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kaffo posted:Holy Christ that's a lot of words which I'm not reading Yeah I didn't want to hijack with a bunch of garbage nonsense or anything but y'know how these things go. Minis look rad, I played a game recently where the DM printed all his terrain and minis. There's a ton of great stuff online for that. Right now we're using TTS but in person printing makes things so convenient.
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Mar 19, 2018 22:46
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Well, this last session for my Sunday group was really interesting. Following an attempted assassination on the group and the city's Grand Magus, the party have found out who placed the bounties on all their heads and are now trying to figure out where to head next. There were some really wonderful roleplay moments, especially when the party's leader tried to place the Grand Magus under House Arrest to stop her from leaving the city and I think I finally managed to Push some Buttons and get some nice emotional reactions from most of the group at one point or another. I've been told it was the best session so far, which isn't bad considering I've been DM-ing for less than a year and am now finally finding my feet (I took over DM-ing at the end of the last major plot arc since the previous DM hasn't had a chance to play a character for over a decade and I had plenty of ideas to finish up the overarching storyline he set up). Given the plot development in this latest session, the party have decided on two potential locations to try and follow up on the leads given to them regarding the reoccurring villainess and her Demonic ally who tried to have them killed. The first location is an elven city that the party has previously visited. This location has an established storyline involving one of the 'Sects' being heavily involved with summoning demons and general Evil Cult activity. While the party did take care of one aspect of this, they've not yet been back to the area to follow up, so I have plenty of hooks for them to get tied up in. The other one, however, is a city run by pirates and is basically the biggest 'Hive of Scum and Villainy' on the continent. While I have a general idea of the potential threats that an average level 17 party might face in such a city (one of those being specific to the Watchperson Paladin who is going to want to arrest the whole drat city), I want to have some fun if they end up going to this location and would appreciate some interesting potential side quests that they can get roped into since they've never been here before. gomababe fucked around with this message at 23:12 on Mar 19, 2018 |
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Mar 19, 2018 23:07
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I took up a lot of advice from this thread and folks the session went really well. I radically changed my DMing up based on what I was reading and I guess I was giving players too much information, and stringing them along rather than allowing them to engage with the world. Also we were over relying on props and went overboard in tabletop sim, I just went back to a simple board to draw on and things worked out real well. I still have prevailing questions: what is a good way to humble my party who have been very lucky so far and pretty much have overcome every adversity pretty easily, without making it feel unfun? So far the story was that the Duke was gonna betray them, and they caught wind of it so instead of following the plot hook I set up they just peace'd out of the city and I have to come up with something else. Right now they are mid-escape from the city via catacombs.
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Mar 19, 2018 23:11
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Phi230 posted:I took up a lot of advice from this thread and folks the session went really well. I radically changed my DMing up based on what I was reading and I guess I was giving players too much information, and stringing them along rather than allowing them to engage with the world. Also we were over relying on props and went overboard in tabletop sim, I just went back to a simple board to draw on and things worked out real well. The Duke says "wait a second, they ran before I could backstab them - they must be on to me, and that makes them a threat." So he sends thugs after them. They haven't avoided the plot - instead they made an enemy, and one they can't really defeat by just killing poo poo.
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Mar 19, 2018 23:18
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Phi230 posted:I still have prevailing questions: what is a good way to humble my party who have been very lucky so far and pretty much have overcome every adversity pretty easily, without making it feel unfun? Players humble themselves, IMO. Eventually they will get unlucky. There's no reason to force the issue. If they feel like real untouchable badasses they will start getting sloppy and something bad will happen. Until then let them enjoy it.
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Mar 19, 2018 23:20
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:The Duke says "wait a second, they ran before I could backstab them - they must be on to me, and that makes them a threat." So he sends thugs after them. They haven't avoided the plot - instead they made an enemy, and one they can't really defeat by just killing poo poo. The thing is the prevailing idea among the party was to stroll up to the Duke and merk him. Their success is getting to their heads. I didn't say a word during their deliberations but a couple players had to talk everyone down and suggest they just leave rather than walk into an unwinnable fight, or walk into the trap that the Duke had set up for them.
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Mar 19, 2018 23:27
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Phi230 posted:I took up a lot of advice from this thread and folks the session went really well. I radically changed my DMing up based on what I was reading and I guess I was giving players too much information, and stringing them along rather than allowing them to engage with the world. Also we were over relying on props and went overboard in tabletop sim, I just went back to a simple board to draw on and things worked out real well. Yeah that duke is going to put a price on their heads that is going to follow them everywhere until they decide to do something about it.
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Mar 19, 2018 23:31
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Actually that push-pull of arrogance and caution sounds great, let them keep doing that. It's not like they leaped directly into a volcano because "we're big fuckin' heroes guys, and we'll figure it out"
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Mar 19, 2018 23:40
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The thing is that they ambushed French Musketeers and found orders/documents outlining a plot by French + HRE to forcibly convert the rhenish areas to catholicism so that's a big motivator for the duke to hunt the party to suppress that getting out they still have to escape which is gonna be a big deal so they haven't yet parsed that information fully I guess I can angle this to be that they've gotten involved in something that they can't exactly ignore
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Mar 19, 2018 23:59
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:Players humble themselves, IMO. Echoing this. Start mathing the fights out ahead of time and make sure your combat is tight. This is not easy to do and takes work, I've never personally been good at it, but there's a lot of grey area between "every fight is easily beaten" and "unwinnable fights." Give them a fight where a character goes down. Give them a fight where a bad dice roll means someone is unconscious, and see what happens from there. Just be sure you have a plan for when they don't win. The trite classic is "you wake up in the dungeon..." but there are more creative things you can do within your setting I think. Players and characters are different, and if you put things in front of players they want to win, and they assume that the game is one they are supposed to win, so they will take challenges they absolutely should not unless you communicate very clearly that some fights cannot be won. Once your players learn this and learn to start sizing up every fight as one that they need to think about, plan for, and carefully consider avoiding, it's fine. Until that point you have to feed them that information. Or just lay that out in a zero session and Let It Be Known that that's something you're going to be doing. But yeah, don't be afraid to put realistic threats in the world and let players run into them, just don't wait until the encounter to let people know that you're including those kinds of threats because a lot of newer players assume that all challenges are meant to be overcome by beating them, rather than by running from them. Sometimes the problem that needs to be solved isn't "killing the bad guy," it's "escaping alive." Edit: Introduce NPCs that the players Know To Be Badasses and then clown on those NPCs in a way your PCs can see happen but cannot prevent, clown on them viciously and then make something happen that indicates that the players would have been next if the train hadn't come at just that moment or whatever. The goal is to show your players that there are threats in the world, you don't always have to do that by clowning on the players. You can also "humble" them by doing things to the NPCs they care about that they are powerless to stop because it happens off camera and they find out about it later. Paramemetic fucked around with this message at 00:11 on Mar 20, 2018 |
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Mar 20, 2018 00:08
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To expound on that, I wouldn't recommend doing stuff off-camera without player input unless they've specifically been told it could happen and been unable to prevent it in some way. It should follow as a consequence. "Guys if we don't stop the Council from invading Thaldor a lot of people might get killed." *players fail to stop the Council* "Player favorite NPC Peddler Pete was in a border town that was invaded by Council forces and killed" : good "The Duke killed Peddler Pete in retaliation because you managed to escape his assassination plot" : bad, IMO Negative outcomes should come from negative performance, for the most part. A link, however tenuous, is important. Otherwise the deck will feel stacked and the event will feel spiteful and retaliatory.
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Mar 20, 2018 00:20
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Zodack posted:I think there's nothing inherently wrong with saying "you're dumped in a big city and here's what you know is going on, it's up to you to facilitate yourselves for a bit". Zodack posted:Your Maeve example is what I did (well, your Maeve is the ideal 10 and mine were more 6's) for their shopping trips and whatever else I threw out because I knew dumping them in a city would mean I needed to have a list of information for whatever NPC they hit to dole out. I obviously need to do it harder and make my fist hammier. A ha. I think I see the root of your problem: You're talking about doling out a list of information, I'm talking about roping the PCs into encounters where information may or may not be dispensed. Do you see the difference? It's not about being ham-fisted, it's about making it such that poo poo is actually happening in your world - and more importantly, happening to the PCs! Such that interacting with an NPC isn't, "Blah, blah blah; back-story, exposition," but rather, "Oh, gently caress, these guys want to take our stuff!" Or maybe, "drat it, if we let these assholes go unchecked, something or someone we care about is going to get messed up in a hurry!" Or maybe, "I have no idea what is happening, but people are suddenly trying to kill me!" Zodack posted:I think you're assuming that in even the most obvious cases my PCs will react and some of them won't. That's because you're not presenting them with situations which they cannot ignore. It's the difference between, "Hey, so there are some folks from the Neo-Orthodox Sect - you know, that thing that's super important in your back-story? - here in the city and it seems like maybe they're gaining converts. What do you do?" and "Right, so you're walking through the market square and there's an unkempt dude in blue robes haranguing people from a soapbox. Before you can really figure out what he's on about, he spots your Ur-Orthodoxy pendant, locks eyes with you, and screams, 'Fie, an apostate approaches! There! There, brothers and sisters, is the true cause of your suffering! Vent your wrath upon him! God demands it!' This by itself would be little more than an annoyance if it weren't for the surprisingly sizeable group of folks who look ready to do just that. A few of them start pushing their way towards you and a toothless old beggar crone sitting there grabs a handful of the hem of your tunic, muttering something about heretics. What do you do?" The first gives you information, but gives you exactly zero entrepot into how to engage with that information. It puts all of the onus on the player to figure out what to actually do with that information. The second presents the player with a situation that's right on the edge of getting out of control and asks a bunch of immediate, pointed questions: Are you willing to do harm to this mad priest's "converts," or is discretion the better part of valor? Do you fight or run? And in either case, are you willing to punch a crippled old lady in the face to get her to let go of your tunic? Or are you instead going to boldly step forward, put on your best oratory-voice, and engage this rear end in a top hat in a little old-fashioned market-square theological trash-talk? Oh, and yeah, it still gives you the information because a) you know these Neo-Orthodox jerks are here in the city because you can see one right in front of you, and b) you know they're gaining converts because a whole passel of 'em are looking to beat your rear end more or less right now. The first gives you information that you theoretically could do something with, the second gives you information and actually makes you do something with it. Whatever happens next - a fight with the outnumbering rabble, a tense chase scene through the crowded market, a theology throw-down, or maybe all three - is going to involve active, immediate, engaging decision-making on the part of the player, because it is obvious to everyone present that doing nothing isn't really an option. Is this making more sense? Ilor fucked around with this message at 00:36 on Mar 20, 2018 |
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Mar 20, 2018 00:32
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Ilor posted:Yes, there is something inherently wrong with it if your players are not self-starters. This is doubly true if the stuff they "know is going on" is uninteresting to them. Or worse, it interests them but they don't know what to do with/about it. No, yes, yes. The GM provides (most of) the world, but it’s not their responsibility to provide all of the story. PC players are participants, not people being interrogated (“what do you do, motherfucker?”) or an audience. It’s fine for the GM to say “here’s what I can provide, and here’s what I need from you”. If the PC players don’t want what’s on offer, they should say what they would rather do, so the GM can work around that if they choose to. If they don’t know what to do, they need to say that. “The flood threatening to wipe out the village is cool, but I don’t know how we can turn that into a really cool long-term enemy, which is what I want.” It’s not the GM’s responsibility to provide a fun game. The GM is another player who deserves to have fun, and the PC players need to contribute to that as much as the other way around. Most of the problems I’ve had with reticent PC players, though, have been shyness. Getting them used to talking at the beginning of each session helps. In one campaign I had people tell a story about the childhood/past of the character to your left at the start of the session. (If the GM was to your left, you used a minor character from the previous session.) in another it was “what does the player to your left most want out of this session?” Get them talking and thinking outside their own character’s mechanics and things might open up. Also the second session is hilarious because nobody remembers anyone’s back story, and I encouraged people to work the other players’ stories in. And: sometimes players incl GM don’t want compatible things. That’s OK, you can do something else together or switch players.
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Mar 20, 2018 00:49
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sebmojo posted:Stumped players advice Nehru the Damaja posted:An addendum to said stumped players advice DivineCoffeeBinge posted:Seat of the pants GMing, cool story, and other advice First of all, I love that story, Divine Coffee Binge. Do you happen to have a link to that thread or would I require archives to get access? I'm a sucker for those sorts of success stories (and I honestly consider them something of a role model for what I should aim for). Secondly, all of this advice is golden. I wish I'd posted sooner! Dameius posted:Villain plot hook idea I really like this, to the point where I'm considering ditching my initial idea for drawing the party in. To keep it simple, my idea was at some point a mysterious droid tries - key word being tries, since it'll get caught in the act and be forced to stop - to steal their landed ship. Then they either catch/blow up the droid (letting them get information about where it came from), it gets away (but it left navigation data in the navcomputer in its haste to escape), or some zany third option happens. At any rate, it sets things up for them to stumble into the midst of the villain's (blissfully unaware, perhaps) fleet and things go from there. The major reason I'm thinking of ditching my idea is that it feels too rigid with too many points of failure, and I don't think I could use both hooks simultaneously. "Oh crap, look at that fleet!" loses its impact a bit if you already know of its existence, and if the Great Capital Ship Heist comes before the party's dinky little Skipray Blastboat (for the unfamiliar, think a patrol boat in terms of size) it makes one wonder why the villain would want to add that of all things to his collection. After this I'll try to stop vomiting so many words everywhere so that other people can get advice.  Anyway, thanks for both being patient and so incredibly helpful to me!
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Mar 20, 2018 01:08
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Subjunctive posted:No, yes, yes. Also keep in mind that what Zodack is describing is effectively the 2nd session (yeah, it's really the 5th, but the first 4 were on a deserted island) and really the first time the PCs have been caught up in wider world events. How many players do you know - even good ones - who are ready to jump in and self-start a plot in their first or second session? The situation as described sounds like a perfect storm of a passive GM passively trying to induce action from passive players. And trust me, I get it - I've had maddeningly passive players in the past too and it is incredibly frustrating. But I'm actually willing to cut the players a lot more slack because they have WAY less information about what is going on in the world and even what is possible than the GM. A good GM can coax players out of passivity by getting them engaged, and the most reliable way to do that is to put the PCs into situations in which the players actively have to make immediate choices about what to do to get out of what's happening right now rather than drop them in a sand-box and hope for the best. Or worse, get bent out of shape because none of them even asked if they could have a shovel and a bucket, because you just assumed that they knew that such castle-making tools were freely available.
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Mar 20, 2018 01:16
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Going back to a previous comment, also, the "what do you do" question is fantastic but it needs to be pointed at an immediate situation. "You're in a place - what do you do?" is not good because you actually have an inundation of options, including "nothing" and "I leave." It's like if someone says "hey, go to the store and get me the thing I need" when you don't know what the hell the thing is, or which store, or what the person needs. It's actually unhelpful. "This thing is happening, right now, and it cannot be ignored - what do you do?" That's the ticket, right there. It's not a forced choice question, because you can do anything in response (if you're willing to accept the consequences), it's just a forced response question, because the consequences for "eh I stand there and do nothing" are not good.
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Mar 20, 2018 01:39
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^^^^ This.
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Mar 20, 2018 02:11
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Soup Inspector posted:First of all, I love that story, Divine Coffee Binge. Do you happen to have a link to that thread or would I require archives to get access? I'm a sucker for those sorts of success stories (and I honestly consider them something of a role model for what I should aim for). Secondly, all of this advice is golden. I wish I'd posted sooner! the notable gaming experiences thread is a treasure (here's my posts in the thread if you're interested in my Star Wars stories in specific, but read as much as possible, thread is cool and good).
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Mar 20, 2018 02:22
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Yep, with the addendum that 'I do nothing' is fine, but entails consequences, probably bad. Dungeon/apocalypse World is really good about this and is worth a read even if you don't want to gm it.
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Mar 20, 2018 02:28
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Ilor posted:
Your assessment of the situation is very on point, and I appreciate everyone's diligence I'm hammering home some of these similar themes. I'm bent out of shape exactly because this is happening, but not because of my players, but because I thought and tried to let them have fun by hiding the shovel and bucket from them, and I thought that was okay and proper.
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Mar 20, 2018 02:29
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Naw, man, I get it. Don't beat yourself up too much over it. Just adjust your tack and try a different heading. The fact that you're even here inviting us to do a post-mortem on your session is a good sign. FWIW, I've sort of come around to the opinion that broadcast games like Critical Role and its ilk bear little or no resemblance to real, actual, honest-to-gods-happened-at-the-table role playing. For one thing, if people were that...dramatic at my table, I might look at them askance the first time, then tell them to knock the gently caress off the next. Like sure, I love a good voice or accent or facial tick or whatever, but all the slow, menacing, mood-setting descriptions from the GMs generally just have me rolling my eyes. I'm to the point now where if people ask what RP is like, I tell them NOT to look at poo poo like that because it's not representative. It gives people totally the wrong impression and creates unrealistic expectations. It can be entertaining for what it is, but actual RP it ain't. I mean, if you don't spend like the first 45 minutes of any given session just bullshitting with your friends and just generally talking poo poo, I'ma go out on a limb and say you're probably doing it wrong.
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Mar 20, 2018 03:19
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Ilor posted:Naw, man, I get it. Don't beat yourself up too much over it. Just adjust your tack and try a different heading. The fact that you're even here inviting us to do a post-mortem on your session is a good sign. I think about 10-15% of a session really digging into atmosphere is a good proportion, and about the same amount bullshitting and talking about second-hand cars.
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Mar 20, 2018 03:27
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I really, truly enjoy some good flavorful description. A few sentences of mood setting can really put me in a good space. And playing characters out in a dramatic way can be good on occasion. It gets exhausting if it's every single sentence. I haven't listened to a lot of Critical Role or so on, I don't get immersed in the stories and, like you guys are saying, it's not roleplaying. The pure practical reality of it being a production for general consumption means it's not going to be that. I like playing a character and getting into it, but I kinda draw the line at voices for myself. As a DM I'll throw an accent on occasionally if it conveys some information. The PAX Acquisitions Inc. games are okay but mostly because Perkins is very good and does a lot of things right in my opinion. It's still an obvious production that plays more to the audience than an actual game would. I think the "C-team" stuff is not so good. Holkins doesn't get me off at all. I don't know of any other interesting to watch games because generally speaking RPGs are not fun to watch. Like you said, most games are a lot of poo poo-talking and fuckin' around with friends. I play with some friends in TTS over Discord Voice and we usually spend the first 20 minutes bitching about someone being late, then most scenes end up involving weird meta references or someone just running with a ridiculous scenario until the DM says "no none of that happens" and as media for others to enjoy it would all be garbage basically. I'm sure some of the roleplaying game based podcasts could be cool but they definitely aren't representative, even the ones meant to sell the product (especially the ones to sell a product, maybe).
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Mar 20, 2018 04:00
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Soup Inspector posted:I really like this, to the point where I'm considering ditching my initial idea for drawing the party in. Keep both. First the fleet heist to introduce the big bad, which will understandably refocus their priorities some and then on a mission they come across that droid, either as their intended target or from some GM divined luck. Either way, the droid and/or the ship associated with it has the nav charts needed to one of the fleets staging areas or next target (maybe the droid was doing recon/scouting for target location?). That way your players have something actionable for the next session and you can recycle most of your work/effort you've already done, but just shift it to a different point in the story arc.
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Mar 20, 2018 04:40
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AceClown posted:Yeah that duke is going to put a price on their heads that is going to follow them everywhere until they decide to do something about it. Do they have friends outside of town where they can lay low? Are those friends secretly in any amount of trouble that a huge bounty from a duke could instantly relieve, and all they have to do is turn in these guys that have basically moved in on the living room couch and don't pay rent? Having one of their allies turn on them for the bounty can go a few different ways: maybe they kill him and that impacts their personal network. Maybe they help him with whatever trouble got him to betray them; instant new adventure where they might make a new enemy. Maybe their ally is just that much of a dickhead, but they never noticed, and now they wonder which other allies of theirs may secretly be dickheads.
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Mar 20, 2018 09:25
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My Lovely Horse posted:Assassins everywhere. the answer to killcrazy players is always - let them do it, and give them consequences.
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Mar 20, 2018 12:57
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Which reminds me of a potential problem in my game I should head off. The setup: a chasm has opened in a village, some brave locals have ventured in to investigate and never returned. The party is asked for help. The obvious idea is for them to go in, explore the chasm dungeon, and find out that, in this case, the chasm is full of infectious mushroom people, save locals, end mushroom threat, you know the drill. The thing I recently realized is that my players are currently exploring the dark side of adventurers, and that the party is aligned with a patron whose generally accepted MO in cases like this is to not even investigate, just sanitize the chasm with fire as a precaution, and probably the village as well, trapped locals or no trapped locals. Obviously if they burn down the village to save it they'll get all sorts of valiant paladins on their rear end, but is that really what I fill that immediate session with? I mean, it kinda feels weird to have the moral decision at the start of the session.
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Mar 20, 2018 13:34
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Ilor posted:I mean, if you don't spend like the first 45 minutes of any given session just bullshitting with your friends and just generally talking poo poo, I'ma go out on a limb and say you're probably doing it wrong. Oh nah, we definitely do this but once we dig in is when things get on track. We still have had plenty of derails and whatnot. I actually prefer PAX games (Perkins, haven't bothered with C team) to CR, I remember trying to get into CR season 1 and watching them try to resurrect their party member and half the table was crying or misty eyed and I noped the gently caress out of there. The voices and poo poo are great but if my table ever went that far for anything I'd strap on a jetpack and blast off into the ether. Zodack fucked around with this message at 13:50 on Mar 20, 2018 |
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Mar 20, 2018 13:40
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My Lovely Horse posted:Which reminds me of a potential problem in my game I should head off. Don't make the Elder Scrolls mistake of magically broadcasting their crime to the entire lawful world. Frame the challenge around what the party wants to do. Leaving aside the question of morality, what problems can arise in a quarantine scenario like this? I'm thinking: * Chase down stray villagers, who leave mushroom monsters in their wake * Stop an Actually Evil faction from taking a sample vial from the scene * The chasm dungeon is too twisty for the fantasy equivalent of "surface bombardment" - they'll have to go down and fantasy equivalent "plant charges"
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Mar 20, 2018 16:11
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Zodack posted:I actually prefer PAX games (Perkins, haven't bothered with C team) to CR I'd recommend C-Team, its pretty good. Plus it helps that its actually a weekly game instead of just whenever there is a PAX going on.
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Mar 20, 2018 16:12
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Early Adventure Zone is the truest form of actual play. They barely know the rules, make 10 boner jokes a minute, and dunk on the DM whenever possible.
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Mar 20, 2018 16:53
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Gumball Gumption posted:Early Adventure Zone is the truest form of actual play. They barely know the rules, make 10 boner jokes a minute, and dunk on the DM whenever possible. This is the truth. Even at the end, when the storyline is doing serious poo poo, you can still feel Griffin cringe anytime he thinks "gently caress, they can totally make a boner joke out of that, please don't make a boner joke out of that..."
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Mar 20, 2018 16:59
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Personally I wasn't a fan of early Adventure Zone but I did listen for quite a bit. I'm not really big on comedy games so later AZ was a nice balance of serious and stupid.
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Mar 20, 2018 17:03
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Paramemetic posted:Part of DMing is knowing that what the players say their expectations are isn't always what their expectations are, and what they say they want to do isn't always what they want to do. They might think they want to do things, but they may quickly decide they do not. Things that might be fun to try out can quickly become things that aren't working. Be flexible and build the game iteratively, responding to what players are actually doing, what they actually seem to be enjoying, and so on. Yeah, in the game I just finished running our session 0 was everyone saying they wanted to be a band of gritty mercenaries, Band of the Hawk style, in a grimdark high fantasy world drawn into politics and intrigue where there was no right answers and only horrible things happened. Three sessions later, they were defeating undead via the power of friendship, ditched being mercenaries for the various nations, and decided to dedicate their time to hunting super monsters and protecting civilians. Turns out what they really wanted was a world where the price of failure was high, but where their victories were sincere and absolute, and their enemies clear.
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Mar 20, 2018 20:21
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DMing my first game using the starter edition, everything's going pretty well but I'm not sure what to do about a couple of things that are about to crop up. My players went through the red brand hideout, adopted the Wizards familiar (rat) and the wizard escaped without them even seeing him. They know he's escaped though. The main issues I'm having is what do with the wizard and how to deal with one of my players having just learnt the talk to animals spell considering it's a familiar to the wizard.
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Mar 24, 2018 14:30
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Have the wizard head for the goblin hideout at the castle. He'll add a new element to the encounters there, and maybe the party can eavesdrop on him arguing with the bugbear leading the goblins. It'll give them more opportunities to fill in blanks about Phandelver, and solidify the Redbrands as part of the conspiracy.
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Mar 24, 2018 14:51
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My party is approaching a caravan raid in an interesting way, causing me to have to write up stats for an NPC that was supposed to be on their side throughout the campaign but turns out they may fight For Reasons. The fight would take place at the end of the scenario, which is a very very very very very large/long room where they are robbing a caravan. There are a bunch o guards, some knights, some scouts, and a designed boss for them to fight - this would take place during looting if at all. I would like the fight to end in one of 3 ways: 1) The fight drags on long enough that the caravan receives reinforcements, causing both the NPC and the party to flee and the caravan retaining its most valuable item. 2) The NPC wears the party down and knocks out or "Arrests" (move below) the entire party, in which case he gets away with the target item but knows the party tried to double cross him. 3) The party comes up with something during the fight that is clearly meant to stall them/take them while they're weak besides punch the boss and i'll wing the ending as dictated by their actions. With that in mind, does this seem like it would serve these purposes for a level 4 party of 4? Too many saves? I wanted to make the fight at least interesting despite that they will be signaled that this is not a fight they can "win" traditionally (my party has too much of a reliance on just punching their problems and I want to force them into something else). Action: Roll Out. Summons 2 mechanical squirrels in adjacent squares. Squirrels have 5 HP, move 30ft, act immediately after Tinkerer, and attack with +2 to hit for 1d4+1 damage. Legendary Actions: Tinkerercan take 4 legendary actions, choosing from the options below. Only one legendary action option can be used at a time and only at the end of another creature’s turn. Ares regains spent legendary actions at the start of its turn. Legendary Action: Spin out. Tinkerer's mech spins its arms around, hitting all adjacent enemies. +5 to hit, 1d6+1 bludgeoning damage, each enemy that is hit must make a 13 DC STR check or be knocked back 5 ft. Legendary Action: Arrest. Cuffs are launched at target creature within 20 ft. Target makes a DC 13 CON save or is unable to move or take any action until freed. Affected creature may attempt to break free as a free action at the end of their turn. The cuffs may also be destroyed with an action from another creature. [I won't spam this while running the boss, and it is designed to be a way for me to lock down people near death without actually killing them to end the fight with this dude leaving] Legendary Action: Unguided Missile. Launch a missile at a random creature (including friendly summoned creatures). +5 to hit, DC 13 DEX save. 1d10 damage, half damage with success on save.
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Mar 26, 2018 00:10
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One of the things that most of the Legendary Actions writeups I've seen (at least in 5th) that I don't see in your writeup goes something along the lines of "Once a Legendary Action is used, it cannot be used again until all other Legendary Actions have been used once." That is, if you use Action A, you can't use it again until you've used Action B and Action C. Using that rule will keep you from spamming one ability too much (and if your players detect the pattern they can start to anticipate and adjust their tactics, giving that warm fuzzy "boss fight" feeling). Beyond that, without doing any math or anything that seems like an appropriate setup; dangerous without being ridiculously deadly and the only directly targeted ability, Arrest, is nonlethal. Looks good to me, let us know how it goes!
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Mar 26, 2018 01:19
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:One of the things that most of the Legendary Actions writeups I've seen (at least in 5th) that I don't see in your writeup goes something along the lines of "Once a Legendary Action is used, it cannot be used again until all other Legendary Actions have been used once." That is, if you use Action A, you can't use it again until you've used Action B and Action C. Using that rule will keep you from spamming one ability too much (and if your players detect the pattern they can start to anticipate and adjust their tactics, giving that warm fuzzy "boss fight" feeling). I'd roughly follow that pattern anyway, not necessarily worried about templating. Figure if they get overwhelmed with squirrels the missiles can help thin it out, missiles are a fun/random thing to keep it hectic, two of the four are melee heroes for spin, and I'll tend to arrest anyone who is near death to signal "don't get up". Squirrels will probably just attempt to swarm the non melee players. I'm interested to see if they try to burn down the NPC or help each other with the cuffs and squirrels (if they even fight this guy. which they probably will). Really I just need to find a way to get those war & peace gauntlets to the barbarian to try to force him to start thinking a little more.
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Mar 26, 2018 01:38
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Luminaflare posted:DMing my first game using the starter edition, everything's going pretty well but I'm not sure what to do about a couple of things that are about to crop up. If you wanna be a stickler for the rules, the familiar isn't actually a beast it is a fey, fiend, or celestial and therefore cant communicate with a PC via Speak with Animals. Glasstaff could also just dismiss the rat familiar at will. The idea of having Glasstaff go to Cragmaw Castle is a good one though.
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Mar 27, 2018 17:46
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