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Mambo No. 5 posted:I know this is from a very long time ago, but did anyone ever write up/expand on the "More Guys" fighter? I like that idea and would like to read more about it. I've playtested this a couple times and it works ok but I'm sure it'll all fall to pieces if you put it up against people who are optimising official classes. I've got it done up as a pdf (and goddamn I'm bad at making stuff look pretty) but I dunno how/where to host that. quote:Fighter Archetype: COMMANDER I've apparently lost my notes for "3/6/9/12 dudes = one adventurer" as a class. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 02:04 on Mar 10, 2019 |
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Mar 10, 2019 01:58
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Numlock posted:
That is loving awesome and way better than 'rocks fall dragon dies'.
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Mar 10, 2019 02:30
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ritorix posted:That is loving awesome and way better than 'rocks fall dragon dies'. That is awesome. Good thing the dragon didn't have some sort of throat-borne attack to defend itself with. 😂
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Mar 10, 2019 02:34
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Kaal posted:That is awesome. Good thing the dragon didn't have some sort of throat-borne attack to defend itself with. 😂 Gotta inhale to exhale!
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Mar 10, 2019 02:46
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Numlock posted:So I’ve wrapped up my middle earth game. Which book is that adventure from? I have some AiMe books but I haven't really done much with the system yet. How do you like it?
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Mar 10, 2019 03:21
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Kaal posted:That is awesome. Good thing the dragon didn't have some sort of throat-borne attack to defend itself with. 😂 It did but it used it to melt a hole in the floor (to not die from the trap that was obviously there to kill it) just prior to the fight starting. Not something I’m supposed to use every round but the dragon died before it “recharged”. Epi Lepi posted:Which book is that adventure from? I have some AiMe books but I haven't really done much with the system yet. How do you like it? Wilderland adventures. We enjoyed it, I made a point of focusing on the most middle earth aspects of the game so the players spent a lot of time solving riddles, singing songs and smoking pipes for challenges. Not a setting for murder hobos, and it took a little adjustment for the players to not auto attack everything that looked at them funny or give respect to the village headman instead of ignoring any authority figure that wasnt obviously stronger than them. But they adjusted.
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Mar 10, 2019 04:45
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Hey has anyone messed with the Liches and Lasers stuff? The theming and stuff is totally my jam, but it seems.....um poorly balanced, so before I spend money on 3rd party stuff, just wanna see if there is any threadsensus on it. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/snickelsox/lasers-and-liches-new-5e-sourcebooks
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Mar 10, 2019 06:17
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Elector_Nerdlingen posted:I've playtested this a couple times and it works ok but I'm sure it'll all fall to pieces if you put it up against people who are optimising official classes. I've got it done up as a pdf (and goddamn I'm bad at making stuff look pretty) but I dunno how/where to host that. Thanks! I'll show this to my GM and see what he thinks about letting me use it.
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Mar 10, 2019 13:34
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So here's a question for those of you who've played Curse of Strahd: Does it actually get any good? We've played through Lost Mines before and it was ok. Nothing amazing but a perfectly functional intro-adventure to D&D, involving goblins, some bandits, and some weirder stuff. It's even got a dragon and some dungeons in it. Classic stuff. This time though? We've played a couple of sessions and I thought it was just me, but yesterday I spoke with another player and we both are just kinda bored with it? Like, we're whisked away into the magical Railroad Fog and we meet some NPCs (dead and otherwise) who tell us their tales of woe and all I can think is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAA1xgTTw9w This is not my land, these are not my people, and no way are their problems suddenly our problems. You guys have trouble with the ancient vampire lord who rules this domain? Why the gently caress do you think we can do anything for you? Even if we wanted to (which we don't), we self-evidently can't. It's obvious this sort of poo poo has happened to other adventurers before us, we have no delusions of grandeur. We aren't your chosen ones who can fix the things that they could not. And worse, it's obvious that Strahd brought us here on purpose so whatever we do is with the implicit approval of the villain, who's in it to get some entertainment going I guess? This doesn't motivate us. I'm not looking for spoilers. Just tell me if it gets better, please.
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Mar 10, 2019 14:40
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Hi I'm thinking of getting back into D&D as I had a lot of fun with 4E, but my small little group lost steam. I'm curious what the best way to find a group these days is, as I'm pretty out if the loop. I'm in Sydney Australia, but I'm not physically close to any game stores worth half a drat My preference is proper face to face play, but is roll20 the alternative for online play? Anywhere else like Reddit, or is there a good site for Aussies? I'd really like to throw myself in the deepens and role play proper if I could. Sorry for 50 questions
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Mar 10, 2019 14:44
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Sage Genesis posted:I'm not looking for spoilers. Just tell me if it gets better, please. I hope this is vague enough, and if it doesn't sound like something you care for then you want a different adventure: There are a lot of things you can do or collect to get stronger or otherwise improve your position, and then you go bust down the gate of Strahd's castle and kill him. You're presented with him as a threat early on but you can't hope to kill him until much later. The "woe is me" is toned down a lot after the first town and there's a lot of hosed up stuff to see and a lot of stuff that tries to kill you out there, as well as things that are or resemble dungeon crawls and other more standard D&D content. It's just a bit front-loaded with tone. edit: It might take tuning for the group on the part of the DM if people aren't interested in taking in the spooky atmosphere or if the DM isn't good at delivering it though, and even though there's a lot of "typical" D&D content in it it leans more heavily on exploration and talky stuff BattleMaster fucked around with this message at 14:55 on Mar 10, 2019 |
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Mar 10, 2019 14:45
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Sage Genesis posted:So here's a question for those of you who've played Curse of Strahd: It sounds like it's being very badly presented by your DM. For starters, Strahd is a powerful entity who just brought you there to gently caress with you, so simply trying to escape him is a perfectly acceptable goal and something the module assumes. But virtually all paths to escape Strahd involve growing strong enough to confront him. So, really, the basic goal is "beat Strahd" no matter whether you're inclined towards selfishness or heroics. He's going to keep bullying you until you either do that, or give up and die. If your group isn't getting that, you're either stupid or the DM is loving up bad. Another thing is that with the module as written, the people of Bavaria has no illusions whatsoever that your group will be the ones to defeat the vampire lord - if you're around and they think you can help them with their immediate troubles then they'll attempt to enlist your help (sometimes through subterfuge), but as far as everyone is concerned, Strahd is invincible. Hell, even most of the few people prodding you to go defeat Strahd consider you just one more of the bunch. What the module does have as a flaw is that it does very little to present NPCs as likeable or sympathetic, so that's entirely on the shoulders of the DM if they want you to want to care about helping the people of Bavaria out of convenience, principle, or out of genuine concern (by way of characterization). Conspiratiorist fucked around with this message at 15:01 on Mar 10, 2019 |
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Mar 10, 2019 14:57
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Conspiratiorist posted:It sounds like it's being very badly presented by your DM. That's possible. The DM in question is fairly new. But there's no quick and easy fixing that, so I guess what I'm basically asking is: will the adventure itself have anything great to offer later on (we're not that far in I think), or am I looking forward to more of the same?
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Mar 10, 2019 15:24
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I mean, who did you run into, Ireena? She's the only character in the story who wants big drat heroes to defeat Strahd. She's also little more than a plot hook with a name - completely irrelevant.
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Mar 10, 2019 15:28
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I'm not sure on the names, my notes and the character sheets are all in the campaign folder at the DM's place. But I'm fairly sure we didn't meet Ireena herself, but did meet her brother. She's the lady that Strahd wants as his vampire bride, basically, yes?
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Mar 10, 2019 15:33
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Yeah. She's got a bunch of events associated with her but they don't matter. At worst all you get is Strahd blaming you if she dies under your watch.
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Mar 10, 2019 15:43
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Sage Genesis posted:That's possible. The DM in question is fairly new. But there's no quick and easy fixing that, so I guess what I'm basically asking is: will the adventure itself have anything great to offer later on (we're not that far in I think), or am I looking forward to more of the same? Define great though. If you like to fight stuff and crawl through dungeons there is a lot of that. There are several small dungeons, big dungeons, and Strahd's castle is a huge dungeon. If you want to talk to characters who aren't depressed out of their minds and solve mysteries and find out who isn't really as they seem, there is a lot of that after the first town. If you want to explore, it shouldn't be so railroady after the introduction. There just aren't many places to go except forward until you get past the first town. If you want to go on a treasure hunt with some clues, there's that too but it's a minor spoiler as to how you get the clues. if you get a chance to get your fortune told, go for it If you want motivation and the DM's portrayal of the situation or NPCs isn't giving it to you, then at least you should be trying to survive and escape the cursed land. I think Curse of Strahd is great but it requires some skill on the part of the DM to pull off and it's more sensitive than usual to what the players really want out of the game. BattleMaster fucked around with this message at 16:06 on Mar 10, 2019 |
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Mar 10, 2019 15:56
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That's a fair question. I guess being inspired and motivated is the main thing. Everything you list sounds like it could be fun, but it's all in the execution, you know? At least it's good to know it gets less railroady and there's more non-depressed characters to look forward to. We'll see how the DM pulls it off. Thanks for the answers.
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Mar 10, 2019 16:03
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Sage Genesis posted:That's a fair question. I guess being inspired and motivated is the main thing. Everything you list sounds like it could be fun, but it's all in the execution, you know? At least it's good to know it gets less railroady and there's more non-depressed characters to look forward to. We'll see how the DM pulls it off. Reminder to speak to your DM about any issues so they can adjust to make it fun for you. My DM ran us through CoS about a year ago. It was very fun. After the first town you can go off and do whatever. Its very sandboxy.
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Mar 10, 2019 16:05
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Honestly I think that DMs and players should endeavor to be involved in crafting character hooks during character creation. So many PCs struggle to find motivation if they're developed without any plot context.
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Mar 10, 2019 16:22
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Session 0 is important. I'm trying to corral my players into doing a session 0 before we kick off Storm King's Thunder, and god drat trying to get people on a call for an hour is like pulling teeth.
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Mar 10, 2019 16:25
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The easiest character creations Ive done have the DM going, "This is the rough adventure youre about to go on, this is the place that it starts, make a character backstory that explains why youre there and why youre willing to go along for the ride" about a week before session 0.
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Mar 10, 2019 17:59
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Yeah did you make a character who doesn't want to go on the adventure? You should want to go on the adventure. You can figure out why - maybe you'd quite like to go back home, maybe you think this guy's a jerk, maybe you have empathy for the people around. I haven't spoiled myself on this one so I don't know quite where the action is - have you had a few sessions without any fighting or anything? I can understand being bored by a session, 100%, some sessions are unengaging, but it seems weird if it's because your character lacks motivation - you made up the character and its motivations, can't you make up different ones so they are interested in the adventure? Like, I also like player-driven sandbox play, so I get wanting to choose where you go and what you do, but you signed up for a premade module. My understanding is that it becomes more of a sandbox soon, but it shouldn't be surprising that it involves people and their problems. Why are the people of Barovia different from the dwarves of lost mines? Why did you care about them? Like I'm not saying your criticism is illegitimate, I'm sure there's a perfectly good reason you're dissatisfied, but I don't think it's that your characters motivations aren't aligned with the situation, given that you get to wholesale make them up anyway.
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Mar 10, 2019 18:18
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Yeah the two questions I ask now are "Why is your character invested in this adventure?" And "What makes you capable of being on this adventure?" In character you can hate any aspect of actually being on the quest. Bilbo Baggins it up. But you have to make someone who doesn't kill gameplay as a character. Also, I guess you CAN retire a character after their first big score. But that means you retire the character, they become an NPC, and you make a new character that wants to play the game.
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Mar 10, 2019 18:30
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Has anyone here run Lost Laboratory of Kwalish? I'm using it with my home game of 9th level players right now. They're mostly through the monastery right now after two sessions and will get to Daoine Gloine next session. This part seems pretty bare bones and underutilized. I'm thinking of pulling in some material from the special random encounters charts in the appendix so they don't just explore a mostly abandoned city. Anyone else modify this section or have suggestions?
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Mar 10, 2019 19:57
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While we're on the topic of curse of strahd, is leveling supposed to be rare in this adventure path? I feel like we're heading towards a TPK with how strong the monsters are. We hit level 3 after the starter haunted house and have't gained a level since. So far we did the first town, killed 3 witches who could one shot us with lightning bolts, fought some minions of the titular character, and we're about to have stern words with a coffin maker. I brought up levelling with the DM and he said we level when we find some important items which we have no idea what we're looking for, or a general are to start looking. Is this adventure just supposed to be brutal? Or is this something we have to Go Over Like Adults~
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Mar 10, 2019 20:40
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How the gently caress did you clean out the Bonegrinder at level 3?!
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Mar 10, 2019 21:04
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DM probably pulled punches just like every single other DM who runs strahd. That encounter is so badly designed. We were 3 as well because you find it just down the road right after the haunted house. To answer your q, you should level soon, the book says to hit 5 after dealing with the town.
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Mar 10, 2019 21:30
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Our DM gave us 4 for clearing bone grinder. And he toned it down a little. And there were 5 of us
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Mar 10, 2019 21:36
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Heh, was kind of dreading being a rogue for my first session in our new Homebrew campaign. Started at level 5 and drat. Hiding behind our wizard and sneak attack one shotting lvl 7 bandits was hilarious and gave our DM a double take. Also pick pocketed more gold than the rest of the party made combined.
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Mar 10, 2019 21:52
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Re: motivation. We're actually three players and it's the same party who did Lost Mines earlier. (This means we're also not level 1 but the DM said he'd adjust encounters to compensate. So far that does seem to be true.) When CoS was suggested we went along with it, as most of us remember Spooky Halloween D&D from our 2e days. All of us know that we're going to find a way out at the end of CoS. As players we're motivated by that, and of course just the idea of having a fun gaming night with friends. But for our characters it's been miserable. It's been railroady. It's been uninspiring. After a haunted house scenario, Strahd showed up in person to mock us and basically told us straight up that we were only there to amuse him, implying that we were just pawns, that he could kill us right there and then, and we could never really beat him. Strahd also apparently controls the weather, the wildlife, and the totally-not-gypsies. There's also no smith in town so we can't stock up on several important arms and supplies. So yeah, as players we know we can (eventually) fight him and go home. But our characters feel like they've been trapped in a crapsack world where their best is never good enough, and even if they did fight him it'd be all according to Strahd's keikaku. It's just kind of hard to retain enthusiasm after several sessions of that. Not just me. All of the players. Hmm. As I type this out and see how other people have experienced the adventure, I think I'm pretty sure where the problem lies.
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Mar 10, 2019 22:48
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Sage Genesis posted:Re: motivation. I was gonna make a post similar to Jeffrey from YOSPOS's about "why did you make characters who don't want to adventure," but I see you responded. Your characters are trapped in a crapsack world and their best isn't good enough, but if you made characters who check out and roll over at that kind of obstacle then it's not the module for them. They should be amped to figure out a way to punk Strahd's rear end, mad that the odds are against them and ready to gently caress up everyone in their way until they can go home. I think you also have a bit of a disconnect because you as players know your characters can't win (yet) but your characters shouldn't think so hard about "raising their power levels" until they can beat Strahd. One of the early hurdles in my Strahd game was I had the man himself show up fairly early in Barovia. My players kind of froze because they knew out of character that they couldn't kill Strahd so they were trying to metagame what to do. I had to say to them, "you and I both know you can't beat him yet but trust me I'm not gonna just kill you right here and now, take a step back and think of what your character would do right now." The fighter responded "Well my guy would try to fight his rear end" and I said go for it and we had a fun combat. I think that instance helped them get more into playing a character instead of controlling pawns in a boardgame. Maybe you guys are having a similar issue.
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Mar 10, 2019 23:33
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Oooh kay, so I have a player that REALLY wants to craft potions because they want to play an alchemy spec artificer and potions is a big part of that. Me being a big softy pushover DM who wants my players happy I want to be able to let them. The RAW for crafting in the DMG is super sparse and only involves buying materials at stores, while my player wants to go out and roll nature for mats. So I am currently brainstorming a homebrew system for foraging mats and am wondering if anyone thinks this will totally be unbalanced: First of all they need a formula and to be correct level for the rarity. Next they need a glass vial and a number of alchemy "elements" based on the crafting price. Then it would take a number of days to craft based on rarity (I would use something akin to this table: https://media.wizards.com/2017/dnd/downloads/UA_Downtime.pdf) pg8. The elements would be: life, earth, wind, fire, water and mind (what they actually are is up to the player's imagination, ie life element can be a healing herb, mind element peyote or a psychoactive mushroom). To find elements they would go out and make a nature check to determine if they find any (DC10? DC15?) and if they succeed have them roll 1d6 to discover what they found (based on environment). Maybe 1 element is worth 25g worth of crafting material? Meaning my player would need 1 life element per healing potion and 4 elements to make a greater healing potion. This is something I still need to figure out. So I guess my questions are: What is the average value in crafting material that my player should be able to find a day? If I made the check DC 15 she would find an element every other day with +5 nature, and if each element had a 25g value that would be on average 12.5g found a day. Is that too much? Would this unbalance the game with a wave of potions? With these values it would average 3 days total between foraging and crafting to make a healing potion, and 15 to make a greater healing, which doesn't seem so bad. Should I just go with it and adjust difficulty accordingly if they are having too easy a time? Is this even worth it and would it slow down the pace of play too much?
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Mar 10, 2019 23:34
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Sage Genesis posted:So yeah, as players we know we can (eventually) fight him and go home. But our characters feel like they've been trapped in a crapsack world where their best is never good enough, and even if they did fight him it'd be all according to Strahd's keikaku. It's just kind of hard to retain enthusiasm after several sessions of that. Not just me. All of the players. Yeah I've tried CoS twice. Depression central doomy sadness of the bloodstained darkness of the moon howled night cloud blood dark spiderweb gloom was super loving lame and fell apart because nobody was engaged. Strahd showing up after every PC success and basically going "I'll get you next time, Gadget! Neeeeeeext tiiiiiiiiiiime!" was amazing and only fell apart because I moved 4 hours away.
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Mar 10, 2019 23:36
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Elector_Nerdlingen posted:
I get that this isn't a vibe for everyone but I don't get people who play "DRACULA: THE ADVENTURE MODULE" when they know that's not their vibe.
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Mar 11, 2019 00:10
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Hey guys I need an appropriate price tag for this thing.quote:Oversized Longbow WDH
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Mar 11, 2019 00:15
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Epi Lepi posted:I get that this isn't a vibe for everyone but I don't get people who play "DRACULA: THE ADVENTURE MODULE" when they know that's not their vibe. Not everyone is already familiar with Ravenloft, and it's not marketed as or necessarily intended as "Nihilism: The Adventure Module. "Fantasy-Horror" could just as easily be Dracula or Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein - and from what I'm hearing, COS could be too, so it's up to the DM to determine (and ideally share) what tone they're going to choose.
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Mar 11, 2019 00:56
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Lurdiak posted:Hey guys I need an appropriate price tag for this thing. Lurdiak posted:Hey guys I need an appropriate price tag for this thing. I'd say that it would be broadly equivalent to an uncommon magical weapon, so 100-500 GP. Note that Ziraj is a CR 8 monster, despite the weapon effectively only adding a 1d4 on a hit. It really depends on your campaign, but I'd price it comparable to a Longbow+1. For my campaign I'd probably price it around 400 GP.
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Mar 11, 2019 01:21
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Epi Lepi posted:I get that this isn't a vibe for everyone but I don't get people who play "DRACULA: THE ADVENTURE MODULE" when they know that's not their vibe. D&D isn't a horror game, Strahd-adjacent stuff has always been every single dumb vampire cliche thrown into a D&D shaped bucket, and I'm never going to think playing it straight with the whinygloom is anything other than lame. <hits wolf howl on halloween soundboard> ZE SCHILDREN OFF DER NIGHT, VOT VONDERVUL MUSIK ZEY MAKE AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!1!!1! <pipe organ solo over visuals of bargain bin dracula swordfighting with wizards, elves, and guys that shoot fire out of their magic lutes> Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 01:46 on Mar 11, 2019 |
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Mar 11, 2019 01:37
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People play CoS straight without constant castylvania/true blood/whatever references??
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Mar 11, 2019 03:58
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