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Appreciate all the advice, thank you. Going to take a ride down to my local shop tomorrow.
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Sep 8, 2017 01:10
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| # ? May 14, 2024 19:47 |
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I'm committing to running curse of strahd. I got the book in today and that tear out map in the back is beautiful, should make the perfect centerpiece to the table if I block out the legend. I haven't been this creatively fired up in a while and I'm looking forward to running it. Mostly just reading up and planning the tarokka card reading setpiece and death house at the moment. I'm thinking of switching to a different currency system once they get into Barovia to nerf the slightly ridiculous amount of gold my party has from an overly generous dm before me who let them open a tavern (named twin peaks, after the really lovely hooters-like restaurant that was home to a big biker gunfight in our town) at level 2 while being incredibly generous with profits. Apparently, Barovian currency has Strahd's face minted on it so I'm thinking of having a Vistani trader offer to exchange currencies at a ripoff rate, unbeknownst to the party. This way I can nerf their wallets quietly with an interesting encounter and switch over to an immersive currency system that I can actually work into the story. I also just want to eliminate a lot of money conversion that comes with all the smaller pieces of currency and eliminate exp crunching at the end of the session with milestone levelling. Anything I can do to save myself some busywork.
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Sep 8, 2017 02:45
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Curse of Strahd is good so I Hope you have fun. Just remember to play Strahd Smart.
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Sep 8, 2017 02:57
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tweet my meat posted:I'm committing to running curse of strahd. I got the book in today and that tear out map in the back is beautiful, should make the perfect centerpiece to the table if I block out the legend. I haven't been this creatively fired up in a while and I'm looking forward to running it. Mostly just reading up and planning the tarokka card reading setpiece and death house at the moment. Starting over with fresh characters is probably the best way to do curse of strahd
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Sep 8, 2017 03:07
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Proud Rat Mom posted:Starting over with fresh characters is probably the best way to do curse of strahd Since the days of yore, putting characters people care about in Barovia is considered a Dick Move. Always run it with fresh characters IMO. And don't skip the Death House.
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Sep 8, 2017 03:16
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Also milestone levelling is a bit trickier than normal in curse of strahd, as you have like 6 (at level 3)levels to place out, and locations + goals will vary a lot depending on the reading and party.
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Sep 8, 2017 03:26
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Eh they don't wanna be bothered rolling new characters at the start (neither do I honestly, it always takes up most of the first session) and I've warned them that it's a very tough adventure and to not get attached to their sheets. I know two of them are going to just roll the exact same character with a slightly changed name anyways if I did start fresh, so gently caress it. I'm planning to take away some of their gear and gold, which was given a bit too generously, but the characters are still pretty fresh at mostly levels 2 and one at 3, only having run a few short sessions of dicking around with the old gm who wound up not liking dm'ing and the Mad Manor of Astabar free adventure I ran (which is good if you enjoy spooky haunted house adventures designed for fresh parties) Death House looks like a fun-rear end quest and I have no plans to skip it. edit:Yeah it looks like milestones could get a bit tricky if you get a bad draw from the reading leaving all the milestones too easily accessible or in high level areas. I might fudge the results a bit on the fly if it's looking like that's the case, but I like the idea of objective based leveling so I'm gonna stick with it. tweet my meat fucked around with this message at 03:44 on Sep 8, 2017 |
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Sep 8, 2017 03:38
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AlphaDog posted:THAC0 also gets smaller as it gets better. It's not really a score though, it's a math shortcut, and the only reason it's backwards is that it's derived from AC which is also backwards. This means that when something says it gives you +1 to hit, it lowers your THAC0 by 1. Or it adds 1 to the d20 roll, which gives the same result. Anyway, it's easy to intuit that because AC increases as it goes down, so does your to-hit number, so a +1 bonus means -1 unless you apply it to a die result instead of your static to-hit number. My new favorite way to look at THAC0 is to use it as the target number. d20 + modifiers + enemy AC. If the result is equal to or greater than your THAC0, you hit. This has all of the advantages of Target20 in that positive modifiers are always positive and vice-versa, but without requiring you to reverse-engineer a "Base Attack Bonus".
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Sep 8, 2017 04:52
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gradenko_2000 posted:My new favorite way to look at THAC0 is to use it as the target number. Splitting up the +/- modifiers to a single roll between the player and the dm is really dumb. The biggest benefit of a BAB is that the person who rolls the die has all the numbers that he needs to actually add to the roll and it doesn't change depending on who he attacks
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Sep 8, 2017 05:20
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esquilax posted:Splitting up the +/- modifiers to a single roll between the player and the dm is really dumb. The biggest benefit of a BAB is that the person who rolls the die has all the numbers that he needs to actually add to the roll and it doesn't change depending on who he attacks I don't disagree, but any further simplification would require switching to a full ascending AC system anyway. The value of the "Target20" or this "THAC0 as target number" methods is that it lets you run old-school D&D combat in a more intuitive manner without a minimum of conversion-work needed, provided that the DM is willing to disclose the exact AC of the monster in order to let the player have all the pieces needed to declare a hit-or-miss by themselves. The other other method that lets the AC be hidden on the DM's end is to use the formula [THAC0 - (modifiers * -1) - d20 roll], so that the player does all the computation on their end, and then reveals the AC that they can hit, but this is drastically more complicated given the use of subtraction.
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Sep 8, 2017 06:42
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Like, you can just make ascending AC out of THAC0 and lose literally nothing. The issues post-AD&D games had wasn't that numbers went up, it's that they went up with abandon, tied to nothing. THAC0 doesn't work because numbers go down, it works because the devs actually tied poo poo to the d20. Like there's something hilarious to be said about "The d20 engine" not actually utilizing the d20 statistically at all. It's a very D&D thing.
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Sep 8, 2017 08:21
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https://twitter.com/cecianasta/status/906167035108962305
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Sep 8, 2017 17:04
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So how do most people handle the tarroka card reading in strahd? Did you cheat or just let the cards fall where they fall? I was thinking of rigging it a tiny bit by removing a few choice cards pre-session, specifically the King of Spades/Darklord for sure since no ally against strahd is boring and my players would probably just think that there was never a potential ally in the first place and the reading was for show, 2 of stars/diviner since that puts an artifact in the tser pool campsite itself which is kinda laughable, maybe the cards that put the artifacts at the ivlis river crossroads since that's really close to the camp as well, but I do wanna keep most of the random elements.
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Sep 8, 2017 17:55
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tweet my meat posted:So how do most people handle the tarroka card reading in strahd? Did you cheat or just let the cards fall where they fall? I did the reading by myself just to see how it worked and it placed an item in Ravenloft. I didn't like that, so I read through the locations and chose from there. 1st was in the Blue Water Inn in Vallaki, 2nd was in Argynvostholdt, 3rd was in Tsolenka Pass. I made their ally the Mad Mage, but left the location random since it really didnt matter.
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Sep 8, 2017 22:55
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tweet my meat posted:So how do most people handle the tarroka card reading in strahd? Did you cheat or just let the cards fall where they fall? I personally like to let it fall were it may, but removing some locations you don't want is fine.
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Sep 9, 2017 09:29
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I had to fudge mine so that all of the Fortunes didn't show up in the same 2x2 area.
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Sep 9, 2017 19:32
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Mendrian posted:I had to fudge mine so that all of the Fortunes didn't show up in the same 2x2 area. Where was they? I had 2 in the swamp, but they pulled the guy that needs to go to amber temple and one in the castle so it wasn't a problem.
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Sep 9, 2017 19:47
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I'm exaggerating. I had 2 show up in Vallaki, which is the first place the PCs went with zero prompting. One in the burgeomeister's mansion and the other in Van Richten's cart, both of which the players hit the same day and both of which are pretty softball to obtain. I decided to give them whichever one they found first and just draw again for the other. If they had spent any time hunting those things down I would have given it to them but they literally stumbled into one after the other.
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Sep 9, 2017 19:55
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A friend of mine is running a game for a few local kids and their parents. He was complaining about the official sheets not being easy to follow for the kids, so I took a stab at making a simple colour coded sheet (that totally rips off some character sheets for playing 4E with kids that I've seen a few times). It needs a second page for spells/feats/class abilities/racial abilities - but I haven't got to that yet. Are there any glaring omissions from this sheet? I also started making some cards the kids could use to learn the action economy. The two sides of the one for standard actions are below. The idea is that the kids can look at the card to see what they can do and, once they have taken the action, they can put the card face-down in front of them to show they have acted.  
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Sep 10, 2017 14:41
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Probably don't fill in "1d" with attacks/spells, since there are a lot of common ones that have at least two dice, like a greatsword.
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Sep 10, 2017 15:44
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Time Cowboy posted:Before y'all start going around again about edition wars...
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Sep 10, 2017 20:09
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I would also add improvise an an action to that action sheet.
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Sep 11, 2017 03:42
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I would add in a box for Proficiency Bonus, probably near the ability score modifiers, since most rolls are ability score modifier + proficiency bonus. Unrelated, but I like this style of character sheet for showing off various stat relationships and derivations: 
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Sep 11, 2017 04:44
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Here's the new UA with stats for Eladrin and Gith PCs. https://media.wizards.com/2017/dnd/downloads/UA-Eladrin-Gith.pdf It really makes me miss the 4e Githzerai.
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Sep 11, 2017 20:41
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Gith look and sound like the most try-hard Star Wars Expanded Universe race from the 1990s. Welp, that's my input.
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Sep 11, 2017 21:05
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That's kind of boring. Read the monster manual I guess.
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Sep 11, 2017 21:28
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"Hold on, let me see roll to randomly see what my personality is for this session." Boy that's a character gimmick that won't get old as gently caress fast.
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Sep 11, 2017 21:31
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Did they forget to give the Eladrin a +2?
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Sep 11, 2017 21:58
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Caphi posted:Did they forget to give the Eladrin a +2? MMAgCh fucked around with this message at 22:17 on Sep 11, 2017 |
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Sep 11, 2017 22:05
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ProfessorCirno posted:"Hold on, let me see roll to randomly see what my personality is for this session." CN Eladrin Wild Magic Sorc
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Sep 11, 2017 22:20
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im an eladrin raised by kenku
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Sep 11, 2017 22:24
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I've been using trinkets a lot more lately as a fun way to give my characters interesting loot without having to worry about balance. I was planning on taking the table into curse of strahd, but apparently CoS has its own, gothic themed of course, trinket table! Honestly trinkets are like my favorite type of loot. Small and simple, and some with surprisingly useful applications for a creative player and a flexible dm. I think I'm gonna come up with a lot of fun little bonuses to some of these trinkets like a one time +2 to any roll with the dice made from a famous charlatan's knuckles, or a point of inspiration for having the courage to eat a pickled ghoul tongue from a jar you found in the mud. tweet my meat fucked around with this message at 22:56 on Sep 11, 2017 |
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Sep 11, 2017 22:47
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Is it me or do githyanki kind of suck for anything you might want to do with one They get +2 strength, which is nice, but then they get light and medium armor proficiency which seems dumb because anyone who wants strength already has that. They also get lovely spells based on Intelligence, except misty step which is good. Githzerai are much better overall.
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Sep 12, 2017 00:26
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Enola Gay-For-Pay posted:Is it me or do githyanki kind of suck for anything you might want to do with one Githyanki Bladelock? = P
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Sep 12, 2017 00:49
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mango sentinel posted:Githyanki Bladelock? = P With hexblade they can use cha instead of str. In the first version it was only one handers, idk about the new one in Xanathar's. Either way, this is a toilet tier UA.
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Sep 12, 2017 01:31
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ProfessorCirno posted:"Hold on, let me see roll to randomly see what my personality is for this session." You could really absorb all those seasonal "personalities" into one character. Like, Winter is one person no prob.
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Sep 12, 2017 01:36
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I guess, I GUESS, it's the first race that has +2 to wisdom.
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Sep 12, 2017 01:57
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Krinkle posted:I guess, I GUESS, it's the first race that has +2 to wisdom. Firbolg gets Wisdom +2 and Strength +1.
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Sep 12, 2017 02:04
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Enola Gay-For-Pay posted:Is it me or do githyanki kind of suck for anything you might want to do with one Yeah basically the +2 strength doesn't really mean unless maybe to meet strength requirements on heavy armour but even then its meh. Like the intention is that they all become eldrich knights but the proficiency is pointless then. Maybe like an arcane trickster or something who just doesn't bother with stealth at all? Like best case scenario is you play a wizard and get heavy armour prof from something.
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Sep 12, 2017 02:07
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Githyanki mystics and wizards and wizard/fighters, githzerai monks, and I guess clerics, and I really guess cleric/wizards. Yanki are the far, far better of the two; zerai aren't useless, but aren't really amazing outside of specifically monks, whereas yanki are a good choice basically any time you combine wizardly poo poo with fighterly poo poo, and can make some kinda hilariously tanky wizards, which I guess sorta fits the lore, but it's weird they get armor proficiency and not weapon proficiency. I mean, it's not weird, it makes sense because weapon proficiency may as well not exist, whereas armor proficiency actually matters, but fluff wise it's weird.
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Sep 12, 2017 04:48
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