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Go full Circe with a cat lady in the apartment complex. She'll lure them in, feed them, she has all the best toys, all the bells and whistles. Every time the players try to figure out if something's up tell them everything's legit. No poison in the food, her affection and adoration seem genuine, and the toys aren't giving off any bad juju vibes. Then when the cats start feeling sluggish after a nap have her do this: 
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Dec 7, 2017 08:30
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Keeshhound posted:Have them encounter an old animal of some kind, who talks at great length about "The Beast." The longer they talk to and indulge his tales, the more apparent it should become that instead of talking about a shoggoth or something ("it's appetite was never sated! It devoured everything in it's way, sparing nothing!!!",) he's talking about a roomba. This is great.
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Dec 7, 2017 10:23
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some kind of thing on a string that is incredibly hard to hit but they have to hit it, it's really important.
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Dec 7, 2017 10:29
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Long, elaborate chase sequence which has them in pursuit of the nefarious Red Dot.
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Dec 7, 2017 11:23
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A puzzle that can be solved two ways: 1: Charging at maximum speed down the hallway, then stopping and and yelling at the top of your lungs. 2: Sitting perfectly still and pointedly staring away from it.
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Dec 7, 2017 20:01
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Relentless fatigue sets in unless a sunny spot can be found. Alternately: accidentally traversing a sunny spot renders one unconscious. Or both!
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Dec 7, 2017 21:11
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Bad Munki posted:Relentless fatigue sets in unless a sunny spot can be found. This is a class in the game already!
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Dec 7, 2017 21:34
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Victory condition: PCs are positioned such that every PC can see every opponent, and no opponent can see any PC. Realistic mode (also easy mode): As above, but it doesn't have to be true as long as every PC a) believes it is true, and b) remains perfectly still. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 21:45 on Dec 7, 2017 |
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Dec 7, 2017 21:43
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Before anyone responds, I know that the best solution is "don't use 5e as your system" and I want to say that yes, I know, and I have every intention of learning Dungeon World or something but for the moment I have new players and we're 6 sessions in and I can't throw out 5e at the moment That said, how can I make non gridded combat work well? I'm in another campaign that I think is essentially an excuse for the DM to play Dark Souls with us and it's like 5 hours of dice and positioning and crunch and they're dear friends of mine but it's demonstrating to me how much I dislike crunchy miniatures gridded combat Does anyone run anything that's a compromise between entirely theater-of-the-mind and grid maps? I'd love some advice
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Dec 8, 2017 16:56
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Alright folks, here's one for ya. I have a thing that I put in a handout that was described as a wizard's tower that's a misshapen monstrosity that the wizard in question didn't have permission to build. But he did it anyway, AND got himself the right credentials to just give himself permission to do it in the first place. Problem is, I haven't really fleshed it out beyond that and wouldn't you know it, some folks wanna check it out because it sounds interesting for obvious reasons. So, uh, what would be fun and not just annoying to have in Groverhaus Wizard Tower? 
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Dec 8, 2017 16:59
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Well you see, this particular wizard wanted to install a new bathtub...
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Dec 8, 2017 17:04
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400lb Concrete Golem.
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Dec 8, 2017 17:26
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Waffles Inc. posted:Before anyone responds, I know that the best solution is "don't use 5e as your system" and I want to say that yes, I know, and I have every intention of learning Dungeon World or something but for the moment I have new players and we're 6 sessions in and I can't throw out 5e at the moment I did this for years. If most adventurers have a move of 30-35 feet, that's more than enough to close with your foes at the range where you're going to be doing your fighting. Basically, feel free to eyeball it and say that something like clearing a room is going to be 10-15 feet of movement, so 1/3 to 1/2 of a PCs full movement. Then logically adjust how much that move will cost based on locale. An enemy across a field will easily require two full moves to get to, while an enemy next to you requires nothing. Don't let crunch supercede the pace of fighting or the drama of the scenario, even in a crunch-focused game like 5e.
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Dec 8, 2017 17:32
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load-bearing bookshelves that creak ominously if a PC touches any of the interesting books/artifacts on them
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Dec 8, 2017 17:33
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He didn't have the right zoning for gravity. Certain rooms have less or more, or in the wrong direction. Big chandeliers. Tiny rooms. Rooms in chandeliers. Low-cost housing for monsters. The wizard is a monster slumlord. It's less a tower, more of a dimensional portal. The architecture allows planar travel.
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Dec 8, 2017 17:33
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Waffles Inc. posted:Does anyone run anything that's a compromise between entirely theater-of-the-mind and grid maps? I'd love some advice I'm a fairly new DM but despite playing on a VTT, I try and run an almost completely theater of the mind game, the only time it gets hard is when there's a battle with a bunch of different enemies, it gets hard to keep track of who is where. In general I just tell my players to ask me if they can do something and I'll let them know. So they'll say something like "Am I close enough to catch those four bandits in a cone of cold?" and I'll be like "Definitely the closest three, the fourth is far enough back that he'd be able to jump back and avoid it". Seems to work fairly well. Even when I do pull up a grid for simple combat, I tell them to not worry about the scale or measuring stuff, it's more a visual so everyone knows roughly where everyone else is.
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Dec 8, 2017 17:34
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trip9 posted:I'm a fairly new DM but despite playing on a VTT, I try and run an almost completely theater of the mind game, the only time it gets hard is when there's a battle with a bunch of different enemies, it gets hard to keep track of who is where. In general I just tell my players to ask me if they can do something and I'll let them know. So they'll say something like "Am I close enough to catch those four bandits in a cone of cold?" and I'll be like "Definitely the closest three, the fourth is far enough back that he'd be able to jump back and avoid it". Seems to work fairly well. Even when I do pull up a grid for simple combat, I tell them to not worry about the scale or measuring stuff, it's more a visual so everyone knows roughly where everyone else is. Yeah I think I'm going to have to shift to something like this. Where it all stems from is I hate having to use and create gridded maps, either on Roll20 using a tool to make the maps or crude sharpie-drawn on grid paper stuff because ultimately I have no art skill whatsoever, but I do have good narrative and description skill. Gridded combat is getting in the way of the players actually feeling immersed, I think, since instead of imagining their characters moving around in an actual space they're seeing a miniature move around on a sheet of grid paper with lines in sharpie
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Dec 8, 2017 17:41
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My group uses roll 20 for heavy, heavy combat in games like d&d and 40k....except when I'm running. I run a much simpler system and do almost all in ToTM, and there's a trick: the players are always right. What will kill ToTM is telling the player their declared action won't work, that they're out of range or can't land the aoe, whatever. If you always yield to how the players have built the scene in their head, doing it all verbally goes smoothly.
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Dec 8, 2017 17:53
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Tactical gridded combat is incredibly fun for some players (like me), but it's been known to leave other players cold. That's fine, not everything is going to appeal to everyone. If you're looking for a middle ground, there are a few approaches. One is the method taken by the old Marvel Superheroes FASERIP system or the more recent Last Stand (that one was released free by the author though I have no idea where you can find a copy), where instead of a precise 5 by 5 grid the battlefield is divided into much larger areas - kind of like sub-battlefields. One area could be the city streets, another area the tavern interior, another a residence rooftop, and you move from one area to the next to engage with foes as needed. Come to think of it, Spellbound Kingdoms uses this system as well. One method I used for a homebrew superhero game years ago was pretty close to this, but it dispensed with the areas delineation - we'd just have heroclix minis out to represent characters, and everything was very broadly, vaguely handwavey - you could move whatever distance seemed reasonable given the situation, and likewise the reach of your powers or what enemies you could attack. It was mostly a spatial visualization aid for an otherwise theatre-of-the-mind approach to combat. You didn't ask about immersion, but I feel the need to comment on your immersion concerns all the same. I've found that immersion isn't worth worrying about. It happens or it doesn't, and neither immersion nor a lack thereof is necessarily an obstacle to having fun. Some of the sessions I've played where I've felt the most connected to my character, and the most involved with the story, were in Burning Wheel while I was explicitly engaging with the mechanics to bring about mechanical-based changes to both my character and the narrative around him. Feeling like I'm "immersed" really can't compete with that, for me. Your mileage, of course, can and will vary, just understand that chasing after immersion may not be what all your players want - even if they think they do - so worrying about it outside of basic stuff like asking players to put their phones away (or whatever) isn't really worth it. EDIT: Jack B Nimble posted:there's a trick: the players are always right. This is good advice regardless of what system you use. Unless there's a clear reason to say "no, that doesn't make sense," if you're doing anything less precise than a normal grid you should always err on the side of letting players pull off the tactics and maneuvers they want. Falstaff fucked around with this message at 18:03 on Dec 8, 2017 |
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Dec 8, 2017 18:00
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Waffles Inc. posted:Before anyone responds, I know that the best solution is "don't use 5e as your system" and I want to say that yes, I know, and I have every intention of learning Dungeon World or something but for the moment I have new players and we're 6 sessions in and I can't throw out 5e at the moment -World isn't the best for Grid combat, 4e and Strike! tend to be better. That said, the biggest suggestion I have for running crunchy combat is have tons of environmental poo poo to play with. - There are traps (pitfalls, spinning blades, guillotine) complex traps can either occur on an initiative count or on beginning of a player's turn. - Cover and terrain (walls, pools of gathered rain, lava) - There are third party locals or animals, they won't attack but can be goaded into. (Pushing a guy towards an alligator or into a wizard's herb garden for instance) - Accept player suggestions for environmental distinctions. If you fear this will be over-used you can make establishing one cost an Inspiration but I'd urge you to not. (Is there a chandelier in this lobby? Absolutely!) - Use countdown timers to foreshadow "something" (I've used them to show when guard reinforcements would arrive, allowing counters to be added or removed by actions of the combatants. You could also use this for a tug-of war type battle.) - The enemy has siege weapons to be captured or some other player/enemy objective beyond just getting kills. (This turned an encounter with 6 goblins in one of my friend's games into something way more interesting.) - The enemy cannot be hurt or seen unless the players actively remove some advantage. (I've used an invisible Stalker in a bank that had to be ink-blasted to be seen for instance.) Also gimmick fights can be fun in moderation.
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Dec 8, 2017 18:32
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Ibblebibble posted:I have hinted to my players that a trained war bear is purchasable if they have enough funds and I need to figure out what to do when they inevitably scrounge up enough cash. Offer them *just* a warbear, or, if they're willing to help out tracking one down, the guy in the stall can fulfill his dream of taming and training a war-dire-bear! Players will almost always go for the second option if you jazz it up enough.
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Dec 8, 2017 20:35
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Waffles Inc. posted:Does anyone run anything that's a compromise between entirely theater-of-the-mind and grid maps? I'd love some advice You could try something like this: Combat is divided into notional areas that have nothing to do with the terrain. You can think of it as a track: PC ranged -- PC Support -- Frontline -- Monster Support -- Monster Ranged. You can move-action between areas on your side. You can't easily cross the frontline. Combatants on the Frontline can hit each other with regular melee weapons, or they can hit the opposing Support with Reach weapons. Every combatant on the frontline counts as engaged/adjacent with every other combatant on the frontline. If a PC wants to leave the frontline without using Disengage, they provoke opportunity attacks. Combatants on Support can hit the opponent's frontline with reach weapons. They can missile fire into the opponents Frontline. The can easily reach allies on the frontline. Combatants at Ranged can engage in missile fire or ranged spells with any opponent. If a PC wants to get to melee with the opponent's Support or Ranged, they have to come up with a way to do it - they can't just move-action through the fight and get there. Same goes for the monsters. Let them use movement abilities or describe their plan. AoE effects hit everyone in an area, so you can smash the opponent's Support or Ranged no problem, but dropping anything on the Frontline hits everyone there, allies and opponents alike. You can add things like "Knock a frontline opponent prone, can make a melee attack against a support opponent on your next turn" or whatever else. Generally say "yes" to players plans and work out how to keep things consistent.
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Dec 8, 2017 21:49
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Has anyone ever come up with something for a dnd-spirit of life to do in combat that isn't healing, plants, or cancer? My players will have the chance to piss one off soon, and I'd like to save the plants stuff for the nature assholes they may be pissing off later. Healing is out because I'd rather the enemies not heal, and cancer/body horror stuff is kinda off-tone for this game.
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Dec 9, 2017 05:17
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Time shenanigans? Clones that take a round or two to mature? The party has to drain the spring of life the spirit is residing in or they can't sufficiently damage it?
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Dec 9, 2017 05:39
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Maybe reducing PC healing until a condition is met, like breaking it's concentration?
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Dec 9, 2017 05:54
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Hi thread, i'm a new DM that's going to be starting with a group of mostly brand new players (5 total, 3 totally brand new, 2 that are already experienced) and i'm going to running them through The Sunless Citadel from the Tales of the Yawning Portal 5e books. Any tips that yall can give me on making this run smoothly? Will be running it over discord and using roll20 for maps and other visual stuff.
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Dec 9, 2017 10:08
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I'd recommend some way to do video chat if you can - physicality and facial expression are really helpful. Even if it's only you on video it will help. Say yes to things players want to do. You're allowed to back up if you really mess something up Combat is going to slow the hell out of your sessions for sure - there's a learning curve there for sure and it's kinda just fundamentally time consuming.
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Dec 9, 2017 10:14
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You're all learning, and you're all supposed to have fun. If you gently caress up a rule or have a problem, the general advice for DMs is to try to fake it and move on, but because you're all new, you should try to make a note of what went wrong and see if you can do it "right" in future. If someone's not learning to play and not enjoying themselves, something's gone wrong. It's a good idea to take a break and figure it out. If you really gently caress something up, it's fine to roll things back a bit, check the rules, and have another try because you're learning, and because it's supposed to be fun. If "oops, everyone died" turns out to be fun then that's fine, but if it's not, backtrack a little, figure out what happened, and do something to fix it. Don't stress about anything too much, make sure you get feedback at the end of the session, and try to do more stuff that people liked and less stuff that they didn't like. As a group, after the game or between games, definitely go over rules you messed up or that didn't look right or that didn't work how you'd think they did and try to understand what "should" have happened. Ask questions here and in the 5e thread, there's plenty of people who'll help you figure stuff out. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 10:49 on Dec 9, 2017 |
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Dec 9, 2017 10:44
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aegof posted:Has anyone ever come up with something for a dnd-spirit of life to do in combat that isn't healing, plants, or cancer? My players will have the chance to piss one off soon, and I'd like to save the plants stuff for the nature assholes they may be pissing off later. Healing is out because I'd rather the enemies not heal, and cancer/body horror stuff is kinda off-tone for this game. Are there any NPCs that the group cares about who could fall ill, and, not realizing the situation, ask them to intercede on their behalf with the spirit? Or maybe a new epidemic springs up, and the entire region freaks out because someone pissed off the spirit and it's refusing to help, so now everywhere they go people talk about how their mom is really sick and how much they'd like to "get their hands on those assholes."
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Dec 9, 2017 10:52
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Maybe the life spirit could focus on debuffs, but can only give them debuffs they've previously been healed of? You know, It's doing a "take back" on healing they've had throughout their lives.
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Dec 9, 2017 13:09
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aegof posted:Has anyone ever come up with something for a dnd-spirit of life to do in combat that isn't healing, plants, or cancer? My players will have the chance to piss one off soon, and I'd like to save the plants stuff for the nature assholes they may be pissing off later. Healing is out because I'd rather the enemies not heal, and cancer/body horror stuff is kinda off-tone for this game. Their own opposite - harm. Scars re-open, scratches turn into gashes, old wounds stop being past tense, etc. You can push the descriptors as far as you want or as little as you want for tone.
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Dec 9, 2017 14:08
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aegof posted:Has anyone ever come up with something for a dnd-spirit of life to do in combat that isn't healing, plants, or cancer? My players will have the chance to piss one off soon, and I'd like to save the plants stuff for the nature assholes they may be pissing off later. Healing is out because I'd rather the enemies not heal, and cancer/body horror stuff is kinda off-tone for this game. Have the spirit infuse them with excessive vitality, in a monkey paw/rear end in a top hat djinn way. Begin describing how they've begun to gently caress goblins up really good, then start having them accidentally strain their own tendons and crush potion vials in their grasp. Have impeccable reflexes turn into dizzying sensory overload. Have them be too restless for resting in between encounters. Of course, keep the advantages as pure narrative fluff and scour all sorts of spellbooks for fun status effects for disadvantages. Perhaps look for berserker-like abilities with a tradeoff to obligatorily slap on the characters, especially if it's a terrible loving idea for their class/build of choice. If you feel you can pull it off smoothly (and it can go very wrong if you're not certain the stars align for your group), you can pull the ultimate rear end in a top hat move in having them so constatly pumped on adrenaline they don't feel pain and laugh in the face of danger - and only know how much HP they've actually lost if they take a second to inspect their wounds. [edit] Inspirational material: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mq6NkgVzns4 Lichtenstein fucked around with this message at 15:26 on Dec 9, 2017 |
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Dec 9, 2017 15:22
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The spirit of life values ALL life. Even bacteria and parasites. Have the PCs actually become sick and debilitated because the ecology of their insides is all out of whack. Not like "spewing cancer blobs" but having flu or other viral symptoms.
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Dec 9, 2017 17:46
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Right before they attack, their horse suddenly needs veterenary bills paid right that moment. Their cousin's house collapses and they need to go spend an afternoon and a bunch of money fixing it. Someone decides not to pay them for work already done and there's nothing they can do about it. Sounds like bullshit, but hey, that's life.
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Dec 9, 2017 17:57
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Ratoslov posted:Right before they attack, their horse suddenly needs veterenary bills paid right that moment. Their cousin's house collapses and they need to go spend an afternoon and a bunch of money fixing it. Someone decides not to pay them for work already done and there's nothing they can do about it. Sounds like bullshit, but hey, that's life. Please don’t put mundane crap like this in your game unless your players are totally on board with it.
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Dec 9, 2017 18:22
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Ratoslov posted:Right before they attack, their horse suddenly needs veterenary bills paid right that moment. Their cousin's house collapses and they need to go spend an afternoon and a bunch of money fixing it. Someone decides not to pay them for work already done and there's nothing they can do about it. Sounds like bullshit, but hey, that's life. HatfulOfHollow posted:Please don’t put mundane crap like this in your game unless your players are totally on board with it.  That being said, yeah, a spirit of life doesn't need to be a spirit of growth or fertility even in an abstract sense. Doing some sliding doors stuff with it could make for a cool encounter - jump between timelines and have it bring in alternate versions the party has dealt with before to deal with.
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Dec 9, 2017 19:11
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A time based combat I've wanted to run for about a month is one that switched between two time periods which would just be 2 maps side to side.
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Dec 9, 2017 21:58
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aegof posted:Has anyone ever come up with something for a dnd-spirit of life to do in combat that isn't healing, plants, or cancer? My players will have the chance to piss one off soon, and I'd like to save the plants stuff for the nature assholes they may be pissing off later. Healing is out because I'd rather the enemies not heal, and cancer/body horror stuff is kinda off-tone for this game. it's a spirit of life, let it bring inanimate objects to life
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Dec 9, 2017 23:12
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So, finishing the latest "arc" (or single sessions tend to get a bit spread out into multiple sessions because we get cut short), and I'm trying to figure out what to do next. I've been winging it as I go, and I don't yet have an idea of what the BBG's end game really is, besides a vague idea. The campaign is basically inspired by Nausicca. There's a forest that's slowly swallowing the world full of giant bugs and deadly spores. So far, the big bad guy was after a weapon that turned him into a bug-monster thing. The party is party was sent for an artifact by a scientist friend of theirs and found the BBG's hideout inside the deadly forest where he was planning this, with dissected giant bugs, bug eggs and mushrooms from the deadly forest. I have a vague idea of the end game being he lures an injured baby giant bug to a city, in order to get enraged bigger bugs to follow to destroy the city, but I have no idea what his motives are in doing it, or how I should sort of bridge the gap to discovering and stopping this plan. There was a bit of suggestion of a "mad max" arc, which I love, but I don't know how it fits into the larger arc of the game. The scientist could send them for another artifact, but it just doesn't feel connected to the BBG's plot.
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Dec 10, 2017 05:06
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Are your players theorizing? Are any of those ideas cool? Maybe the badguy wanted power but his mind is being slowly consumed by the forest thanks to the bugblade. Maybe he's been manipulated by someone who benefits from the city's destruction? As for a side story arc, go for it? Having stuff not related to the main villain makes the world seem bigger, plus, then he can do stuff while they are away.
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Dec 10, 2017 16:39
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