So in a week or so i will start my first (real) campaign, i had a 2 others but those were just me and 2 of my friends messing around with 100% homebrew rules and story. The DM asked me to make my character and figure out the backstory. The backstory is important because it gives the character +1 to coolness, my question is about the character that i came up with and how good or viable it is compared to how cool it sounds hahaha. I chose a Variant Human for a race because of the free feat i can get, a Fighter with a subclass of Samurai, and the feat i got was dual wield. On top of that his story is that he is a Ronin. So i have a dual wielding Ronin with 2 katanas.
If anyone has any feedback on this topic please do tell, i would really like for my first campaign to be a good one and not a total flop xD Thanks in advance <3
No i intend to distribute my stats according to the personality of my character, so putting everything into one stat wont happen :D Thank you for the advice <3
As a player who has played numerous fighters, I would suggest picking up a mastiff. It gives a fair amount of role-playing opportunities and allows for the fighter to gain more option while in combat. For only 25gp early on in your adventuring career.
As a player who has played numerous fighters, I would suggest picking up a mastiff. It gives a fair amount of role-playing opportunities and allows for the fighter to gain more option while in combat. For only 25gp early on in your adventuring career.
Serious question, not trying to be snarky or pick a fight. What do you do with the mastiff? If you’re size small you can ride it, I guess. Otherwise, it has 5 hp. It’s getting 1-shot by almost everything. And it’s going on it’s own initiative, so I don’t see how it gives the fighter character any more options.
As a player who has played numerous fighters, I would suggest picking up a mastiff. It gives a fair amount of role-playing opportunities and allows for the fighter to gain more option while in combat. For only 25gp early on in your adventuring career.
Serious question, not trying to be snarky or pick a fight. What do you do with the mastiff? If you’re size small you can ride it, I guess. Otherwise, it has 5 hp. It’s getting 1-shot by almost everything. And it’s going on it’s own initiative, so I don’t see how it gives the fighter character any more options.
You RP with it as your pet. It doesn’t fight with you or anything, it’s your dog. Your character does the same stuff with it that you do with your dog. You play with it and go for walks with it and have fun with it.
allows for the fighter to gain more option while in combat. For only 25gp early on in your adventuring career.
I, too, would like to hear more about the combat options an untrained puppy gives you
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Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
As a player who has played numerous fighters, I would suggest picking up a mastiff. It gives a fair amount of role-playing opportunities and allows for the fighter to gain more option while in combat. For only 25gp early on in your adventuring career.
Serious question, not trying to be snarky or pick a fight. What do you do with the mastiff? If you’re size small you can ride it, I guess. Otherwise, it has 5 hp. It’s getting 1-shot by almost everything. And it’s going on it’s own initiative, so I don’t see how it gives the fighter character any more options.
You RP with it as your pet. It doesn’t fight with you or anything, it’s your dog. Your character does the same stuff with it that you do with your dog. You play with it and go for walks with it and have fun with it.
Oh, I get the pet angle. Pets can be great. I just don’t understand how it allows “more options in combat.” Partly because I just finished a campaign with a halfling pally who used a mastiff as his mount. That thing died all the time. Even when I would just use it run run up, I dismount, have it disengage and back away. Any AoE just kills it.
As a player who has played numerous fighters, I would suggest picking up a mastiff. It gives a fair amount of role-playing opportunities and allows for the fighter to gain more option while in combat. For only 25gp early on in your adventuring career.
Serious question, not trying to be snarky or pick a fight. What do you do with the mastiff? If you’re size small you can ride it, I guess. Otherwise, it has 5 hp. It’s getting 1-shot by almost everything. And it’s going on it’s own initiative, so I don’t see how it gives the fighter character any more options.
You RP with it as your pet. It doesn’t fight with you or anything, it’s your dog. Your character does the same stuff with it that you do with your dog. You play with it and go for walks with it and have fun with it.
Oh, I get the pet angle. Pets can be great. I just don’t understand how it allows “more options in combat.” Partly because I just finished a campaign with a halfling pally who used a mastiff as his mount. That thing died all the time. Even when I would just use it run run up, I dismount, have it disengage and back away. Any AoE just kills it.
🤷♂️ You would have to ask WRE_Dopest, they’re the one who recommended it, not me.
A Mastiff is a fairly low-investment creature that can contribute in combat. Buying a Mastiff assumes that it's a trained Mastiff (just as buying a horse assumes it's trained enough to be ridden). A trained Mastiff is useful in number of ways... for one, their Keen Hearing and Smell makes them valuable as allies for tracking. You'll have to wrestle a bit with just how much your DM will let them help in that case... they may be good at situational awareness, but it's not like they can tell you out-loud what they're smelling. At low levels, their bite is useful because it has the secondary effect of knocking an enemy prone, giving you advantage on your attacks. At higher levels, when its low to-hit and easily surpassed DC to avoid being knocked prone, it can help by performing the help action to give you advantage on an attack, or otherwise distracting enemies.
That all said... it also has 12 AC and 5 HP... if you're going to be using your mastiff in combat, get ready to buy a new mastiff in every town you come across. Still, even if you're not bringing them into combat, they could be helpful. If nothing else you could buy them a little wagon and they can help you carry stuff.
Anyway, as for the topic of this thread... my concern with Dual Wielding as a Samurai is that it's hard to combine that with your primary Samurai feature... Fighting Spirit. This is because two-weapon-fighting uses your bonus action, but you also trigger your Fighting Spirit with a bonus action. It's not terrible combination... it's not like you use Fighting Spirit every round, since it's more intended as something you use against high-priority targets or when you're low on health (since it grants Temp HP), but it's just one of those features that doesn't synergize well with dual wielding.
So, your idea isn't bad, but it just has one little redundancy. I will say, though, that you aren't required to play as the Samurai subclass in order to play a samurai-themed character. You could just as easily play as a Battlemaster, which is more dynamic and versatile and still present your character as a Samurai.
Outside of combat a mastiff is amazing to have in a party. They’re great to have in camp during long rests to help detect incoming threats if nothing else. And a party with a mascot is always fun too.
Buying a Mastiff assumes that it's a trained Mastiff (just as buying a horse assumes it's trained enough to be ridden)
Great, it doesn't poop in your house. That doesn't mean it's useful in a fight
You want an animal companion with combat utility, be a ranger
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Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Buying a Mastiff assumes that it's a trained Mastiff (just as buying a horse assumes it's trained enough to be ridden)
Great, it doesn't poop in your house. That doesn't mean it's useful in a fight
You want an animal companion with combat utility, be a ranger
If it’s trained enough to be a combat mount for a Halfling it’s trained enough to be a war dog for anyone else. Wardogs were actually things you could purchase in older editions. This edition they rolled it into the mount mastiff together. Yes, as a DM, for 25 gp your mastiff is a trained war dog in any campaign i DM. An untrained, or merely housebroken dog would be at most 20 - 50 cp in any campaign I DM.
Something to keep in mind is that, within the context of D&D, a Gold Piece is less comparable to $1 as it is to $20. So 25 gp, within Faerun, is closer to spending $500, despite how casually players start throwing around gold pieces once you start adventuring. So it's less like giving someone $25 to buy a mutt, and more like spending half a grand getting a pure bred dog that has gone through at least half a year of training for the express purpose of accompanying others on long and potentially dangerous missions. I think a DM might rule that they're not necessarily trained to participate in combat... theoretically, they're trained to serve as mounts for small humanoids, not necessarily as war hounds. But it's not unreasonable to assume that they've been trained to understand the command "Attack", although anything more complicated than like... "Attack, Stay, Hide, Speak, etc." might be a bit much. Like... how do you command a dog to give you the Help action? Still, it's entirely dependent on your DM, but the utility is there... even if a Mastiff will always underperform compared to more dedicated companions that you get through subclass features.
This is about to spiral into a discussion of how goofy D&D economics are, but per its stats a mastiff costs about the same, and can carry about the same amount of stuff, as a pony. There's no reason to think an off-the-rack mastiff is more useful in combat than a pack pony. YGYR etc etc
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Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
This is about to spiral into a discussion of how goofy D&D economics are, but per its stats a mastiff costs about the same, and can carry about the same amount of stuff, as a pony. There's no reason to think an off-the-rack mastiff is more useful in combat than a pack pony. YGYR etc etc
That pony is also trained, just not trained for combat. You cannot just start strapping things to any equine and expect it to service and not run away or kick you and run away, it has to be trained first. It just isn’t trained for combat is all, the mastiff is.
So in a week or so i will start my first (real) campaign, i had a 2 others but those were just me and 2 of my friends messing around with 100% homebrew rules and story. The DM asked me to make my character and figure out the backstory. The backstory is important because it gives the character +1 to coolness, my question is about the character that i came up with and how good or viable it is compared to how cool it sounds hahaha.
I chose a Variant Human for a race because of the free feat i can get, a Fighter with a subclass of Samurai, and the feat i got was dual wield. On top of that his story is that he is a Ronin. So i have a dual wielding Ronin with 2 katanas.
If anyone has any feedback on this topic please do tell, i would really like for my first campaign to be a good one and not a total flop xD
Thanks in advance <3
No i intend to distribute my stats according to the personality of my character, so putting everything into one stat wont happen :D
Thank you for the advice <3
As a player who has played numerous fighters, I would suggest picking up a mastiff. It gives a fair amount of role-playing opportunities and allows for the fighter to gain more option while in combat. For only 25gp early on in your adventuring career.
Serious question, not trying to be snarky or pick a fight.
What do you do with the mastiff? If you’re size small you can ride it, I guess. Otherwise, it has 5 hp. It’s getting 1-shot by almost everything. And it’s going on it’s own initiative, so I don’t see how it gives the fighter character any more options.
You RP with it as your pet. It doesn’t fight with you or anything, it’s your dog. Your character does the same stuff with it that you do with your dog. You play with it and go for walks with it and have fun with it.
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25 gp is pocket change after a few sessions.
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I, too, would like to hear more about the combat options an untrained puppy gives you
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Oh, I get the pet angle. Pets can be great. I just don’t understand how it allows “more options in combat.” Partly because I just finished a campaign with a halfling pally who used a mastiff as his mount. That thing died all the time. Even when I would just use it run run up, I dismount, have it disengage and back away. Any AoE just kills it.
🤷♂️ You would have to ask WRE_Dopest, they’re the one who recommended it, not me.
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A Mastiff is a fairly low-investment creature that can contribute in combat. Buying a Mastiff assumes that it's a trained Mastiff (just as buying a horse assumes it's trained enough to be ridden). A trained Mastiff is useful in number of ways... for one, their Keen Hearing and Smell makes them valuable as allies for tracking. You'll have to wrestle a bit with just how much your DM will let them help in that case... they may be good at situational awareness, but it's not like they can tell you out-loud what they're smelling. At low levels, their bite is useful because it has the secondary effect of knocking an enemy prone, giving you advantage on your attacks. At higher levels, when its low to-hit and easily surpassed DC to avoid being knocked prone, it can help by performing the help action to give you advantage on an attack, or otherwise distracting enemies.
That all said... it also has 12 AC and 5 HP... if you're going to be using your mastiff in combat, get ready to buy a new mastiff in every town you come across. Still, even if you're not bringing them into combat, they could be helpful. If nothing else you could buy them a little wagon and they can help you carry stuff.
Anyway, as for the topic of this thread... my concern with Dual Wielding as a Samurai is that it's hard to combine that with your primary Samurai feature... Fighting Spirit. This is because two-weapon-fighting uses your bonus action, but you also trigger your Fighting Spirit with a bonus action. It's not terrible combination... it's not like you use Fighting Spirit every round, since it's more intended as something you use against high-priority targets or when you're low on health (since it grants Temp HP), but it's just one of those features that doesn't synergize well with dual wielding.
So, your idea isn't bad, but it just has one little redundancy. I will say, though, that you aren't required to play as the Samurai subclass in order to play a samurai-themed character. You could just as easily play as a Battlemaster, which is more dynamic and versatile and still present your character as a Samurai.
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Outside of combat a mastiff is amazing to have in a party. They’re great to have in camp during long rests to help detect incoming threats if nothing else. And a party with a mascot is always fun too.
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Great, it doesn't poop in your house. That doesn't mean it's useful in a fight
You want an animal companion with combat utility, be a ranger
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
If it’s trained enough to be a combat mount for a Halfling it’s trained enough to be a war dog for anyone else. Wardogs were actually things you could purchase in older editions. This edition they rolled it into the mount mastiff together. Yes, as a DM, for 25 gp your mastiff is a trained war dog in any campaign i DM. An untrained, or merely housebroken dog would be at most 20 - 50 cp in any campaign I DM.
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Something to keep in mind is that, within the context of D&D, a Gold Piece is less comparable to $1 as it is to $20. So 25 gp, within Faerun, is closer to spending $500, despite how casually players start throwing around gold pieces once you start adventuring. So it's less like giving someone $25 to buy a mutt, and more like spending half a grand getting a pure bred dog that has gone through at least half a year of training for the express purpose of accompanying others on long and potentially dangerous missions. I think a DM might rule that they're not necessarily trained to participate in combat... theoretically, they're trained to serve as mounts for small humanoids, not necessarily as war hounds. But it's not unreasonable to assume that they've been trained to understand the command "Attack", although anything more complicated than like... "Attack, Stay, Hide, Speak, etc." might be a bit much. Like... how do you command a dog to give you the Help action? Still, it's entirely dependent on your DM, but the utility is there... even if a Mastiff will always underperform compared to more dedicated companions that you get through subclass features.
Watch Crits for Breakfast, an adults-only RP-Heavy Roll20 Livestream at twitch.tv/afterdisbooty
And now you too can play with the amazing art and assets we use in Roll20 for our campaign at Hazel's Emporium
In my world, 1 gp is roughly analogous to $100, so 25 gp is like dropping $2,500 on a dog.
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This is about to spiral into a discussion of how goofy D&D economics are, but per its stats a mastiff costs about the same, and can carry about the same amount of stuff, as a pony. There's no reason to think an off-the-rack mastiff is more useful in combat than a pack pony. YGYR etc etc
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
That pony is also trained, just not trained for combat. You cannot just start strapping things to any equine and expect it to service and not run away or kick you and run away, it has to be trained first. It just isn’t trained for combat is all, the mastiff is.
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