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I'm doing an ambitious Shadows of the Demon Lord meets Sid Meiers Pirates! Meets a bioware RPG. The idea is a long term campaign based out of Freeport. The PCs will have an opportunity to build up a fleet and carve out power in Freeport while dealing with escalating crises caused by the demon lords increasing influence and making friends and enemies along the way. They'll be able to do loyalty missions for notable crew members, customize their ships and sail for treasure. I'm trying to find the best way to structure this. I'm using WorldAnvil to organize everything on the back end but in terms of scheduling play sessions the best I've come up with is every session will have upkeep, a minor mission and a major mission. Upkeep would be individual character stuff where they can customize their ships, rest, do role playing poo poo to level up, etc. This would be largely abstracted. Minor missions are things like crew missions, doing random raids on the ocean, stealing poo poo from the warehouse district, basically things to improve the PCs position and form/deepen relationships. Major missions would be stuff that advances the plot. Things like Yerathi building mounds outside Freeport or mole people tunneling into a residential district under the control of the sleeping God Yig. At the end of each major mission arc the PCs would ideally come away with a new major ally or a new ship, something game changing. The players choose which minor and major missions they want to do at the end of each session so I can prep. Has anyone done anything like this before? Im planning on presenting this to players in the form of a job board. Would love ideas on missions and adventures from all sources that I can shoehorn into this because this will require a ton of fuel for content. If there are any better ways to structure this I'm all ears as well.
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Apr 20, 2018 21:11
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How goes the "Normie" Hack? I'm mechanically fascinated by everything this game is doing but I know only one of my players would be willing to read through this book, let alone play in the setting the book assumes.
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Apr 21, 2018 09:54
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I need some advice on how to find a 'bigger' adversary - I don't feel like GMing this campaign forever, and the stage seems set to confront a demon prince, the Shadow itself or some other big bad: Our heroes have gotten themselves in sort of a pickle. They started the game as slaves in Dis, and have over the course of four sessions finally caused the citys fall: Creating a tunnel, they made it possible for one of Drudge's rebel legions to assault Dis through the underground, and as of the start of our next game, the city is being overrun by orcs and freed gladiator slaves, brigands and other fun types. However, they inadvertently bungled a negotiation with an old friend from the Crusader states, leading a Crusader army to attack the city while the orcs are fighting the remnants of the slaveholder armies. Other things happening: The players know of the old plot that was never realized, that slave-holding aliens/demons from Tartarus are attacking Urth to kidnap people for their giant prisons. I had sort of hoped the players, who explicitly stated their abolitionist concept, would want to invade Tartarus and defeat the demons, but so far they've felt too intimidated or busy with Dis itself. They have struck a deal with an elder Harvester, but she has presently ran off, citing 'trouble is coming'. One of the players wants to turn evil, or at least learn forbidden magic, but I'm not too keen on letting him demolish his character with corruption before the game has progressed a bit. I wanted to run one of end times concepts from Hunger in the Void, but I'm not sure exactly which works. The orcs are too cookie-cutter for me, and I'd like something more disturbing.
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Apr 21, 2018 10:38
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The chaos and bloodshed has drawn the attention of a powerful demon. Have the orcs and crusaders fight in a less disciplined manner over time before eventually descending into barbarism and cannibalism. As they do so, they morph into beastfolk like the First People did ages ago. Then run with the Curse of the Beastmen end time scenario, and pick an NPC the players like to become the King of Carnage. The book describes a giant minotaur but gently caress that, make it some cronenburg nightmare of snapping wolf heads and wiry claws.
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Apr 21, 2018 15:54
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Any limits on the Break spell (Destruction school)? Seems like a PC could use a level 0 attack spell to smash just about anything. Vv I was thinking relics etc, but there's a short bit about them being nearly indestructible, so might be ok. Going to have to ensure my enemies carry backup weapons, though, and maybe hide any magic or explosive / flammable items. Hollandia fucked around with this message at 03:35 on Apr 22, 2018 |
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Apr 22, 2018 01:25
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Hollandia posted:Any limits on the Break spell (Destruction school)? The spell can only target something size 1/2 or smaller.
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Apr 22, 2018 02:28
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Antilles posted:You could do one of those bullshit Eastern Front tropes, 'you've three characters but only one has a weapon, when he drops the next pick up his weapon' nonsense. I was more thinking 'control 1 at a time, the other two assist the first' to pick up some much-needed boons at level 0. This doesn't seem bad. Give the lead character a boon to attacks, an extra d6 damage, and maybe a point of extra armor to represent the three characters working in unison. When a character dies, you lose one of the benefits. When you're down to just one, you lose all of them. Of course, this means your characters will get weaker as the session continues and you lose people, but that could be a fun experience too.
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Apr 22, 2018 15:52
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I'm sorry if this has been asked, but I'm just about done with the core rules and the rules for encounter building are hard to understand. The written section is completely different than the chart it shows. Is there anywhere or anyone that can tell me what the hell the encounter building rules actually are?
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Apr 22, 2018 19:33
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You add the difficulties of each monster together, and then if there are twice as many monsters as players, move the encounter difficulty up a "step". (1,5,10,25,50,100,250,500,1000 are the steps). The bestiary section also has rules for making harder versions of existing monsters which you would use in the calculation. The chart on page 190 shows what difficulty level is easy, medium, hard, or lethal as far as I can tell. edit: corrected my mistake Jeffrey of YOSPOS fucked around with this message at 04:48 on Apr 23, 2018 |
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Apr 23, 2018 04:40
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So, as someone who really likes the clockworks' flavor but is less than enthused by their ability scores, how bad is it to have +0 in their preferred stat score starting out?
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Apr 23, 2018 18:27
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glitchwraith posted:So, as someone who really likes the clockworks' flavor but is less than enthused by their ability scores, how bad is it to have +0 in their preferred stat score starting out? Clockworks are seriously gimped in return for what are really minor benefits. I use this stat array for every ancestry: 10, 10, 10, 9 with a +1 to any stat you want, and the option to give another one a -1 in exchange for a +1 in a different stat.
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Apr 23, 2018 18:32
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Oh drat, not even the option of the original array? Goblin starting at agi 13 is cool to me and I wouldn't want to take that away. I just started a new sotdl side-campaign to my main 5e one and the clockwork in my game did seem like he had punitively low stats. I'm running a dungeon crawl in this system to get a feel for it and I'm tracking food and water and whatnot(trying to do everything the opposite of how my main campaign is as an experiment), so at least the not having to eat or drink or breathe is a real benefit. I let them move two stat points as long as they increased two different stats - this lets my goblin warrior use 11 str stuff at level 3 instead of 7. Also for clockwork I'd let them pick where their +2 goes rather than rolling for it, though maybe I'd make them roll if they want a chance at the cool quadraped form. Jeffrey of YOSPOS fucked around with this message at 19:17 on Apr 23, 2018 |
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Apr 23, 2018 18:40
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Serf posted:Clockworks are seriously gimped in return for what are really minor benefits. I use this stat array for every ancestry: 10, 10, 10, 9 with a +1 to any stat you want, and the option to give another one a -1 in exchange for a +1 in a different stat. That's what I assumed. Granted, I don't have a game to play in right now, so I'm mostly making characters to learn the system and for fun. But assuming I do get in a game and end up with a DM who is a stickler for the RAW, how gimped would I be? Like, completely broken or just enough behind the others to be noticeable? Would leveling up even things out at all?
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Apr 23, 2018 19:13
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Glukeose posted:If you do level 0 tell your players to have like three PCs in mind. I'll do you one better - don't run level 0 and also have players create characters. Just show up with a stack of sheets with names on them and say 'you're all villagers, here we go!'.
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Apr 24, 2018 03:04
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So other than starting at level 1, any random tips for DM'ing SotDL? If someone can't make my PF game tomorrow I'm going to haphazardly run a oneshot, so I've got like a 30% chance of having to run a module. Probably one of these three:Serf posted:"Dark Deeds in Last Hope" is a very solid starting adventure that is light on combat and more about a neat little murder mystery. "The Witching Wood" is also good, though it has more potential to go badly and kill the team. "A Year Without Rain" is super cool and interesting with a mystery/dungeon crawl, but the dungeon itself is way overtuned and I would recommend toning it down a bunch and really weakening the final boss, which instantly killed 2 PCs when I ran it. Elysiume fucked around with this message at 20:37 on Apr 24, 2018 |
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Apr 24, 2018 07:17
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SotDL has a really lovely character sheet, so some kind soul put together a rockin' one and threw it onto DTRPG for free. http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/238778/Shadow-of-the-Demon-Lord-Character-Portfolio
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Apr 26, 2018 05:22
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dwarf74 posted:SotDL has a really lovely character sheet, so some kind soul put together a rockin' one and threw it onto DTRPG for free.
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Apr 29, 2018 22:05
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Am I missing something or is full plate unusable without penalty for most builds? You start with 11 strength from race, then +3 at 1/3/7. Or is there another way of 15 str?
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May 2, 2018 10:05
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Razakai posted:Am I missing something or is full plate unusable without penalty for most builds? You start with 11 strength from race, then +3 at 1/3/7. Or is there another way of 15 str? You can actually start as high as Str 12 if you pick a Str 11 ancestry and use the Adjusting Scores rule on p. 10. Also, the Fighter expert path has an ability that treats their Str as 2 higher for purposes of equipment minimums.
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May 2, 2018 10:57
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The Dreadnaught Master Path also ignores armor requirements, and the Dwarf supplement gives them a lvl 4 Talent that lets them ignore Str requirements on armor and weapons.
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May 2, 2018 11:04
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Thanks, I missed that stat swap rule. Another question regarding a character build. Adept can make a weapon attack+cast in the same action. Does that stack with Mage Knight's Tactics? Being able to swing, augmented attack, swing again with a greatsword seems pretty awesome. And on that note, anyone have any general advice for a hybrid build like that? Adept/spellbinder/mage knight with battle magic seems great.
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May 3, 2018 10:36
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Can anyone give me some tips or ideas for using the New God / Astrid? I have a player, a Priest/Paladin type, who's always followed Astrid, and the next adventure is the culmination of his personal arc. He's a member of a dwindling paladin order that lost their ancestral mountain fortress. Well, now they've found it again but it's occupied by a dragon, one of the campaign's big bads. The player also found out that most of the paladins have been captured by the dragon and are being held in the fortress. In every previous adventure I've given him a dream, all centered around a woman in some different circumstance that ends up related to the upcoming adventure, and the image this time was "a young woman, a knight, wearing her gambeson and standing before a shelf with the rest of her armor. She's in a fortress and you can see mountain tops in the background. Suddenly, there's a terrible roar in the distance and she reaches for the shelf." Any tips on how I could build on these visions? Or any tips for a divine intervention. These paladins all have magical horses that, in an earlier age, could fly.
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May 3, 2018 14:09
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Ran my first SotDL session last weekend; had four players starting at level 1, in the default setting but with my own story. The players managed to start with a clockwork priest, clockwork magician, orc priest and orc magician, so the team had some glaring deficiencies from the start. Turned out really well, and everyone seems to have thoroughly enjoyed it. We had two experienced players and two who had barely touched a TTRPG, but everyone got into the swing of things very quickly. Using their professions to add a boon in the correct situation was a great way to get them flexing their RP muscles. Only one player death, and it was at the last battle; I'll have to try harder. I was worried about pitching the right tone with the horror aspect, but they seemed pretty gleeful about the burrowing centipedes busting out of people's bodies and the magician who kept making enemies poo poo themselves to death. Monstrous Mien is a great resource for making unique and weird as hell monsters, which was useful for a group who have seen a lot of the traditional RPG enemies. I did pretty much forget about insanity though, so I'll be leaning hard into that next time. Also need to better evaluate how long everything will take – we ended up playing until midnight 
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May 5, 2018 12:55
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I'm want to get a group going where I am, so starting from scratch what would the "must haves" be? I'd like to lean towards physical books as I'm in SE Asia and printing the PDFs would be extremely difficult. I'm heading back to the States for a visit soon and want to place a bulk order to get everything going when I got back to Vietnam. I'm thinking: - SotDL Sourcebook - Demon Lord's Companion - Tales of the Demon Lord Would Uncertain Faith be worth it? I know one of my players is enamored with playing a Witch. Also what exactly is DLC 2 that I hear talked about? I don't see that anywhere on Schwalb's website.
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May 6, 2018 06:04
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DLC2 is the second Demon Lord's Companion, with expanded playable ancestries for players who like to be weird poo poo like snake people, cat people, bug people, and mole people. It also has some neat magic and paths. In total it's like 50 pages long if that.
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May 6, 2018 15:33
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Springfield Fatts posted:I'm want to get a group going where I am, so starting from scratch what would the "must haves" be? I'd like to lean towards physical books as I'm in SE Asia and printing the PDFs would be extremely difficult. I'm heading back to the States for a visit soon and want to place a bulk order to get everything going when I got back to Vietnam. I'm thinking: aside from the pretty good setting information in Uncertain Faith there's a lot of quality magic for the traditions associated with the different gods/religions. there's stuff in Death that lets priests of Father Death better at combating undead for instance
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May 6, 2018 15:49
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DLC2 is DLC #2 
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May 6, 2018 17:45
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Shoulda got the season pass when it was available 
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May 6, 2018 18:14
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Does anyone know if the print versions have ever been updated with regards to errata?
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May 6, 2018 18:27
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Alehkhs posted:Does anyone know if the print versions have ever been updated with regards to errata? How do people do NPC lies in SotDL? I'm used to Sense Motive from PF and Insight from 5e, while SotDL just has Deceive (which would be equivalent to Bluff and Deception). Do people just roll the NPC int vs. player ints and say "Chuck and Festerwort, you get the impression that Tate is lying," or do you leave the onus on the players to actively choose to disbelieve and roll their int vs. the NPC int?
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May 6, 2018 22:14
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I prefer the former because if you give the players agency on it it can turn into "i stop and check for traps every 5 feet" syndrome. Throw some dice at random to throw them off too, cause then everytime you roll theyll know you're making a lie check.
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May 6, 2018 22:19
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RagnarokAngel posted:I prefer the former because if you give the players agency on it it can turn into "i stop and check for traps every 5 feet" syndrome.
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May 6, 2018 22:31
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Natural Born Scoundrels is out. http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/240957/Natural-Born-Scoundrels
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May 7, 2018 14:05
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Glukeose posted:DLC2 is the second Demon Lord's Companion, with expanded playable ancestries for players who like to be weird poo poo like snake people, cat people, bug people, and mole people. The new ancestries are really neat and weird, but may clash tonally (depending on what you're looking for).
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May 7, 2018 14:24
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Soul magic in DLC2 is loving wild too. Phase shifting, full healing, etc. poo poo's pretty crazy. The cenobite master path is pretty cool though.
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May 7, 2018 15:11
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GimpInBlack posted:Natural Born Scoundrels is out. http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/240957/Natural-Born-Scoundrels 
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May 7, 2018 15:21
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Yeah that mastermind path like, a 3e leadership-level "this path changes the game entirely". The descriptive text is a little ambiguous there also - it uses "your group" to talk about your agents and also your player group and it's hard to tell which one they mean. I am gonna show this supplement to my rogue but I might have to veto that one. 
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May 7, 2018 16:08
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The obvious answer is an entire party of masterminds.
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May 7, 2018 16:18
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:Yeah that mastermind path like, a 3e leadership-level "this path changes the game entirely". The descriptive text is a little ambiguous there also - it uses "your group" to talk about your agents and also your player group and it's hard to tell which one they mean. I do love the flavor, though.
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May 7, 2018 17:33
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dwarf74 posted:It looks interesting but yeah, I'm not sure on balance with 3 level 1's vs 1 level 3 and so on. It's not so much balance as much as session-time with the mastermind. I don't think his crew joins if the party is there.
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May 7, 2018 18:41
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