Knowledge ( ) – Has information about a certain area of knowledge/goings-on.Researcher ( ) – Grants expertise on related check to find information through research if you have proficiency, proficiency if you don’t.Moneybags – Can back an endeavor and provide funding for an expedition or heist, expects to be paid back.Some roles may require multiple contact slots, or you can use multiple contact slots to give one contact multiple areas of proficiency. Here are a few contacts Roles that I’ve defined, but creating a new one is quite easy and merely needs to fit the paradigms of your game. Where there are parentheses, that means to define a specific area the contact is proficient in. (In my games I actually call it Contacts / Gather Info. Optional: The contacts skill can be rolled like a normal skill, representing a kind of Gather Information ability.Likes… is an attribute that just describes what the contact appreciates in case you have to woo them to get info. Roles are specific areas the contacts can help with and define the contact’s mechanical benefit.Each contact you have is assigned a Name / Description, Role, and a Likes… attribute.you get burned by your organization and lose contacts with it, you can then find or create new contacts through the game. A contact cannot just be switched out without some major in game event, i.e.Characters can fill a contacts slot with a contact they develop or come across.A character can have proficiency or expertise in contacts, giving them more contact slots.The character’s total rank in the Contacts skill is the maximum number of permanent contacts they can have.All characters have access to an additional skill called “Contacts” that is based on their charisma attribute.They are almost always there and willing to help so long as the characters are connected to them or haven’t done something to piss them off. A temporary contact or NPC would just function like an NPC, but a “Contact” is someone with a deep connection. The contacts I am describing are permanent or semi-permanent NPCs who each character has a relationship with and can drop in for advice, information, or a favor as needed. That has been my model for contacts, but with much more of a Shadowrun style vibe. They are treated as a person or organization you could gain information or help from. In 5e downtime options, the carousing path lets you gain nebulous favors from various people you have connected with. What Exactly do you consider a “Contact”?
I looked up various options, picked apart what other games did, and finally built what I feel is a very nice, simple system to develop permanent contacts in 5e. When we were doing the game with 3.5 (to expose some new players to how things use to be) we had a contacts system based on ranks in a contacts skill, but in newer versions of D&D that wasn’t a perfect fit.
#5e character builder point buy how to
With many of the characters having intrigue-based backgrounds or connections to organizations, I’ve been continuously picking at how to make their “contacts” feel meaningful and have some mechanical advantage. Using the the Tiered point buy amounts, the following point buy amounts may be used (see table).The last week or so I’ve been building out options in my Sharn-based Eberron game. In the event there is a 7th ability score (such as Luck), point buy should be adjusted to account for the additional ability score. In such cases, use the following starting amounts based on the level adjustment of the race selected. Point buy was designed for use with races without a level adjustment, but in scenarios where a player might want to play a level adjusted race the default values make their race choices more powerful than intended. For ability scores higher than 14, it costs more (see the table below).ĭepending on the intended strength of the players in the campaign, different amounts of point buy may be allowed. For ability scores of 14 or lower, you buy additional points on a 1-for-1 basis. You are allotted a number of points (usually 25) to "buy" stats, spreading them out among all your ability scores.