its innate form of damage, simply because I would expect a set of brass knuckles to deal bludgeoning damage inherently. But its your game so its whatever you want to do
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Three-time Judge of the Competition of the Finest Brews!Come join us in making fun, unique homebrew and voting for your favorite entries!
Here’s a quick version of Thoughts and Prayers for a low level character built around the average damage of of a 1d6 (the highest damage die a light weapon has) while still doing extra psychic & radiant damage.
Thanks! My DM says it would work like a monk unarmed strike where they deal 1d4 plus my strength modifier, but I'll show him these and see what he thinks.
If they don’t want the radiant and psychic damage you can just dual wield clubs, it’s probably easier than brewing up a 1d4 unarmed strike on DnDB and functions exactly the same. You can even custom name them on your character sheet.
Here’s a quick version of Thoughts and Prayers for a low level character built around the average damage of of a 1d6 (the highest damage die a light weapon has) while still doing extra psychic & radiant damage.
Here’s a quick version of Thoughts and Prayers for a low level character built around the average damage of of a 1d6 (the highest damage die a light weapon has) while still doing extra psychic & radiant damage.
You could also change the damage type so that all damage dealt is psychic/radiant.
True! And I thought about it, but in the end I decided when you punch something it’s going to do bludgeoning damage. Also I designed them for a low level character and felt that the +1 psychic/radiant kept it thematic but didn’t overly skirt monsters’ resistances (while technically magical weapons I specifically didn’t say “this magic weapon does...” with the intent that the bludgeoning damage be non-magical.) Thinking about them again they should probably get a fun "you can not be disarmed" caveat though.
Hi all! I'm fairly new to 5e and I noticed there's no option for knuckledusters/brass knuckles in the official rules as far as I can see. In my current campaign I'm playing a Paladin who uses holy knuckledusters named Thoughts and Prayers that deal psychic and radiant damage respectively (not my idea, saw a tweet about it and thought it was funny and my DM agreed). I'd like to find a way to make them work with D&D Beyond because the site is super useful, but I'm a bit out of my depth with the Homebrew stuff and not sure how to go about it.
So, how would you all Homebrew knuckledusters for 5e, and/or is there already a good Homebrew out there y'all can point me towards?
Thanks!
This isn't related but our nicknames are kinda matching which i find funny
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i like linguistics and, well, d&d, obviously. this bio hadn't been updated for 3 years so i figured i'd do that.
Have you noticed, however, for a monk the smites described as supercharging an attack on this item (easily found using "Thoughts & Prayers 5e" in a g-search) actually lower the average damage output since each one requires a Bonus Action which means the monk loses their Flurry of Blows (2 attacks). This makes this item less OP than it appears and more likely to get into my game. I hope.
Question for a fighter class unarmed can you have brass knuckles and where can I find them what could the damage be help please
There are no official “brass knuckles” or “knuckle dusters” in 5e. The “official, RAW answer” is to find the closest weapon from the list and use that, pro’ly the club in this case.
Hi all! I'm fairly new to 5e and I noticed there's no option for knuckledusters/brass knuckles in the official rules as far as I can see. In my current campaign I'm playing a Paladin who uses holy knuckledusters named Thoughts and Prayers that deal psychic and radiant damage respectively (not my idea, saw a tweet about it and thought it was funny and my DM agreed). I'd like to find a way to make them work with D&D Beyond because the site is super useful, but I'm a bit out of my depth with the Homebrew stuff and not sure how to go about it.
So, how would you all Homebrew knuckledusters for 5e, and/or is there already a good Homebrew out there y'all can point me towards?
Thanks!
Well currently you can't make custom weapon types of give items actions.
You can create a custom action on your character sheet manually. I think you can at least change a weapon's damage type, so you can take an existing weapon and change its name and damage type (damage dice and weapon features don't change, so pick one that already matches).
Otherwise you could potential just write up a homebrew magic item (which I think make sense since they don't deal bludgeoning damage). You can just set them as being common magic items if you want them to seem more commonplace.
I would make sure it has the "light" property in order to ensure that you can use Two-weapon fighting if you have two of them. Not sure what you and the DM have planned already, but it might also make more sense to have the psychic and radiant damage be a magical effect of the knuckledusters that you can trigger, as opposed to its innate form of damage, simply because I would expect a set of brass knuckles to deal bludgeoning damage inherently. But its your game so its whatever you want to do
Three-time Judge of the Competition of the Finest Brews! Come join us in making fun, unique homebrew and voting for your favorite entries!
Here’s a quick version of Thoughts and Prayers for a low level character built around the average damage of of a 1d6 (the highest damage die a light weapon has) while still doing extra psychic & radiant damage.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/magic-items/596964-thoughts
https://www.dndbeyond.com/magic-items/595675-prayers
Thanks! My DM says it would work like a monk unarmed strike where they deal 1d4 plus my strength modifier, but I'll show him these and see what he thinks.
If they don’t want the radiant and psychic damage you can just dual wield clubs, it’s probably easier than brewing up a 1d4 unarmed strike on DnDB and functions exactly the same. You can even custom name them on your character sheet.
You could also change the damage type so that all damage dealt is psychic/radiant.
True! And I thought about it, but in the end I decided when you punch something it’s going to do bludgeoning damage. Also I designed them for a low level character and felt that the +1 psychic/radiant kept it thematic but didn’t overly skirt monsters’ resistances (while technically magical weapons I specifically didn’t say “this magic weapon does...” with the intent that the bludgeoning damage be non-magical.) Thinking about them again they should probably get a fun "you can not be disarmed" caveat though.
This isn't related but our nicknames are kinda matching which i find funny
i like linguistics and, well, d&d, obviously. this bio hadn't been updated for 3 years so i figured i'd do that.
Ha! That is really funny.
i'm a pretty new dm would just adding a +1 to the unarmed strike be to much.
That's hilarious.
I love this item.
Have you noticed, however, for a monk the smites described as supercharging an attack on this item (easily found using "Thoughts & Prayers 5e" in a g-search) actually lower the average damage output since each one requires a Bonus Action which means the monk loses their Flurry of Blows (2 attacks). This makes this item less OP than it appears and more likely to get into my game. I hope.
Question for a fighter class unarmed can you have brass knuckles and where can I find them what could the damage be help please
There are no official “brass knuckles” or “knuckle dusters” in 5e. The “official, RAW answer” is to find the closest weapon from the list and use that, pro’ly the club in this case.
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