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Our dwarf-heavy tomb of annihilation party did a whole dwarven coming-of-age ceremony for our barbarian who had never lived the mountain life. We got him drunk, fed him psychedelic mushrooms and made him wrestle a greasy goat on top of a boulder
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Jun 6, 2020 17:53
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change my name posted:Yeah I'd check with your DM before you start playing just for clarification. In my last game, the DM kind of ruled that rustic hospitality from the folk hero background wouldn't work in the city we were in since they wouldn't know who I was, which kind of makes sense? But goes against how the feature is written. Your DM was a dumbass. The whole point of background features is that it's the DM's job to alter the narrative to make these things happen, out of sheer coincidence if necessary.
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Jun 6, 2020 18:07
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Infinite Karma posted:Your DM was a dumbass. The whole point of background features is that it's the DM's job to alter the narrative to make these things happen, out of sheer coincidence if necessary. Yeah, agreed. Background features should always be usable, though circumstances might affect how they are implemented. Rustic Hospitality in a city might mean resting at an out-of-the-way tavern, or a caravan of rural travellers, or a houseboat owned by salty fishermen, or a suburban fieldworkers hut, or a supportive homeless camp, or a friendly factory workshop.
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Jun 6, 2020 19:02
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Suggest me some magic items to give my party! They just turned 9th level, pretty low magic world, and they don't have much magic stuff, and I'm too lazy to read through the all the magic items on dndbeyond! They are a barbarian, Archfey tomelock/rogue, fighter/war wizard, dreams druid, and vengeance paladin/hexblade. What cool stuff should they get? They are possibly looting a powerful wizard's lair, so most anything is on the table. I much prefer 'neat and occasionally useful' to 'very powerful.'
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Jun 6, 2020 19:24
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I'm annoyed that we don't have piety on dndbeyond yet
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Jun 6, 2020 19:35
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Kaal posted:Yeah, agreed. Background features should always be usable, though circumstances might affect how they are implemented. Rustic Hospitality in a city might mean resting at an out-of-the-way tavern, or a caravan of rural travellers, or a houseboat owned by salty fishermen, or a suburban fieldworkers hut, or a supportive homeless camp, or a friendly factory workshop. I was trying to yuck it up with some reluctant miners about the poo poo going on under the city, agree that it should have worked. That was a rare misstep, usually she's good about integrating background stuff.
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Jun 6, 2020 19:51
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Kaiser Schnitzel posted:Suggest me some magic items to give my party! They just turned 9th level, pretty low magic world, and they don't have much magic stuff, and I'm too lazy to read through the all the magic items on dndbeyond! They are a barbarian, Archfey tomelock/rogue, fighter/war wizard, dreams druid, and vengeance paladin/hexblade. What cool stuff should they get? They are possibly looting a powerful wizard's lair, so most anything is on the table. I much prefer 'neat and occasionally useful' to 'very powerful.' You could try some randomly generated items from this site: http://www.lordbyng.net/inspiration/results.php
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Jun 6, 2020 20:25
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Okay, so my party's main quest right now is tracking down and destroying the shards of a meteorite. These shards corrupt those that are around it for a prolonged time. I'm looking for some ideas of a effect that I can imbue the NPCs and monsters they encounter. They've already encountered a few, which had a strange glistening effect on their skin/fur/scales, with those effected worst having small outbreaks of a crystalline kind of acne. I want to give them a gameplay/combat ability that it gives. Something unique and recognizable, but also scalable. Weird and eldritch, if possible. I'm thinking about a variable AC bonus that changes every turn (like discussed earlier in the thread), but that's not really flashy and entertaining, you know? Any ideas?
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Jun 6, 2020 20:40
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Taeke posted:Okay, so my party's main quest right now is tracking down and destroying the shards of a meteorite. These shards corrupt those that are around it for a prolonged time. Variable resistances? ie, hit an infected with your axe and it grows crystalline plating to resist slashing damage?
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Jun 6, 2020 20:42
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What is the origin of the shards? They could be remnants of an alien civilization, and are trying to turn this land into copies of where they came from. Some people get changed to resemble the crystalline golems the aliens used as guards. Others are changed to resemble the aliens' other servant constructs. Some might get large numbers of limbs, or gills, or eyes on stalks. Plants turn into alien plants, and the ground is altered to resemble alien buildings in strange colors. Every once in awhile you'll find someone who died because their lungs were altered to try to breathe water/methane/etc. instead of oxygen and they couldn't figure it out before asphyxiating. At some point in the process, the corrupted stop speaking Common and start speaking the alien language instead. A very rare few have been changed into the alien race itself, and their memories replaced with data stored in the shards.
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Jun 6, 2020 20:46
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Taeke posted:Okay, so my party's main quest right now is tracking down and destroying the shards of a meteorite. These shards corrupt those that are around it for a prolonged time. They just start to look and sound more like Nicolas Cage
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Jun 6, 2020 21:10
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change my name posted:Variable resistances? ie, hit an infected with your axe and it grows crystalline plating to resist slashing damage? That's a good one as well! Thanks. TooMuchAbstraction posted:What is the origin of the shards? They could be remnants of an alien civilization, and are trying to turn this land into copies of where they came from. Some people get changed to resemble the crystalline golems the aliens used as guards. Others are changed to resemble the aliens' other servant constructs. Some might get large numbers of limbs, or gills, or eyes on stalks. Plants turn into alien plants, and the ground is altered to resemble alien buildings in strange colors. Every once in awhile you'll find someone who died because their lungs were altered to try to breathe water/methane/etc. instead of oxygen and they couldn't figure it out before asphyxiating. At some point in the process, the corrupted stop speaking Common and start speaking the alien language instead. A very rare few have been changed into the alien race itself, and their memories replaced with data stored in the shards. I'll just post a bit of writing I did for my own sake (helps me lock down ideas and work on it): I'm tired of the 'wants to eat/destroy the world/reality'-elder being cliché, which seems to be all of them, but I do want to keep it suitably unknowable and lovecraftian, as well as tie it into the overarching story of the campaign. We're going for the long haul (level 1 to 20), with the campaign hopefully lasting at least a year or two. So I'm homebrewing some elder beings. My idea for the campaign is the following: They're on an island now where strange shards have been causing some issues, some of which they've already dealt with. These shards seem to have properties of both metal and mineral and corrupt those they come in contact with, as well as growing strange metallic crystalline configurations when they get a foothold somewhere, increasing their power and corrupting influence. For now, the players are tasked with tracking down these shards and neutralizing them, as well as finding out the source. These shards are the result of a meteorite exploding above the island decades ago, a seemingly minor astronomical event that didn't have any significance at the time, but has now started to give some problems. The meteorite was directed to Toril by an ancient evil looking to destroy the world, and was one of many sent to both test the current state of the material plane, the strength of the beings living there and to draw power to be used in subsequent assaults. My players, when at a suitable level (I'm thinking 12ish) will learn about this and go full spelljammer, traveling across many worlds to thwart this plan. The elder being the warlock of the party made a pact with is of a different nature. It doesn't seek destruction, but instead feeds on chaos and confusion, for which it needs the living. As such, the destruction of the world would mean starving to death. It used to have a fairly indirect approach to sowing chaos and confusion by subtly influencing politics/relationships, creating weird magical items, giving individuals strange powers and urges, etc. More like a trickster god than an ancient evil being. However, it has now been forced to directly create agents to find and destroy the shards (for starters.) Hence it taking a shine to my warlock. I haven't fully decided on the adversarial evil yet, but in terms of scale it'll be something like Atropus, World Born Dead, except instead of the whole undead themes it'll be more alien/lovecraftian, so that tracks with your idea as well. It's still early(ish), they're level 5 now, so I've got plenty of time to work on it but also, I do have to start settling on some ideas now so I can foreshadow and seed some things. ElMaligno posted:They just start to look and sound more like Nicolas Cage If I was good at doing impressions I'd definitely do this.
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Jun 6, 2020 21:10
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Taeke posted:Okay, so my party's main quest right now is tracking down and destroying the shards of a meteorite. These shards corrupt those that are around it for a prolonged time. 3e had a class/idea just like that, so it might give you some ideas: https://dndtools.net/classes/green-star-adept/ e: regarding your idea about elder evils, the original 3e elder evils book has sections about adapting them (including atropus) to the Realms
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Jun 6, 2020 21:11
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Taeke posted:Okay, so my party's main quest right now is tracking down and destroying the shards of a meteorite. These shards corrupt those that are around it for a prolonged time. Just steal monster abilities from other monsters? Give them gems with Beholder (or Spectator) eyestalk abilities as bonus actions. Give something an Aboleth's slime, but crystal-themed instead of slime-themed. Give a Bearded Devil's Beard attack, but make it a tail or stinger or spike. Give it a fiendish charming gaze, or a Cockatrice's or Medusa's petrification. The eye rays are probably the easiest since there are so many creatures with eye rays, and you can custom choose weaker ones if you want, or make it random, or anywhere in between.
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Jun 6, 2020 21:17
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When I say variable AC, I mean like if they're fighting a corrupted giant insect, or whatever, one turn it'll have 12AC, next turn 13, then 14, then 13, then 12 again and the cycle continues. I wouldn't communicate this directly to the players, of course, but with some flavor. "Where it's carapace was fairly typical only moments ago, it seems to pulse and harden now." My players, at least most of them, are very adept at keeping track of what hits and what doesn't, so by round two of the combat encounter they'll often have the AC figured out and this seems like a fun way to mess with that, and something they will figure out soon enough so it won't feel like I'm cheating. Once they've figured it out they might even use it for tactical advantages if I give it some negative effect as well. Maybe if the AC is high its movement is superlow, for example? I asked earlier in the thread for advice how to level up the encounters of the haunted house adventure in Saltmarsh (written for level 1 but my players are level 5) and while the pirates are easy enough to scale up appropriately, this seems like an interesting way to make the random critters more fun. E: just spitballing a bit here. I don't really have anyone else to brainstorm with because my friends that play dnd are in the party. 
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Jun 6, 2020 21:39
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Infinite Karma posted:Definitely don't give them AC or other numerical bonuses, and DEFINITELY don't give them more than +1 or +2. +1d6 AC would be a broken slog. 5E has bounded accuracy and no real way for players to counteract that. This is what I did in a recent campaign to also distinguish "main plot" enemies - about a growing Beholder cult in the northern wilds. Enemies in the thrall would grow eye stalks or hide the eyes on their bodies but would use them in combat. Giving an unorthodox enemy ability is better than upping the stats, but can also serve as an "oh poo poo" reveal for players.
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Jun 6, 2020 21:45
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Infinite Karma posted:Definitely don't give them AC or other numerical bonuses, and DEFINITELY don't give them more than +1 or +2. +1d6 AC would be a broken slog. 5E has bounded accuracy and no real way for players to counteract that. Yeah! I'm a big fan of creepy poo poo that gives humans monster abilities. In my long-running in-person campaign (sadly on hold due to the pandemic) the big bad faction were an elemental evil-type cult that made use of alchemy to join the souls of elementals with their own souls. They would gain appropriate personality traits and monster-like abilities based on the type of elemental they were joined with. I also added a bunch of real-life mythological creatures to the list so there were cultists with the powers of lampads (underworld torchbearer nymphs), oreads (mountain nymphs), sirens, rusalkas (did you know that essentially every culture has like several female monsters that lead men to a drowning death???) and such. Because of the status of these "witches" within the cult, it was pretty obvious who they were - but my players always held their breath when they fought them because it was hard to predict what kind of powers they would pull out. I wasn't necessarily going for creepy or scary but my players thought they were; I bet if you went with more exotic and evil poo poo than a basic four elements theme you could really leave an impression on your players.
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Jun 6, 2020 21:46
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Taeke posted:I'm looking for some ideas of a effect that I can imbue the NPCs and monsters they encounter. They've already encountered a few, which had a strange glistening effect on their skin/fur/scales, with those effected worst having small outbreaks of a crystalline kind of acne. BURST ABILITY. Anything that hits the crystals above (or below?) a certain threshold risks destabilizing their structure and sending shards flying. The party can collect shards to forge weapons to help combat the crystal monsters ("The only thing that can pierce it is itself!"), or get caught in a blast and turn werecrystal themselves, or... TooMuchAbstraction posted:Interplanar Terraforming Crystal Meteorite Definitely stealing this.
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Jun 6, 2020 21:58
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Ignite Memories posted:My child-char is a 15-year old warlock named Agnès Mystagogicon-Kaplan. She was arranged-married to a book with a demon trapped in it (long story) This sounds badass and I'd watch this if it was a tv show. Kaal posted:Yeah, agreed. Background features should always be usable, though circumstances might affect how they are implemented. Rustic Hospitality in a city might mean resting at an out-of-the-way tavern, or a caravan of rural travellers, or a houseboat owned by salty fishermen, or a suburban fieldworkers hut, or a supportive homeless camp, or a friendly factory workshop. This brings up a question, in the campaign I'm in, one of us is a Paladin with a royal pedigree, so he has a thing he can show people that shows that he's a noble and they gotta let him in to do Noble Things(tm). But then we got transported to a different continent where we don't speak the language. How does it work then? Is it like a super iluminati ring like in the Simpsons? Raenir Salazar fucked around with this message at 22:20 on Jun 6, 2020 |
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Jun 6, 2020 22:18
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Inkspot posted:Definitely stealing this. From The Expanse.
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Jun 6, 2020 22:23
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Man, all i gave my players where two rust monsters as pets.
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Jun 6, 2020 22:24
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Kaiser Schnitzel posted:Suggest me some magic items to give my party! They just turned 9th level, pretty low magic world, and they don't have much magic stuff, and I'm too lazy to read through the all the magic items on dndbeyond! They are a barbarian, Archfey tomelock/rogue, fighter/war wizard, dreams druid, and vengeance paladin/hexblade. What cool stuff should they get? They are possibly looting a powerful wizard's lair, so most anything is on the table. I much prefer 'neat and occasionally useful' to 'very powerful.' Ask them what they are interested in, and go from there.
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Jun 6, 2020 22:28
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Depends on the culture I'd say (do they even care about a hierarchy like that or is the concept of conpletely foreign to them?), and whether or not the royal decree (or whatever it is) could be translated to their language so they'd understand. Alternatively, if the document looks official enough you could make it a persuasion check. Maybe they'll respect it out of fear of pissing off a foreign power. Wars have been waged for less, after all...
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Jun 6, 2020 22:29
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Taeke posted:The elder being the warlock of the party made a pact with is of a different nature. It doesn't seek destruction, but instead feeds on chaos and confusion, for which it needs the living. As such, the destruction of the world would mean starving to death. It used to have a fairly indirect approach to sowing chaos and confusion by subtly influencing politics/relationships, creating weird magical items, giving individuals strange powers and urges, etc. More like a trickster god than an ancient evil being. However, it has now been forced to directly create agents to find and destroy the shards (for starters.) Hence it taking a shine to my warlock. This is reminding me of a concept from one of the Laundry Files books by Charles Stross (I think it was the first book). Spoilered in case you think you'd enjoy reading a cynical spy novel with necromancy and Lovecraftian horrors. An "ice giant" in that setting is a being that eats entropy, consuming chaos and leaving cold uniformity in its wake. Left unchecked it will eventually freeze the entire universe, at which point it is stuck waiting for someone to stumble into its reality so it can leap across to theirs and start the cycle anew. Or you can summon it into your reality, and it'll do favors for you in exchange -- but of course, it'll eventually eat your universe into stasis.
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Jun 6, 2020 22:31
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Raenir Salazar posted:This brings up a question, in the campaign I'm in, one of us is a Paladin with a royal pedigree, so he has a thing he can show people that shows that he's a noble and they gotta let him in to do Noble Things(tm). But then we got transported to a different continent where we don't speak the language. How does it work then? Is it like a super iluminati ring like in the Simpsons? So the Position of Privilege basically states that due to your noble birth, commoners may treat you with deference and other nobility treat you with respect. This might be because of signet rings and paperwork, it might be because of your obvious wealth and refinement, it might be because of family reputation, it might due to how you carry yourself and expect others to obey. Any of these could translate fairly easily to a foreign land. Locals might know nothing of the paladin but see that they are a leader of the player group. Perhaps their clothing and equipment is exceptionally well-made and indicates wealth. They might have vague knowledge of the paladin's famous ancestors. Maybe they resemble an important figure in the local society or mythos. Or perhaps the paladin simply trots out the trope of "instantly commanding respect" - they've always been obeyed and don't intend to stop now. Regardless, something about that paladin makes it clear to all that they are no commoner. Think of it this way: If you meet a stranger who everyone calls Baron Hefold von List III , you're going to treat them differently from "Heffie Little" right? If an alien comes down and says they're Commander Zyg, and take them to your leader, who are you to argue that? If a woman walks into a restaurant wearing a fortune in jewelry and barks orders at the wait staff, you form a certain image of her. Think of all the European colonizers who came to the New World and were treated as highborn nobility by the locals for a wide variety of reasons. That's Position of Privilege. Kaal fucked around with this message at 23:37 on Jun 6, 2020 |
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Jun 6, 2020 23:05
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Ignite Memories posted:Our dwarf-heavy tomb of annihilation party did a whole dwarven coming-of-age ceremony for our barbarian who had never lived the mountain life. We got him drunk, fed him psychedelic mushrooms and made him wrestle a greasy goat on top of a boulder Best bar mitzvah ever
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Jun 7, 2020 01:31
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nelson posted:The Beyond version takes less shelf space and is automatically updated with errata. OK thanks for the recommend. I'm planning on running an open table hexcrawl once thing open up here in Brisbane and the book version is scarce due to the covid supply line issues.
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Jun 7, 2020 01:33
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Okay my best internet strangers, I managed to claw my way into a SKT game. I have no idea how to build characters in general, but I want to figure out something for either a halfling monk or fighter. This is where you guys come in, please help me figure out a subclass and direction to go towards. It's standard array for stats. I know so far we have a barb that is storm herald, two casters of some kind, and me wanting to play something martially. And we will be starting at level 5, with a magic item (uncommon) of our choice once the DM approves, no weapon or armor. I have yet to naturally grow to more than level 4 so far, so I feel out of my depth. Also, is there a different option for martial-in-your-face kind of game play that I am overlooking? (not hexblade, I have one already) And one more thing, as an update to my anxiety over starting LMoP with someone I thought might be too picky or hard to play with especially as us all being first timers. We've veered wildly off the path and are gearing up to go into the... Feywilds? and we're all going to get insanely overpowered things from there if we manage to find the people/events offering them. I'm excited even if this campaign is definitely "rule of cool" vs. playing by the books. We just had a massive concert in Phandalin to revitalize/re-brand the Sleeping Giant.. I think we're stuck in an 90s movie a little bit.
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Jun 7, 2020 02:22
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Raenir Salazar posted:This brings up a question, in the campaign I'm in, one of us is a Paladin with a royal pedigree, so he has a thing he can show people that shows that he's a noble and they gotta let him in to do Noble Things(tm). But then we got transported to a different continent where we don't speak the language. How does it work then? Is it like a super iluminati ring like in the Simpsons? Did you get magically zapped to somewhere that is completely unknown to your people or would the people of the new continent know of your people? If you landed at a port or teleportation circle or whatever, there might be some sort of government official around to screen newcomers who should have some training in identifying important people, if only to know who to shake down in fees and ask for bribes. If it's somewhere your people have contact with, you might not speak the language or know much about them, but they might know/recognize your people. Even if they don't know your Paladin specifically, they may recognize words like Lord or Prince in your language if not have actual translators. And it's D&D. Worst case scenario is to do is just get in touch with the local important people (Just being odd looking foreigners armed to the teeth will probably do the trick) with a comprehend language/tongues spell should be able to figure something out.
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Jun 7, 2020 02:24
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A good use of the 'Folk Hero' background is in the Dungeons and Comedians podcast, where the folk hero (Belt) is famous for buying everyone a beer that one time. Yes, everyone.
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Jun 7, 2020 10:44
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Stabbey_the_Clown posted:I know about that, the option I was planning to use, with only the existing options was: Sword Coasts Adventures Guide has an official one: http://dnd5e.wikidot.com/background:city-watch
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Jun 7, 2020 11:53
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engessa posted:Sword Coasts Adventures Guide has an official one: http://dnd5e.wikidot.com/background:city-watch I didn't know about that. That's super, thanks. I can use that instead with the Investigator variant.
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Jun 7, 2020 13:57
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The issue is not that child-heroes are bad. The issue is that adults pretending to be children ends in tears, rage, or both.
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Jun 7, 2020 17:01
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Sodomy Hussein posted:Best bar mitzvah ever everyone in attendance chants "MOUN-TAIN-KING" during step 3, this is v important
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Jun 7, 2020 17:06
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Stabbey_the_Clown posted:You could try some randomly generated items from this site: http://www.lordbyng.net/inspiration/results.php Thanks-this is great!
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Jun 7, 2020 17:49
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Stabbey_the_Clown posted:You could try some randomly generated items from this site: http://www.lordbyng.net/inspiration/results.php lol, the first random item I rolled was a weapon that didn't leave any evidence of it's wounds and didn't cause any pain.
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Jun 7, 2020 19:03
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.... So does it just not do any damage? Perfect for the theater!
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Jun 7, 2020 21:56
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Taeke posted:lol, the first random item I rolled was a weapon that didn't leave any evidence of it's wounds and didn't cause any pain. The assassin's guild will pay any amount of money
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Jun 7, 2020 22:06
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But what about the chirurgeons guild?
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Jun 7, 2020 22:22
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Yeah, I posted that in the group chat have as a funny example. Either of thise effects on their own are kind of weak and would be fine for like a 3rd level character, but imagine that as a dagger, used by a character with a high stealth roll. You could stab someone to death without them knowing it. As a DM I'd rule that they would feel the physical impact of the weapon (like a minor shove or punch), just not the pain, and they'd feel like they were weakening as if suffering from internal bleeding, but still. Fun item. E: it was a javelin, btw, but that's no fun. Taeke fucked around with this message at 23:27 on Jun 7, 2020 |
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Jun 7, 2020 23:21
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