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Right, the evil wizard's tasks could ALL further his agenda. The demon does this poo poo every time heroes come into the woods: he got one group to kill the priest of a nearby town, got another to aid a cult the demon itself is cut off from, etc. He may be stuck in the woods, but people who come into the woods aren't, so he patiently advances his plans and extends his influence through them.
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Jul 30, 2019 13:14
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That's good.
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Jul 31, 2019 06:16
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To keep the party from instantly suspecting the wizard, I would have the quest giver themselves name drop the them. Something like "The wards are maintained by a wizard who has dedicated her life to keeping [demon] bound in the woods. You can find her at X. Help her with whatever her needs." Hell, it could have originally been a real wizard doing exactly that. Maybe at some point an adventuring party that was more mercenary than heroic killed the wizard for her treasures and covered it up, then the demon took the opportunity to begin impersonating her using forest-wide illusions. This sets up the players slowly finding out that the cottage is rotting, the wizard is a corpse, and the wards are decaying.
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Jul 31, 2019 13:11
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hey goons, I have my lvl 2 saltmarsh party heading off into the DREADWOODS to find a missing patrol, so far i have a vague idea of them finding a burnt out (wood elf?) village and having a fight (and finding a couple of the missing patrol). Thoughts for fight complications/nice bits of flavour/weird happenings? the wood is ruled by an evil night hag but that's a long way down the road, a couple of hints in that direction would be neat though
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Aug 2, 2019 23:29
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Whatever has done this bad stuff has also captured a talking, semi intelligent raven. It belongs to the night hag and wants to be let out of the cage so that it can go home. If the party is nice to it, the night hag will remember this later (and be humanized a bit by a moment of gratitude), or, if the party keeps or harms the raven, the hag is set up for some justified anger. Anyway, the raven is too stupid to really reveal anything about the hag, its just a decision about loot (magic bird!) that is going to come back around later. (I'm thinking of that bird the witch from arthur stories had)
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Aug 2, 2019 23:39
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How good is Shadow of the Demon Lords difficultly system in balancing out monsters in terms of strength in comparison to something like CR in DnD? I'm planning on running my group through a premade level 0 adventure then probably going off from there off the cuff with the handbook
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Aug 3, 2019 22:20
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Jack B Nimble posted:Whatever has done this bad stuff has also captured a talking, semi intelligent raven. It belongs to the night hag and wants to be let out of the cage so that it can go home. If the party is nice to it, the night hag will remember this later (and be humanized a bit by a moment of gratitude), or, if the party keeps or harms the raven, the hag is set up for some justified anger. Dammit I forgot to put this guy in, they made it through the spooky logging camp and had a spooky night hag dream, so I think I'll have the raven flutter up and attach itself to them the following day.
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Aug 3, 2019 22:29
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The Shame Boy posted:How good is Shadow of the Demon Lords difficultly system in balancing out monsters in terms of strength in comparison to something like CR in DnD? Level 0 is actually not a great starting point due to how squishy level 0 pcs are, but generally the difficulty budgeting for sotdl is pretty good. Demonic foes are always harder than their difficulty would lead you to believe though. Pretty sure Void Larvae are low-level demonic enemies that can easily cause a TPK. For the most part the difficulty does an adequate job though.
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Aug 3, 2019 22:48
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The Shame Boy posted:How good is Shadow of the Demon Lords difficultly system in balancing out monsters in terms of strength in comparison to something like CR in DnD? It's the weakest part of the game, and extremely frustrating, especially with small (but still officially supported) party sizes. Turns out that there's actually a pretty significant difference between a party of 3 and a party of 5 despite the game treating them exactly the same RAW. So very much like CR, in other words.  I recommend checking average damage per turn math for your players vs. what the monsters are capable of, or even run dummy combats if you have the time and patience. Or backport D&D 4E assumptions about how resilient and damaging monsters should be (a project I started working on before school started kicking my rear end; I'm graduated now so I might revisit it at some point). Glukeose posted:Level 0 is actually not a great starting point due to how squishy level 0 pcs are, but generally the difficulty budgeting for sotdl is pretty good. Demonic foes are always harder than their difficulty would lead you to believe though. Pretty sure Void Larvae are low-level demonic enemies that can easily cause a TPK. It's hard to tell for sure because difficulty tiers in SotDL are so vague and there's not really any rhyme or reason to how much defense, health, damage, etc. stuff has, but just going by rough averages Demon-type enemies tend to basically be one difficulty tier higher than what the game says they are. (Much like dragons in D&D 3.5.) Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 23:05 on Aug 3, 2019 |
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Aug 3, 2019 23:01
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I'm in a slight pickle with my 5e Curse of Strahd campaign that I'm running. Luckily I have 2 weeks to iron it out. Slight spoilers follow. My party has run the Watcher's and the Baron's family out of Vallaki and have installed Ismark as the new Burgomaster. They are convinced that there are still more of Lady Watcher's cultists running around the village so I'm running with that. They found some fake posters for a new festival that the warlock was able to see were actually instructions for the cultists to meet up the following sundown out of the city. In the meantime the party went to the Wizard of Wines and Yester Hill and prevented the summoning of the corrupted treant. That battle was a battle where they had to defeat all the enemies and stop the ritual in 10 rounds, while Strahd berated them and cast annoying spells like Gust of Wind and Polymorph. My problem is that I was going to do a similar battle to resolve the cultists in Vallaki. My plan was to have a warlock servant of Strahd using the Deathlock stats conducting a ritual with the remaining cultists. The goal of the ritual would be to put the entire town to sleep/paralyze the citizens so the cultists could run amok. The party would have to take out all the cultists before the ritual is complete, which I realize now is the same situation as Yester Hill. I'm not attached to the goal of the cultists. I mainly wanted to make the party feel like they resolved that thread and introduce the warlock as a sub-boss type character who will hopefully get away to haunt the characters another day. (My party have been doing a decent job of recruiting characters to their side and I see that continuing so I want Rahadin and some other characters on Strahd's side to tie up the parties allies whenever the big showdown happens.) What kind of conflict can I have them get into that is interesting but not the same thing? Why are the cultists meeting? The reason the party warlock is able to see the true message on the poster is because she has made a deal with a devil, is there a way to tie that in more? She has told the rest of the party she is a wizard so there may be some interparty conflict when they find out she's a warlock which is why the poster part happened at all.
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Aug 5, 2019 21:23
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Had a session of a game that was all about Director Stance and players picking things they wanted to during a period of downtime. It was different and we mostly ended up just playing out scenes in full anyway, but it was neat. Anyone have any experience with that sort of thing and advice for it? It was only after the session ended that we went "hey, can the guy do some crafting?" and then we just rolled some crafting and he got all the stuff done without needing big scenes for it.
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Aug 5, 2019 21:34
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Can you say more about “Director Stance”?
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Aug 5, 2019 21:57
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Subjunctive posted:Can you say more about “Director Stance”? Sure! So the three main "stances" you can do is Actor, Author and Director. Actor is the "default" mode of play that most people use and is where you play your character based on what they know and their POV. Author is playing the character but they act in a way that, while still in-character, the choices lead towards what you as a player think will be a good story so sometimes choices that aren't "good" for your character happen, like getting classic comedy of error stuff going because it's more dramatic if your character has a big misunderstanding than going "well, lets gather all the facts here" or whatever. Director stance is when you describe events or facts beyond just your character. Examples ranging from the level of stunts in Exalted where you'd say "ah yeah, when Rollo gets the message that his father has died he turns and tears down the family heraldry on the wall" where you've directed that there's the heraldry on the wall to tear down to straight up asking for a scene and describing the setup, like "Rollo is walking down the street, glum from the news of his father and he hears someone getting mugged down an alleyway! He rushes in and yells at the thugs to stop!" and then you can go into an encounter with some thugs or you skip it and go straight to Rollo getting beating bloody in an alleyway and hitting a new low or triumphing and being heroic. You obviously don't just declare this is happening and start directing because that's lovely and you can't do things that aren't reasonable in the imagined space, like your Rogue in D&D can't pick up a tree and use it as a baseball bat so don't flavour your attacks as that, but kicking a stool into a guy's shins as you attack for flavour in a bar brawl is great. Obviously people generally dip in and out of the various things as they play without even realizing and various games have them built in already, for example Chuubo's and Polaris encourage Director and Fiasco encourages Author. Director stance can also have more openness about declaring facts about the world and setting in general, not just scenery or scene setting. I guess I'm mostly just asking for examples people have in their own play for inspiration.
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Aug 5, 2019 23:43
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Often if I am introducing a new Zone to the World of Ruin Catering Company, I will pick somebody at random and tell them they have been to this place once before. Then I prompt a little story from them about whether it was frightening or exciting, and what sort of things/people they encountered there. Even something so simple as "Pesto, you are not thrilled to go back to Western Zone. Why is that?" can help you establish a lot about the area and its inhabitants. Or just a little more about the character's history. Strike, in general, strongly encourages you to have the players do a little directing now and then. That's one of the reasons I love it so much. Ignite Memories fucked around with this message at 01:01 on Aug 6, 2019 |
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Aug 6, 2019 00:56
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I love the concept but my table isn't quite used to having that level of control yet so I try to thread it into semi trivial situations to let them contribute to the flavor. In Castle Naerytar in HotDQ Rezmir keeps a well-stocked library with primo texts he's stolen from the Coast. I described the room and when they asked what books were in there, I basically said "I dunno, check some of the titles and let me know what you see." Gotta give a little guidance like "there's only one book on here that looks valuable at face value, none of them are Wizard tomes." But I can usually trust my players not to try to cheat in things they shouldn't, warranting the DM slap. In this example, they found a self help book about controlling anger which they gave to the absent firbolg cleric with the revenge hit list. He eventually changed dieties (not subclass, just for flavor) to try to achieve more lasting peace. When I killed him at the end, in his last monologue, he gave it to the party and asked them to leave it at a shrine for him. "How do you want to do this?" Is a pretty classic example. It doesn't give players much control outside of their weapons and immediate surroundings, so can be a great way to start having players narrate their own attacks. I've had a couple people start describing their non killing blows on their own. Combat directing gives you a glimpse into how players imagine their characters behaving/looking in stressful situations. ILL Machina fucked around with this message at 04:09 on Aug 6, 2019 |
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Aug 6, 2019 04:05
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Glory to Italia!
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Oh! I also had a gnome become murdered during the caravan and they asked the same cleric to lead a funeral service. He deftly pretended to know/improvised a macabre but sombre ceremony where three spears, held by his loved ones (one in this case, plus a friendly party member and the cleric) were pierced into the corpse before a burial. "To ceremonially ensure they don't accidentally bury him alive."
ILL Machina fucked around with this message at 04:40 on Aug 6, 2019 |
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Aug 6, 2019 04:13
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Nice nice nice! Completely unrelated issue now. Anyone got any advice on how to handle a situation in which a player that has admitted to having a problem with impulse control when they play a character with a fancy weapon which mostly manifests as escalating from 0 to 110 in about a second, with 100 being shooting someone in the face with a flamethrower? There's been 4 instances in 6 sessions of the current game where I've had to pause and ask if he really does want to kill someone that is very important to our immediate goal of finding someone or if he's sure he wants to shoot right now at a thing instead of holding his action to be ready to shoot it if it turns out to be bad and every time he's changed his mind to be "not kill" and "wait and see" and I don't want to be the guy telling someone else how to play but also there's the admitted impulsiveness which we've dealt with in other games and it sucks to call someone out on a thing. I'm pretty sure the reason he changes his mind is because he does actually think about it and change his mind rather than just doing it to please me. I've spoken to the GM and him about it, but I've got mondo anxiety about it. There's a bunch of times where the character is impulsive and it's rad and cool, its specifically the Kill Now thing I've got issue with.
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Aug 6, 2019 15:58
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Are you sure he isn't doing it to be funny? "I hit him with my sword" is the lowest hanging tabletop humor when NPCs are introduced and uncreative people seem to really gravitate toward it. If he's getting a laugh or even a chuckle each time, it will be hard to get him to stop.
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Aug 6, 2019 19:38
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Quote posted:Are you sure he isn't doing it to be funny? "I hit him with my sword" is the lowest hanging tabletop humor when NPCs are introduced and uncreative people seem to really gravitate toward it. A guy I used to play with told me many times that "the lowest hanging fruit is often the sweetest"
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Aug 6, 2019 20:17
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It's definitely not for laughs, it's more a case of everything looking like a nail combined with hot-head character.
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Aug 6, 2019 21:04
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If your DM doesn't feel it necessary to intervene, you can try to interrupt him in-character. I had that same cleric try to surprise a commander he was drinking with with inflict wounds in a room full of soldiers which would almost certainly have wiped multiple characters. I gave the other players who were watching over him a chance to intervene with some rolling so there was a chance he got to do his thing. If the DM isn't going to try to talk the guy down, he's going to have a hard game to manage, but murderhoboing is something that can be curtailed with in game events or simply by tailoring the game to recognize the impulsive evil this guy always brings. You could always PK him or leave him when he aggros a mob of guards to make him reroll a char that's more of a pacifist so he chills the gently caress out, too. 
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Aug 7, 2019 05:30
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EthanSteele posted:It's definitely not for laughs, it's more a case of everything looking like a nail combined with hot-head character. Sounds more like a psychopath to me. Is this how they play all their characters? If not, maybe let them get into that fight they want so bad and make sure everyone else is somewhere else so there can roll a different guy after they get arrested/killed? e: If that would annoy or upset the player yall could res them or break them out of jail and go "Listen man, there is a time and a place, so maybe chill out a bit." sleepy.eyes fucked around with this message at 16:52 on Aug 7, 2019 |
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Aug 7, 2019 16:37
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If you have a guy who's chaotic stupid and disruptive, the number one DM advice I can give is to NOT have the people he upsets take it out on the rest of the party if they don't take action to support him. If he pisses off a merchant/duke/guard captain/whatever, have them throw out/arrest/fight the dumbass, but don't have them attack everyone, just the disruptive player. "Now that he's gone, where were we?" is the only way to make the other PCs not hate both you and him, even if it strains credulity a little bit. The other players can only go so far to contain a problem member of the party when the player is unpredictable, don't punish them for not interrupting and turning the game into a farce of squabbling among themselves in public.
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Aug 7, 2019 18:02
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Spoilers for an early location/NPC reveal in Tomb of Annihilation: Currently my party of three level 5 PCs is on a quest for their jungle guide, Azaka, for which they have to ascend a 300-foot-tall stone spire to retrieve her magic family heirloom mask, which was stolen by the flock of evil pteradactyl-like humanoids that live at the top. The spire is riddled with caves that the party was intended to take to get to the top, with old rickety ladders connecting different levels. Rather than taking the ladders, the Sorcerer spent all his 3rd level spell slots and sorcery points to Twinned spell cast Fly on the party and bypass the lower caves, which they used in conjunction with the Ranger's Pass Without Trace to stealthily sneak a peek at the top level, where most of the Pterafolk roost. Rather than assault the top directly, they instead went into the highest cave entrance, just 50' below the top. Inside they encountered some of the Pterafolk and easily dispatched them, but failed their stealth rolls to take them out quietly so the loud, pained squawking alerted the remaining enemies up top. A couple flew down to investigate, and the party killed one while the other fled back up. It was at this point that we had to end the session. While we were clearing the table they began strategizing about what their next move should be, and all of them agreed that the first thing they should do is take a long rest to regain their lost spell slots. They think (and are correct) that the cave is very defensible with its 5' tunnel entrances and their enemies, being Large creatures, have to squeeze to get in, giving them Disadvantage on attacks and the PCs Advantage on attacks against them. Which leads to my current issue. So immediately after alerting all the enemies in the place to their presence, their plan is to take a long rest that is almost entirely unnecessary since 2/3 of the PCs are at full health, their guide is almost impossible to kill (although they don't know this yet), and the only resources that they have spent are three spell slots that wouldn't really be of much use in combat anyway since the Sorcerer hasn't taken any combat spells more potent than Magic Missle. The enemies know exactly where they are. However the enemies aren't stupid, and know that going single file into that tight space to try to kill the PCs in melee is a death sentence. So my question for the thread is: what would you do in this situation? Just let them have the long rest since they're in such a defensible position? Have the enemies interrupt their rest by trying to get them out some other way, like smoking them out of the cave? I'm relatively new to DMing and haven't had to face the "long rest in a dungeon" problem before.
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Aug 7, 2019 19:51
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I think you're thinking about it the right way. It helps sometimes to reread the long rest description in the rules:phb posted:A long rest is a period of extended downtime, at least 8 hours long, during which a character sleeps or performs light activity: reading, talking, eating, or standing watch for no more than 2 hours. If the rest is interrupted by a period of strenuous activity—at least 1 hour of walking, fighting, casting Spells, or similar Adventuring activity—the characters must begin the rest again to gain any benefit from it. When it comes to this kinda thing - "do we act now or gather our strength?", "do we follow the main plot lead or side quest?" - give them the sense the world is still active without their direct observation.
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Aug 7, 2019 20:19
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I'd probably have the enemies also planning their attack, or taking up more strategic/defensible positions while they rest. Something to make the fight harder (but not unwinnable) than if they continue on without the rest.ILL Machina posted:When it comes to this kinda thing - "do we act now or gather our strength?", "do we follow the main plot lead or side quest?" - give them the sense the world is still active without their direct observation.
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Aug 7, 2019 20:33
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Infinite Karma posted:If you have a guy who's chaotic stupid and disruptive, the number one DM advice I can give is to NOT have the people he upsets take it out on the rest of the party if they don't take action to support him. If he pisses off a merchant/duke/guard captain/whatever, have them throw out/arrest/fight the dumbass, but don't have them attack everyone, just the disruptive player. "Now that he's gone, where were we?" is the only way to make the other PCs not hate both you and him, even if it strains credulity a little bit. The other players can only go so far to contain a problem member of the party when the player is unpredictable, don't punish them for not interrupting and turning the game into a farce of squabbling among themselves in public. This has been one of the results of talking it out. Going with the Burning Wheel classic of "I wasn't involved so don't include me in the consequences" as long as it's within reason, like setting fire to a building doesn't mean its not burning down for the other players. If the rest of the party is talking him down from a thing the NPCs take notice that we're doing that. The other result is he's going to try not to do it! So success! The DM is very good at making consequences happen and making sure they're very foreseen and also making sure nothing gets too derailed because of fronts and stuff. sleepy.eyes posted:Sounds more like a psychopath to me. Is this how they play all their characters? If not, maybe let them get into that fight they want so bad and make sure everyone else is somewhere else so there can roll a different guy after they get arrested/killed? That's the thing! He doesn't normally do it, sometimes he has to be reminded to make sure his characters have a reason to not just walk away. This character is pretty conflict averse other than escalating immediately to gun at the first sign of anything that could be considered even remotely dangerous or bad cop becomes murderer. Today's session he was very conscious about not wanting to kill a guy with his attack because we wanted to question them! I think we're gonna be good with just "ok, are you sure?" for any sudden "I shoot" that crop up.
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Aug 8, 2019 02:13
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Against a level 6 party of 4, is a single young remorhaz threatening enough with its heat body or should I throw in a scaled back baby remorhaz to back it up? I figure a second young remorhaz might be a little too much since the major damage dealers are a fighter and monk and the tempest cleric may not think to use Call Lightning in a cave, even though the cave IS tall enough to accommodate.
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Aug 8, 2019 22:32
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From my experience Remorhaz, whether young or not, is extremely deadly. The young version may not have the swallow action or grapples with its bite, but that's still 27 average damage per hit, and an extra 7 for EVERY melee hit. The monk could down themselves without even thinking about it.
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Aug 8, 2019 23:56
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Reveilled posted:Perhaps the item lets you cast detect thoughts twice per day, but the item's curse is that it always reports stuff like the following as the target's thoughts: I like this and I think I can make it work by letting the weapon grow in power over time. The "curse" will probably be a malevolent spirit or something inside the weapon that gets more aware over time; that way I can ramp to the thought reading. Thanks for the suggestions, folks.
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Aug 9, 2019 07:29
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Because my campaign is almost completely comprised of ideas from this thread, my players are now in control of a giant lighthouse in the middle of the city. They have moved up through a guardroom, a barracks/living quarters, a training room, and an armoury. The top floor of the lighthouse has a magic item with both scrying and destructive capabilities. They will shortly get through a trap door to move into the subterranean levels of the light house which will, I hope, be more interesting than those above ground level. Does anyone have any ideas? It is established that the lighthouse is a holy place of the sea god, has been abandoned for hundreds of years, and is not hostile.
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Aug 10, 2019 17:38
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Sanford posted:Because my campaign is almost completely comprised of ideas from this thread, my players are now in control of a giant lighthouse in the middle of the city. They have moved up through a guardroom, a barracks/living quarters, a training room, and an armoury. The top floor of the lighthouse has a magic item with both scrying and destructive capabilities. They will shortly get through a trap door to move into the subterranean levels of the light house which will, I hope, be more interesting than those above ground level. Does anyone have any ideas? It is established that the lighthouse is a holy place of the sea god, has been abandoned for hundreds of years, and is not hostile. A lighthouse going in the opposite direction that lights the sea. This part isn’t abandoned
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Aug 10, 2019 19:01
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What system is everyone running in their current games?
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Aug 10, 2019 20:20
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Torchbearer on Roll20. Hard finding people online for it, though.
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Aug 10, 2019 20:24
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GURPS on Discord.
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Aug 10, 2019 21:10
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5e in person and my buddy's custom hard sci-fi game called Space Rejects on Roll20+Discord.
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Aug 10, 2019 23:47
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3.5e D&D on Roll20+Skype.
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Aug 11, 2019 00:21
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DMing a 5e saltmarsh game and a13th age stone thief campaign
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Aug 11, 2019 00:26
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Fragged Empire very slightly hacked to run the Warframe universe (it didn't take much), on Roll20.
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Aug 11, 2019 00:28
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I've got 3 sessions left in a two year long 40krpg game of only war. Reeaaally looking forward to being a lazy player.
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Aug 11, 2019 00:28
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