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Hobo By Design posted:Nah, in a fight his first instinct is to action surge the first thing that looks at him improperly. With dual wielder, he threw a lot of extra dice. Out of combat he absolutely took to the tone of the game, had an evergrowing list of ambitions, which was fantastic for plot hooks, knew how to involve other players, and pre-timeskip was the sharpest at the crime solving part of things. He was a good player. The first giveaway of his latent assholishness was when the trickster cast grease on the battlemaster, to catch the invisible creature near them. It was only a hindrance but a funny one. After the fight the brute spent the next ten minutes "in-character" bitching about it, with the battlemaster talking him down. It caught me unaware, I didn't know how to react, and should've told him to knock it the hell off. e: Snipe him in the nuts.
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Oct 20, 2018 22:03
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Subjunctive posted:Yeah, but they were talking about fighters. Yeah and there are some fighter subclasses with tanking powers like I said.
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Oct 20, 2018 23:52
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I was running a Vampire Dark Ages game back in the late 90’s. The characters had tried to pull some poo poo on the elder vampire in the region and he’d caught them redhanded. But he found the situation amusing since the PCs were no real threat. (Keep in mind that this wasnt what I intended to happen, but when you tell your pcs that an elder npc has a mystical doodad that’s supposed to be from the days of the antedeluvians, they’re gonna go of course.) So instead of killing them where they stood he tasked them to go steal something he wanted from his rival, to put their skills to good use. The players were trying to negotiate a payment for a payment when the character who was obfuscated decided he’d had enough of the elder’s attitude. So he jumped on him got his hands around the elder’s neck and tried to choke him out. We rolled dice, the character’s potentce wasnt enough to get through the elder’s soak and he proceeded to pull him off his back and throw him against the wall right next to the open hearth causing the character to freak out. This is when the player started arguing with me saying that damage shouldnt have mattered cause he was choking the elder. I reminded him that the elder didnt need to breathe and besides he didnt get any damage through so he was actually unable to choke the elder even if he needed to breathe. This is when the player decided to demonstrate how choking a vampire would be effective by putting his hands around my neck and choking me. I actually remember thinking to myself “he’s actually choking me, I could die.” The other player’s pull him off and calm him down and we got back to the game. And that there is my craziest tabletop story.
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Oct 21, 2018 01:13
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holy poo poo. Did you press charges? You should've pressed charges.
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Oct 21, 2018 03:03
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Robindaybird posted:holy poo poo. Did you press charges? You should've pressed charges. He was one of my friends. He had some issues but was a good guy at heart. It was just one of those wtf moments.
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Oct 21, 2018 04:54
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walruscat posted:He was one of my friends. He had some issues but was a good guy at heart. It was just one of those wtf moments. "They don't breathe and have magic blood." "But i could totally choke them, see? You couldn't breathe!" "I'm not a vampire!"
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Oct 21, 2018 05:04
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I'm gonna say the instant a friend tries to throttle me, they're not gonna be a friend of mine anymore.
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Oct 21, 2018 06:05
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MonsterEnvy posted:Yeah and there are some fighter subclasses with tanking powers like I said. Also there is no Fighter subclass that's good at the aggro management side of tanking, only the cavalier, whose punishment mechanics soak your bonus action and are limited to 5 times a day maximum, doesn't get stickyness until level 10, and gives you no additional "not die" tanking abilities and instead gives you a bunch of horse stuff? Which is obviously great in a game based around going into dungeons. To address the general "Can you tank in 5E", you can build a better tank than cavalier by taking any other subclass and grabbing the tunnel fighter fighting style and the Sentinel feat. The fairly massive downsides are that tunnel fighter is not official material and it soaks your bonus action every turn, and taking the sentinel feat requires playing as Variant Human or waiting until level 4 before your tank can actually tank (and also paying the opportunity cost of taking Sentinel instead of +2 Str or different feat). So this: Aniodia posted:Fighters have had the easiest ability to contribute to groups since like, the little brown books back in the 70s, even if it was stand around as a meatshield so other people don't get pasted.
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Oct 21, 2018 12:14
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Another fascinating catpiss story from reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/DMAcademy/comments/9pxeuy/tonight_i_quit/ Female dm harassed by her own husband. choice quote quote:Eventually I got stuck with husband incessantly arguing that, in the form of a fox, he should totally be able to use his whiskers to pick a lock, or that lunging at someone with a dagger shouldn't cause a fight, or that "disguise self" should totally let him turn into a bear- and I am done.
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Oct 21, 2018 12:44
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Story was removed  But judging from the comments that remain, it sounds like a hell of a ride.
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Oct 21, 2018 16:25
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Thanks to the miracles of the internet, it lives:quote:As a first time DM, I tried very hard not to let myself get too carried away. I knew that people might have different expectations, and that it would take a while to feel those out and settle into a play style that suited everyone.
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Oct 21, 2018 16:44
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Freudian posted:Thanks to the miracles of the internet, it lives: DIVORCE HIM
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Oct 21, 2018 16:49
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holy poo poo, that's a huge red flag that her own husband keeps undermining her - and he'll probably be a loving miserable DM too if his player actions are anything to go by.
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Oct 21, 2018 16:59
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What worries me the most is that, if he is so disrespectful in a game, that must translate over into the rest of their lives together. If it does to any significant degree, and it's not a stretch to imagine so, that's especially worrisome.
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Oct 21, 2018 17:25
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Freudian posted:Thanks to the miracles of the internet, it lives:
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Oct 21, 2018 18:45
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 Including with the so-called husband.
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Oct 21, 2018 19:05
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 No RPG is better than that RPG
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Oct 21, 2018 19:20
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Today, our campaign and my character really clicked and we had one of those games where everyone's decisions and die rolls line up to make for satisfying conflict, pleasantly dramatic intraparty tensions, and strong characterization for everyone. We're deep in the jungle tagging along with an expeditionary force on a big spider-tank land-ship that's heading for a local Yuan-Ti stronghold. We want an extremely important magical artifact/macguffin from the Yuan-Ti, but have no particular attachment to the expedition, which is led by a self-absorbed duke seeking revenge for the death of his father and his far more competent but loyal sister, who commands the troops. We've hosed up several attempts to claim artifacts like this in the past, the last of which involved us inciting a peasant revolt and bombing a wealthy neighborhood as a distraction while we snuck into a castle vault, only to end up losing the artifact to a shocking act of betrayal and fleeing the city in shame as the revolt was brutally suppressed. The plan was enacted without everyone being on board, and simmering (IC) tensions still plague the party. Our tiefling sorcerer and goblin rogue carried out the bombings and refuse to acknowledge they may have been a mistake; our lizardfolk paladin is distracted by some kind of attempt by the Yuan-Ti to metaphysically usurp his lizardfolk god's place in the cosmos; and our human sorcerer, the reluctant party leader because she's the only PC everyone else trusts, is in over her head and unsure how to reconcile our murderhobo tendencies with her still relatively unblemished desire to do good and save everyone. My bard/warlock just learned that his patron, who has promised him his freedom if he helps collect these macguffins, is going mad for unclear reasons, and secretly fears that he's doomed to death or worse whether he succeeds in saving the world or not. A series of horrific murders has rocked the group, with the lead engineer of the ship, a dwarven commander, and the assistant engineer all being killed in ways that suggest a Yuan-Ti infiltrator. We've been on and off the ship running little side missions in the jungle, but we're only a day's march from the Yuan-Ti at this point, and the Duke intends to lay siege to the gates of the Yuan-Ti city with the ship's cannons. We've tried to persuade the Duke to slow his roll and let us finish our murder investigation and scout for a more favorable place to begin our assault. He stubbornly refused, so we've resolved to finish the murder investigation before the siege begins. We've narrowed our list of suspects to the commander (the sister) and the Duke's bodyguard. We've been below deck interrogating several commanders when my bard tries to call back his familiar, who's been told to keep watch on the deck. The raven doesn't come, so we rush up to find it and the tiefling sorcerer (absent this session) slumped against a wall, clearly the victims of a sleep spell. The Duke's bodyguard, who had been outside his door, and the commander, who'd been studying maps in the war room, are both missing. The Duke, as we learn once we kick down his door, is fast asleep. The bodyguard returns, having ostensibly been to the bathroom, and we find the commander in her quarters asleep. While we're catching the commander up on our findings, the Duke's lead creepy magical researcher rushes in to tell us the court wizard just turned up dead in the alchemical lab. He also informs us that the work we've been doing for him (side quests in the jungle) has borne fruit, and he's devised a way to identify shapeshifted Yuan-Ti. Our human sorcerer and rogue go to check the scene and make sure the wizard doesn't come back as some sort of Yuan-Ti abomination, while the lizardfolk paladin and my bard go with the researcher and commander to confirm whether the bodyguard is Yuan-Ti, which we're almost certain of. She's already wary of our paladin and won't let him test her, but she lets the commander approach her. Naturally, the next thing we hear is the cold sound of metal sliding on metal, and the commander falls to the floor. She's unconscious but only barely alive, and that only because the paladin used magical means to take on half the damage she suffered. The bodyguard/Yuan-Ti assassin mocks us for the slow pace of our investigation and failure to even apprehend them properly; I cast Wall of Force to trap all five of us in one place, which turns out to be a crucial error. We roll initiative, which I win, blasting the assassin and bringing the commander out of unconsciousness with Healing Word, though poison keeps her unmoving on the floor. On their turn, the assassin puts their saber to the commander's throat, and calmly informs us that the new plan is that we're going to escort them off the ship, killing anyone who sees us on the way. Not seeing a way to kill the assassin and save the commander, my bard drops the wall of force. By this point, our sorcerer and rogue have returned, and join our merry hostage situation. We step out onto the deck, and when we see guards, the assassin orders my bard to handle them. Instead, I cast Heat Metal, hoping to force the assassin to drop their saber. They succeed on the save, but our DM offers to let us take one more action before the assassin can slit the commander's throat. The sorcerer (who's been played as having some sort of mixed infatuation with/admiration for the commander) turns, slams her staff on the ground, and disintegrates the assassin into a pile of dust (not only did the assassin fail the DEX save, she took enough damage to just go straight to dead). Having just failed to solve the murders in time, been (accurately) called stupid and slow, and having just nearly gotten the commander killed, my bard stalks back to the Duke's quarters and proceeds to have a little tantrum. He berates the Duke for his incompetence in failing to recognize that his bodyguard of ten years was a Yuan-Ti plant and tells him that his new attack plan is almost certainly going to get all his men killed. The Duke reminds my bard that he's a lowborn sellsword who has no honor or sense of duty, and that he isn't from here and has no idea what it's like to lose family to the Yuan-Ti. My bard goes, oh poo poo, he's right, I'm not from here and I don't give a rat's rear end about any of these people. As he opens the door to leave, he shouts back that the only reason the Yuan-Ti didn't kill the Duke after all these years of having him at their mercy is because they know he's far less a threat to them than his sister, who would inherit the title. The rest of the party, who stuck around to actually help heal the commander and clean up after the fight, is dumbfounded by this, and even more surprised when my bard (after much OOC apologizing that I really don't want to split the party but am absolutely certain my character would not stick around at this point) gets on his griffin, tells them that they can stick around here and die but that he'll be departing tomorrow at midday to do what they actually came here to do and steal the macguffin, and flies off to a back entrance to the Yuan-Ti stronghold that we'd previously discovered. The Duke gathers his commanders and our paladin (he denies our sorcerer and rogue access, somewhat implied to be because he feels they lack the nobility and breeding to be trustworthy) and calmly informs them that while it seems we may have walked into a Yuan-Ti trap, at this point we don't have the ability to leave. The loss of the murdered engineers means returning through the jungle is not an option, since the fortress ship is an intricate machine and at this point will basically just have to run until it overheats, since we lack the expertise to properly shut it down and start it up again. Sieging the Yuan-Ti isn't just a dumb option, it's also the only option, because even the slight chance of victory it affords is the best hope remaining. The Duke says that while our party isn't obliged to stick around, he very much intends to go down with his ship. We ended there, with the party split and our path unclear. We agreed OOC that the most likely course of action was that my bard could be persuaded to return to the ship after cooling off a bit, though the DM made clear that he didn't mind splitting the party for a bit if that's what we wanted to do. All in all, easily the best session I've had in ages, and the first time in a while that I've felt comfortable enough to spark big intraparty conflict without worrying about derailing the game or upsetting someone. Nice big moments for the paladin and sorcerer too, and our party is clearly clicking and getting into character and developing differentiated relationships with NPCs and each other. In conclusion, elfgames good. Valentin fucked around with this message at 07:08 on Oct 25, 2018 |
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Oct 25, 2018 06:58
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Excellent story, it's great that you have a group/DM willing to support that kind of intraparty conflict without it getting out of hand!
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Oct 28, 2018 19:06
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Oh, I want to know how this turns out...drat Yuan-Ti... And I like that party conflict didn't automatically mean player conflict!
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Oct 29, 2018 13:09
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Somewhere in the midst of the revolving door character exchange that is Tomb of Annihilation, something magical happened: my neutral evil drow celestial warlock alternate ended up in the party alongside a chaotic good tiefling fiendlock. They're both blade pact, her with a greatsword and me a bow, and both can both see in magical darkness and have that spell as a racial. She's got a deathwish because of her whole deal while I'm a compulsive healer. It's working out pretty great; I'd describe the dynamic but it's exactly as you'd imagine.
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Oct 31, 2018 22:02
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I'll write this up later for Halloween night but in short if you want to have a blast screwing with your players, throw them into a hypercube. Ran a variant on Ross Payton's BESTOW and it was an absolute blast watching them solve it and calling me an rear end in a top hat as they smiled.
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Oct 31, 2018 23:11
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Edit: nevermind, did a search.
Volmarias fucked around with this message at 02:45 on Nov 1, 2018 |
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Nov 1, 2018 02:42
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I'm never actually GM'd a tabletop game before, but yesterday was a pretty great start to my career, I think. My group's weekly games are normally Wednesdays, but since our GM was feeling pretty terrible yesterday, she asked me if I'd feel up to running something creepy instead. I'd already been planning to either run Curse of Strahd or Out of the Abyss once our current Tomb of Annihilation campaign is over, and I'd had plenty of experience with GM-type stuff in the past, so I decided this was as good a chance as any to plunge headfirst and run them through the Death House adventure. So, spoilers if you haven't run through that yet and want to, I guess. I spent half a slow workday reading through the scenario, selecting music from my reliable Bloodborne and Berserk standbys, whipping up some level 2 characters, reading advice from other GMs, and finding artwork I could use to take some creative liberties with what was presented in the original material. I felt pretty confident in some cool stuff I could do to spice up the adventure and really make it my own, and I definitely think it paid off. We had a pretty quick introduction, with everyone starting off on their own business wandering through the forest, then being consumed by a creeping mist with a deathly chill and being transported to the narrow streets of Barovia. They gave some introductions, went off to meet Rose and Thorn and get their quest hooks, and the checks start coming out. Lots of insight checks to see if these kids are lying to them, and the halfling wizard tosses out an arcana check to see if there's anything exceptional with them. They're pretty good checks, but I try not to play my hand too early; the kids definitely believe what they're saying, as far as they can tell, though there's definitely something off about them beyond just looking deathly and eerie. The party's suspicious, but less so of the kids. They fixate a lot more on the parents, especially when Thorn mentions their baby brother, Walter. I hosed up and told them he was in the attic instead of the third floor, but that became their goal anyway. Get the baby, reunite the kids, and then figure out what the hell is up. Rose and Thorn manage to convince them that they'll definitely be fine waiting outside. The unfortunate part of this is that they didn't feel the need to explore too much, since they wanted to beeline up to the top floor. Still, I got some tension built up as they went along: the kobold paladin noticed the subtle snakes and worms in the first floor's walls, while everyone else just brushed it off; the mother's scorn for the swaddled baby in the family portrait was worrying, knowing what they did so far; on the third floor nearly everyone noticed the corpses swinging from the trees. Coincidentally, their checks were also perfect for finding the secret passage up to the attic, where I made a slow, creaking kind of chuckle over Discord. Half-elf barbarian, who also happens to have a background in masonry: "What was that? Where'd that come from?" Me: "Eh, it's an old house, lots of wood. You know how it is." Without many other options available, they decide to go up to the attic. They immediately know that the padlocked door is going to be important, then decide to search the storage room for a key, pulling up dusty sheets and checking what's under them. The half-elf stops when he finds a sheet caked in dried blood over a seat, and quickly recognizes that there's a figure sitting in the chair under the sheet. With some trepidation, he pulls back the sheet and finds the desiccated, stabbed corpse of the nursemaid. The group immediately considers their suspicions about this house confirmed, and just as they decide to go back and check on the kids, the half-elf felt a spectral hand grab his arm and suck away his life. He turned back to the nursemaid's corpse, only to see her specter looming in front of him.  A quick fireball from the fire genasi rogue distracts the specter enough to free the half-elf, and the group starts doing their best to fight the shrieking nursemaid. They barely manage to do anything to her, though: she flickers around their swords like a roll of burning film and shutters behind them to sap their life, all the while screaming about "the baby" over and over. The genasi and half-elf fixate on that, and instead of attacking, start trying to ask her where the baby is and convincing her they're here to keep him safe. I thought it was a great opportunity to reward some good thinking and roleplay, so her screaming started devolving into murmurs and mutters as she clawed at her face, as if trying to keep something out of her head. The genasi finally calling out the name Walter snapped through, and the nursemaid phased through the floor to the third level with a last frustrated, confused howl. The group chased after her, then spotted her in the nursemaid's suite, staring silently through the doorway of the nursery. The half-elf gave the halfling a nudge over ("I got the last scare. You're up, buddy.), and the halfling very cautiously crept up to the nursery, his player just as anxious and hesitant as his character. The nursemaid didn't react to his presence at all as he pushed aside the shroud on the crib and unfurled the still, swaddled bundle inside to find...nothing. The bundle collapsed, empty, and the nursemaid fell to her knees, silently sobbing in the doorway. Through her sobs, the group heard a few words from the nursemaid. "My baby." The scorn on the mother's face in the painting suddenly made a lot of sense to them. They asked if the mother killed her child or fed it to the "monster" in the basement, but all she could say was, "He promised my baby would be safe. Safe from that cult, that thing." The half-elf stood near her and asked, "Rose and Thorn are in danger. Where is the monster? How do we get to the basement?" The nursemaid silently looked up at him, then placed her hands in his. As she faded away, a key appeared in his hands. The house creaked and groaned, chuckling at them again. "gently caress this house," the half-elf grumbled, and I'm still not sure if that was in-character or out of character. The group made their way up to the attic, but when they reached the top of the stairs this time, the stairway suddenly sealed behind them with groaning wood panels. The genasi and halfling briefly caught that the panels were lined with blunt teeth before the panels sealed their exit, and the party went to open the padlocked door. The halfling just happened to have his character standing in the perfect spot for Roll20's dynamic lighting to show the childrens' skeletons once the door opened, even before I started describing the room. The way his player said "Oh god, I think I know what's in there already" was so satisfying. Rather than investigate the room further, the group decided that they needed to find a way out. As if on cue, they heard the scratching of fingernails on wood in the storage room nearby, and immediately after going in notice the secret door to the stairwell that definitely wasn't there before. Since they hadn't found any other ways to the basement, they started down the tight stairwell. On the way down, they heard a man's voice bellow in the silence, "I told you not to go into the basement!" It was all quiet again until they reached the basement and heard the steady, distant chants. From there, they went on a looping exploration through the living quarters, trying to move to where the chanting seemed loudest. Just after they spotted the dining area strewn with human bones and were about to turn a corner to the source, the ground burst with twisted, rotten figures: former cultists turned to ravenous ghouls. The group decided to stand their ground and fight rather than run deeper into the dungeon, and this is probably where I should've started worrying a little.  To their credit, they took on the ghouls pretty well, hacking them down without severe damage to the party. They made their way deeper into the reliquary and found the sacrificial hall sealed by a portcullis. Nobody seemed to be inside, but just as they turned away from the portcullis to explore more, the chanting stopped. The party started to feel like the silence was more unnerving than the chanting, but kept exploring the prison nearby and stumbled on the hidden passage to the ritual chamber. The kobold was the first to examine the dias with the altar, and as soon as she stepped up to it, shadowy figures holding black torches that sucked the light from the room manifested around the chamber and started chanting a dire, desperate order. And that's where things really started going wrong.  Shades: "One must die! One must die! One must die!" Genasi: "...yeah, I think you should get away from that altar." The kobold rejoined the group, and the shades began wailing. The pile of refuse in the corner stirred, tendrils and arms forming from the mass of rot as it swelled to fill its alcove and ooze out into the watery room. The group saw Lorghoth the Decayer looming in the darkness, a mass of flesh and plant material fused unrecognizably in decay and reeking with the stench of an uncovered grave.  And these level 2 players thought their best option would be to fight a monster statted like a shambling mound. I hadn't altered the actual sheet in Roll20, so they definitely saw that it was actually a shambling mound, and in ToA our six level 5 characters legendarily struggled to beat just one of them. They might've forgotten that part, though, and so they went right in fighting. The barbarian was instantly pancaked, but the mostly silent dragonborn druid threw out heals to get him back up. The halfling went to the alter to see if he could find some kind of mechanism or anything indicating that this thing was summoned, but all he found were carvings of ghouls and dried blood. He cast a thunder wave at Lorghoth and was perfectly placed so that it was slammed back into the secret entrance they used to get in, but fortunately Lorghoth decided to go after him next, giving the genasi a chance to run back to the reliquary and gather up all the bizarre trinkets. She ran them back and hurled them on the altar, hoping to revert some kind of ritual, but when nothing happened, the party decided it was a much better idea to just run. This had been going on for a while by then; a couple of times they were luckily missed by its slams or I just did one instead of two, and I forgot about the engulfing mechanic, but three deaths were healed up by our druid and paladin. To their credit, they got it down from 136 HP to 89, so that was something. Since it was getting much later than our usual end time and everyone agreed to run, I decided to wing the escape sequence with dexterity rolls and narration. Lorghoth chased them all through the basement, but good rolls on their end kept them ahead of him. A couple of times he slowed down trying to wedge himself through corners, then suddenly rushed forward, snapping at the party's heels. The stairwell slowed him down enough that they had a second to plan their escape once they got back to the storage room: the barbarian rolled a nat 20 to clear the boarded up windows and played it as punching right through them, and the group rappelled down to the third-floor balcony. There they started debating whether to jump off the balcony or move through the rest of the house, and while I love this group, they get really hung up on planning sometimes. Lorghoth made it up to the storage room, and when I narrated the banister snapping and cracking as teeth and gums grew from the wood, they decided to run through the rest of the house. They ran down the spiral staircase; the halfling stumbled and fell in shock when the family painting split down the middle and revealed a gaping eye staring at him, but the half-elf propped him up and got him down to the bottom floor. Just as they were about to escape through the foyer, the halfling got stopped again as the doorway snapped shut in a vicious maw. As it tried snapping at him, the kobold wedged her shield into the mouth, but not quite wide enough for the halfling to get through. Just as Lorghoth started crawling down from the second floor, she hefted the shield sideways, making a gap that the halfling rolled right through. The party escaped out into the street, and the furious house began eating itself, crumbling and snapping until there was nothing left of the cursed structure but a creaky iron gate. By the end it was almost midnight when our games normally end by 11, and I definitely didn't follow the campaign to the letter, but everyone still had a blast. The only curveball I couldn't handle was when everyone decided to stay and fight the last monster instead of running, but I feel like that's the kind of thing I'll learn to deal with better. I definitely feel confident in my ability to set up atmosphere and work some good narrative stuff into the events. Back to being a player next week, and maybe a DM in another year or so!
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Nov 1, 2018 20:52
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Nov 3, 2018 03:25
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Man that ruled. Great story, and it sounds like your players had a blast! Bring them back to the house next year, IMO. Let them deal with the aftermath of leaving stuff behind!
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Nov 3, 2018 07:20
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Should've hit the lights in the room when the shades sucked the light in the basement. Make them poo poo bricks. Even still, very well done.  You sound like you've not only got a handle on the DMing thing, but a group that'd be more than happy to play along. Take a little bit, maybe look into running something a bit more involved after your current game is done.
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Nov 5, 2018 06:33
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Squidtentacle posted:*awesome, spooky stuff* My one suggestion: always assume that the party is going to stand their ground, even when they know better. I'm glad yours realised that they were in over their heads, and that they managed to pull their fat from the fire. That was amazing. 
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Nov 5, 2018 13:22
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Aniodia posted:Should've hit the lights in the room when the shades sucked the light in the basement. Make them poo poo bricks. Man, that would've been a great idea, actually. We all live in different states and play over Roll20, but only a couple of characters had darkvision. Could've altered the light sources a couple of our characters were carrying and narrow down the range a bunch. Thanks for all of the encouragement, everyone! I definitely want to run some more small stuff to get a better feel for DMing and the rules I probably don't pay as much attention to as a player. There were a few points where the players asked for some clarification on rules and I just went "gently caress it, idk, let's do it this way for now". Does anyone have good one-off suggestions for adventures, or shorter (2-4 4-hour sessions) campaigns? I have some ideas for things but feel like I'd be better off looking at premade stuff before putting together my own, even with examples.
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Nov 5, 2018 15:22
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Bieeanshee posted:My one suggestion: always assume that the party is going to stand their ground, even when they know better. I'm glad yours realised that they were in over their heads, and that they managed to pull their fat from the fire. That was amazing. My rogue trader party are usually fairly prudent. We were fighting our way through some dark eldar pirates when we encountered an ambush: a dug-in splinter cannon, several wyches and warriors, and a Cronos Pain Engine. We took one look at that, popped smoke, and made an expeditious tactical retrograde advance, to the sounds of our GM’s mocking laughter.
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Nov 6, 2018 04:29
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Previously on Tanicus - A fight against a Minotaur leads to a glimpse of what lay beyond this world’s veil, while the return to Fallcrest sees the party chase a group of cultists to a portal leading to another plane... X X X X X During a heated discussion between party members about the dangers of stepping into the Elemental Plane of Earth, Aya ended the conversation by stepping through the portal, giving the party choice but to follow her through. The party found themselves in a large chamber utterly devoid of illumination, which forced them to utilize the magical torch in order to utilize any sort of darksight or low-light vision. The distant sound of rock grinding against rock was ever present as the party began to follow a series of human footprints through the series of vast, winding caves. A few minutes into their journey they met their first transplanar denizen.  There’s a little bit of a language barrier as the party and the golem attempted to speak to one another, until Typhomine spoke to the golem in Ignan, the language of the Elemental Plane of Fire and cousin to Terran, the language of the Elemental Plane of Earth. The crystal golem tells the party that, should they choose to continue further on, they will encounter a friend of theirs that has been slowly going insane every since the hole was opened to the Prime Material Plane. The golem asked for the party’s assistance in helping their friend, who had driven the golem away during their slow descent into insanity. A few caverns later, the friend in question turned out to be a Dreamwalker.  Dreamwalkers are a variation on Stone Giants. Being primarily raised underground, some Stone Giants, especially those that end up spending a large amount of time on the surface, begin to see the entire world as a dream they have yet to wake from. Such a shift in their paradigm often comes with odd phenomena and reality-altering powers at the cost of their slowly fraying sanity. This particular Dreamwalker, who called themselves Basalti, had returned to the Elemental Plane of Earth in order to get away from the sky, replacing wide open sky with comforting, embracing stone. Basalti was able to deal with her insanity for a few months, until the Black Earth Cultists ripped open a hole between the two planes. She told the party that she was able to “feel” the sky beyond the opening and it was once again affecting her, and that she had sent away her friend the crystal golem because she didn’t want to hurt her. The cultists, she told the party, had been moving back and forth between the inter-planar opening and another chamber deeper within the series of caves. With a promise to bring a powerful Cleric to help restore Basalti’s mind, the party continued on. As the party walked, Biff recalled that he already had access to healing magic - a Scroll of Greater Restoration, which he vowed to use on Basalti during the party’s egress from the plane. Eventually the party found themselves in a large chamber. Standing next the far entrance leading from the chamber was a priest of the Black Earth Cult. Accompanying them were...several individuals who were not cultists. Rather, the half-dozen armored figures were members of the Knights of the Iron Raven - elite warriors from the nation of Korvis, sworn enemy to the kingdom of Kaeryn. During the clash against the Iron Ravens, the priest managed to flee through the far opening before the party could stop them. After defeating the Iron Ravens (with Aya snagging a nifty Belt of Frost Giant Strength), the party chased after the priest...   The priest had retreated to warn a second unit of Iron Ravens, who were waiting for our party to arrive. But across a crevice in the floor, standing next to a node of pure elemental earth, were two individuals…     ...one, the party had met several weeks before - Sister Melancholia. And standing next to her was a demonic figure in black armor, who smiled and greeted each party member by their full names and titles...including Hale, who he referred to as “Gomana Hale”...before ordering the Iron Ravens to attack. Simply put, the Sword of Fallcrest got their asses handed to them. The party managed to slay several of the Iron Ravens, however Melancholia’s magic and the greatsword of the demonic figure cleaved through the party like a hot knife through butter. The only person to even land a blow on either of them was Krowe, who managed to scratch the demonic figure on the cheek before being cleaved almost in half. As each party member fell however, Melancholia stood over them and cast “Spare the Dying” to prevent them from becoming fresh corpses. Kynwal was the last to drop, his last memory being Melancholia striding in his direction. The party eventually comes to. They are still in the creviced cavern, along with the dead bodies of the Iron Ravens that they managed to slay. Each member of the party had a red ribbon tied around their neck, possibly indicating the ease with which Melancholia could have murdered the party while they were helpless. A special “punishment” had been given to Hale - the dwarven gunslinger had been bound with wire and hung upside down from the ceiling of the cavern. The corpses of the slain Iron Ravens still remained, however anything that identified them as warriors from that order had been stripped from them, leaving behind nothing more than anonymous corpses. Across the crevice, the node of elemental earth had been sealed inside a magical sphere and locked with an incredibly powerful spell that was beyond the party’s means to dispel. The method of sealant and magical energy given off by the locked node reminded Typhomine of a similar situation the party had encountered a few sessions prior, when they had come across a node of elemental air during their time on the floating island. And there a spellcaster had been attempting to seal off the node for some unknown reason… There was also a letter that had been left among the party members’ unconscious corpses. The demonic form apologized for not properly introducing himself to the party while promising to see them again in the future. The letter was signed “Lord Aggadon Thrain.” Picking up the proverbial pieces, Biff directed Krowe to throw one of the Iron Raven corpses over his shoulder before the party began retracing their steps. Upon reaching Basalti’s chamber, Biff produced the Scroll of Greater Restoration and cast it upon the Dreamwalker to restore their mental clarity. Grateful for the assistance, Basalti provided an escort for the party back to the hole leading back to the Prime Material Plane. Once the party had reached the portal, Basalti waited for them to step through and return to Fallcrest before closing the portal on their end. As the hole closed, Typhomine waved to the Dreamwalker. quote:Typhomine - ”Goodbye, Basalti!” X X X X X As Typhomine considered Basalti’s words...his variety of uncontrollable breath weapons, his ability to speak in the elemental tongue, and his interactions with some fire sprites...Hale attempted to take this moment to slip away with the goal of fleeing Fallcrest now that the party knew her name. Biff managed to spy her trying to run and was able to coax her back through gentle reassurance and just a hint of implied violence. The party headed back to Krowe’s manor to rest for the evening - the sight of Krowe walking through the streets with a body over his shoulder raising not a single eyebrow. The next morning at breakfast, Typhomine was still pondering the final words of Basalti. After some discussion, Kynwal made a suggestion - ”Have you tried Identfying yourself?” Having never cast Identify on a living person before, Typhomine used Krowe (who volunteered) as a guinea pig to help modify the spell, revealing Krowe to be a non-magical creature with no magical effects on him. Hale volunteered next, revealing that while she was a non-magical creature, there was a residual magical effect upon her - the aftereffects of a divination spell of some sort, cast roughly a year earlier. When pressed for details, she demurred and encouraged Typhomine to go ahead and cast Identify upon himself. Typhomine was identified as a non-magical creature with a magical effect upon him...and a magical creature with a magical effect on him. Every scale on his body flared up with a magical rune. At some point in his life, the same abjuration spell had been cast and bounded into him hundreds of times - not to affect him, but seemingly in an effort to affect someone else. quote:Kynwal - ”This is a turn. Maybe someone bound an elemental inside of you and the runes are keeping it trapped inside.” The party’s next stop was the Temple of Lethik, where Biff planned to use Speak with Dead on the dead Korvan’s ghost. At the temple the party was joined by Aislyn Ironsky, Captain of the Fallcrest city guards known as the Halberds, Lord Commander Shane Featherstone, captain of the Baron’s personal guard known as the Shields, and personal abjurer to the Count, Lady Alydia Steelhilt. Speak with Dead allowed Biff to ask five questions to the summoned ghost. The total sum of the postmortem interrogation was that the Iron Ravens had been assigned by the High King of Korvis himself, Dukaid Thrainvolk, through the kingdom’s Spymistress Lady Catrynna Staalgard, to guard the door to the Elemental Plane of Earth, keep out trespassers, and follow his orders until Thrain’s mission was complete and he was free of the city. The Black Earth Cult themselves were inconsequential in the eyes of Korvis, and the kingdom had two agents operating within Fallcrest, one in the South Ward among the common folk (Lord Commander - “we know of this agitator”) and one operating among the Count’s men - a man of rank among the Shields (Lord Commander - “that’s impossible”). Korvis’ interference in Kaeryn’s affairs is nothing new, as the countries’ relations are at best a perpetual state of cold war. But orders coming directly from the High King are incredibly rare. At this point Alydia reveals that it’s interesting that the party is dealing with a being (‘Thrain’) named after the High King (‘Thrainvolk’), as it implies some sort of relationship between them...and according to confirmed reports, the High King has been making a dedicated effort to slay his progeny at the moment of their birth, to the point of using magic to confirm their executions have been carried out. Three such progeny have been slain in this manner. As these revelations are being discussed, Alydia steps to one side and casts Message. A few minutes later upon receiving a response, she turned to Lord Commander Featherstone and told him, ”I am invoking the neutrality of the Cabal.” Once neutrality was agreed upon, a woman teleported in, roughly the same age as Alydia but prematurely gray, with canary yellow robes and a family emblem of an open castle gate with crossed swords pointing inward. Krowe immediately recognized the emblem as the family crest of the Siegeholmes, a noble family from Korvis, while Kynwal immediately recognized her as Baroness Karsten Siegeholme, Diviner for the Cabal.” Alydia had one question for her. quote:Alydia - ”Why is the High King of Korvis killing his progeny?” Lord Commander Featherstone stepped out with the pair as well. After casting the gaesa binding everyone left in the room to secrecy, Karsten laid the prophecy bare. Centuries ago Dukaid, who is only the second High King in Korvin history, was told by a seer that he would be struck down by a legitimate heir - a child of a Korvin queen. As such, he has since killed three of his children and used magical methods to confirm their death, to avoid an heir raising a revolt to overthrow him in the future. The reason for Dukaid ruling for as long as he has? He’s a cambon, a half-friend born of a union between his father Kronus and his succubus queen, and Dukaid’s influence that has explained the birth of the first tieflings on Tanicus… X X X X X On the way back to Krowe’s manor, the party are discussing their plans for the upcoming winter when Aya notices that one of the griffins flying patrol overhead was weaving through the air due to the rider being slumped over against its neck.    The rider, one of the Shields, ended up slipping off the griffin and splattering all over the pavement. Krowe managed to calm the griffin down as it descended to check on its master as Biff studied what was left of the body. A pair of arrows had been shot into the rider’s back, a wound which would have killed him if not for the sudden application of gravity. Picking through the chunky salsa of his remains, Biff discovered a note.  The Happy Hydra was a bar/restaurant just outside the headquarters for the Halberds, in essence a police bar. As such, Krowe got a number of looks from some of the Halberds as the party walked in, due to his questionable and juvenile criminal antics in the past. (DM - ”There’s a statute on the books stating that the Halberds are no longer to put Krowe Dragonhall in shackles because he enjoys it too much”) Kienna Summerwise turned out to be one of the barmaids, along with a new girl named Darla, who traded off serving the party during the lunch rush. As things died down and Darla slyly hit on Biff, Kienna managed to spare a few minutes to sit down with the party. Taking care not to reveal specifics, Biff described as much of the body’s clothing, symbols and items as best he could. It was enough for Kienna to recognize the party was talking about Sir Merrik Windstone, a good friend to her brother Kanton Summerwise, both members of the Shields. The party decided that it would be for the best to go talk to the Shields, specifically Kanton, until Aya pointed out that there was a Korvan spy within the Shields, and someone had gone so far as to shoot a Shield while they were on their griffin. quote:Hale - ”If we go to the Shields right now, there’s a good chance that one of us might get an arrow in the back and die.” Biff and Kynwal stay behind to watch Kienna while Biff stays to watch Darla’s behind. The rest of the party heads towards the Shield’s barracks where Merik and Kanton were assigned. It’s Krowe (for such a dumb character the player rolls stupidly well on Perception checks) who sees a rat...and then the same rat...and then the same rat following them, darting through the shadows and back alleys to keep just ahead of them and watch them as that walk past. Typhomine slowly drifts to the side before pointing at it and asking it to politely come over through the use of the Command spell. Several passed Wisdom checks on Typhomine’s part and several failed Wisdom saves on the rat’s part finds the party, specifically Aya, in possession of a cranium rat.  Shoving the rat into one of her empty pouches after literally intimidating the crap out of it, the party knocks on the door of the Shield’s barracks. The guard behind the counter is initially wary of the party, and it takes some convincing (after several horrible attempts to flirt by Aya and the guard asking Krowe is he was there to turn himself in) for the guard to go look for Kanton. As the party waits, Biff joins them, having left Kynwall back at the Happy Hydra. After hearing about the difficulty that the party was having, Biff suggested that the party go talk to the Count first and get his backing and authority to investigate the matter. The ensuing discussions, including AGAIN aggravating the guard behind the door, causes Biff to sink to the street, head in hands. Which was the point where Biff came running up. Wearing nothing but a bedsheet and holding his hammer in the sky. And by hammer, I mean actual hammer, not his metaphorical one. As the party takes a second to process the thought of two Biff’s (Aya - ”I cannot even begin to tell you what I am thinking right now.”), a swarm of cranium rats streams from a nearby grate as the Biff on the street gracefully leaps into the air, landing on both feet as its skin liquifies and becomes smooth with a bluish-gray tint.  A doppelganger. Fortunately the party continued to resist the psychic attacks of the cranium rats and dispersed the swarm while Biff got his revenge by beating the crap out of the doppelganger, which has poisoned him while in Darla’s form and switched places with him for the purpose of delaying the party to allow Kanton to make his escape. Once the guard saw the unconscious body of the doppelganger, he allowed the part inside and directly them towards Kanton.   Kanton was standing by a campfire as the party approached. An effort was made to approach him in a calm, reasonable manner to allay any suspicions and hopefully get him before… Of course, Kanton saw the party coming and proceeded to throw something in the campfire before running towards his griffin to take off. Biff cast a Darkness spell to hinder his efforts as Krowe charged into the sphere, leaping off and managing to grab onto the griffin as it took off, preventing it from getting away.   The fight consisted of Krowe and Kanton fighting on the griffin while the griffin attempted to attack BOTH of them, Hale using Wing Shot to keep the griffin from escaping, and Aya and Typhomine managing to recover the item that had been thrown into the campfire. Before Krowe could land the finishing blow on Kanton however, he pulled out a dagger and stabbed himself in the leg. As the poison coursed through his body, the doppelganger reverted to its normal form and fell to the ground. Krowe managed to land the griffin as Typhomine looked at the item in question - a letter of some sort.  Thankfully, however, Typhomine still had Patternweave handy, and there was just enough of the letter left for Typhomine to get an image in his head… 
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Nov 9, 2018 13:43
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Looks like Lady Catrynna has a stargate.
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Nov 9, 2018 17:14
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Oh poo poo, it's a goa'uld invasion in progress.
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Nov 9, 2018 17:24
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Yawgmoth posted:Looks like Lady Catrynna has a stargate. Cooked Auto posted:Oh poo poo, it's a goa'uld invasion in progress. You laugh, but here's a spoiler for the next recap... 
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Nov 9, 2018 18:11
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I don't quite know if it'll amuse you - I waded through many pages of this (and the 'bad' thread) and thought you might find this amusing. I'm on a DnD 5e campaign with four other guys. My character is a tiefling warlock/bard with an intense fascination for taboos. So out of the game, I asked our DM whether he would let me fight a feces elemental one day. Sure enough, one of the next sessions as we explore a crumbling, abandoned sea-side fortress, a very foul smell begins to waft in our direction. We enter a ruined banquet room, an at us comes the feces elemental. The rest of the party bows out of the fight and wants to either witness me fail spectacularly or be a hero of questionable merit. It didn't start out well. The feces elemental rolls a crit on its first attack and, to quote the DM: "takes a very sick dump down your mouth". Then, the elemental spins of four smaller elementals. It's then that my eyes light up in delight and I ask the DM: "permission to call these four little turds the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turdlets." DM allows it, everyone is already a bit tipsy and laughing. One of our companions, an evil halfling wizard, then asks: "and how bout the big one?". In the heat of the moment, without pause, I blurt out "that's Master Sphincter." The halfling had the laughing fits for so long he actually took windpipe damage. I ended up slaying the feces elemental on my own. My last action was to create a phantasmal force in the shape of a toilet. The elemental failed its wisdom check and was flushed down the drain with 6 psych damage.
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Nov 10, 2018 00:22
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call center manager posted:dare you enter my magical realm
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Nov 10, 2018 05:11
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call center manager posted:Then, the elemental spins of four smaller elementals. It's then that my eyes light up in delight and I ask the DM: "permission to call these four little turds the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turdlets." DM allows it, everyone is already a bit tipsy and laughing. One of our companions, an evil halfling wizard, then asks: "and how bout the big one?". In the heat of the moment, without pause, I blurt out "that's Master Sphincter." The halfling had the laughing fits for so long he actually took windpipe damage. See that's how cutting insult works though. But more appropriately RiotGearEpsilon posted:
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Nov 11, 2018 16:18
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What the gently caress
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Nov 13, 2018 14:28
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Bottom line: I just think poop is funny. I know that after years of warily seeing creeps bring in their fetishes into DnD, you think there's some nefarious repressed sexual desire at work here, but there isn't.
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Nov 13, 2018 16:13
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| # ? May 21, 2024 20:29 |
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call center manager posted:Bottom line: I just think poop is funny. I know that after years of warily seeing creeps bring in their fetishes into DnD, you think there's some nefarious repressed sexual desire at work here, but there isn't. Don't worry, this thread wouldn't be half as interesting without the occasional cat-piss story.
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Nov 13, 2018 17:02
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