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Farg posted:delaying spell progression is a big deal but also fighter 2 gets you action surge and a fighting style Yeah action surge is at 2 and an archetype would be at 3 (probably Eldritch, maybe echo?) But yeah waiting to get 4th level spells would also be lame
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Sep 1, 2020 00:45
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Azza Bamboo posted:There's nothing stopping you using Animate Objects like this, but the only customisation available is how big or how many the objects are. 9th is much later than 5th though. Yeah Animate Objects is way too late and too limited for the use case I have in mind.
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Sep 1, 2020 01:32
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vlad3217 posted:So I just took a level of fighter to become wizard 6/fighter 1 for mostly story reasons but also now I get second wind and I can cast with armor to eventually boost my AC. Is there any reason to think about taking 1-2 more fighter or just stick to wizard from here on out? Action surge would mean you could cast a spell and a cantrip on the same turn, but that kind of thing is usually more of a sorcerer build than a wizard.
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Sep 1, 2020 01:35
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Azza Bamboo posted:Action surge would mean you could cast a spell and a cantrip on the same turn, but that kind of thing is usually more of a sorcerer build than a wizard. action surge lets you cast two leveled spells actually. it gives you another action, and the restriction of cantrips exists only if you have used a bonus action - sorcerer quickened spell casts the spell as a bonus action, which prevents you from using two leveled spells with it. hell astro course posted:the pog boyfriend maneuver if there was a pog boyfriend maneuver, its saying to the party "okay, i will let you do this broken cheese combo to instantly kill this guy once. but if you do it again then it is a part of the world and you accept that there is a high possibility some enemies will have independently figured out the same thing and use it on you exactly" pog boyfriend fucked around with this message at 01:46 on Sep 1, 2020 |
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Sep 1, 2020 01:40
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Azza Bamboo posted:Action surge would mean you could cast a spell and a cantrip on the same turn, but that kind of thing is usually more of a sorcerer build than a wizard. IIRC you can do two leveled spells a turn with action surge, the spell and a cantrip thing is only regarding bonus action spells for some reason. That being said being able to double fireball is never a bad idea.
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Sep 1, 2020 01:40
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pog boyfriend posted:look up something called the colville screw. i apologize to your dead players in advance I had never heard of this before and upon looking it up realized I did this exact maneuver a few times early on. Most notably when I ran Lost Mines and the party had a level 2 encounter that ended up being them sandwiched in a hallway between a room of Bugbears and a room of Bandits.
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Sep 1, 2020 02:08
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Trojan Kaiju posted:I had never heard of this before and upon looking it up realized I did this exact maneuver a few times early on. Most notably when I ran Lost Mines and the party had a level 2 encounter that ended up being them sandwiched in a hallway between a room of Bugbears and a room of Bandits. Didn't know there was a name for this. Party just finished a scenario where they snuck past a ton of kobolds living off the scraps of some harpies at the bottom of their roost. During the fight with the harpies they made enough of a ruckus to draw a bunch of them up -- only to cut the rope and send them all plummeting to their dooms before more than a few could come up after them.
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Sep 1, 2020 02:38
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I have to say games get fun to run when players sloppily trip a bunch of traps and encounter triggers at the same time and you'll probably come back with a good story.
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Sep 1, 2020 02:47
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please knock Mom! posted:I'm running CoS in a week for a group of players at their request, though I'm not too sure the horror aspect of it will vibe with them. Still, I'll try. I'm starting them off at level 3 with some extra goodies, shortening Death House, and going from there -- aside from the CoS primer on Reddit, anything I should really know in advance? I've GMed the start of CoS a fair few times but this will be the first time I'm running it for relatively new players (some of whom aren't into the roleplaying aspect as much). A fair few pages back but I just finished DM'ing CoS and wanted to chip in! I used this guide to help me, https://www.elventower.com/curse-of-strahd-guide/. I felt like it condensed a lot of information that I was having trouble keeping track of. I'd generally read the chapter in the book and then in the guide to get my head around it all. I found that the horror vibe didnt play well with my group however they still took notice when I would whip out some of the nastier monsters. I'm sure a lot of guides say this but I made sure Strahd was around a bunch to mess with the players, it made them hate him. I also had to severly buff (light spoilers?) Castle Ravenloft and also messed with Strahds Spells. The castle seems built for players to go into early, but if they save it till the end then they will steamroll the enemies there and Strahd himself. You gotta play him like a sneaky vampire, using his lair actions to keep one step ahead of the players until they go to where the card reading tells them to go. I did stuff like have an illusion on Strahd's Animated Armour to make it look like Strahd and then when they all focused on it, real Strahd would appear and attack. Hope its going well for you, it felt like a lot of work to get right but I really liked the adventure! It was my first tome DMing a big adventure and I learned a lot!
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Sep 1, 2020 05:59
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Sodomy Hussein posted:I have to say games get fun to run when players sloppily trip a bunch of traps and encounter triggers at the same time and you'll probably come back with a good story. My group went into a set of caverns I'd designed with each chamber being an encounter. I guess I didn't plan well enough the distance between each chamber... because it basically ended up being an enemy escaping to alert others. Turning a handful of medium encounters into one big deadly encounter that never ended. (Also a four-armed troll that has been hasted is scary)
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Sep 1, 2020 09:11
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Robiben posted:A fair few pages back but I just finished DM'ing CoS and wanted to chip in! Thanks for the reply I ended up axing the idea of butchering Strahd until it fit this group of newbies who like funny jokes and combat, and instead made a homebrew Saturday morning cartoon world which uses some CoS characters in over the top villainous ways. I figured that making them play Strahd wouldn’t go over very well at all, even if the setting is cool.
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Sep 1, 2020 09:20
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please knock Mom! posted:Thanks for the reply Haha fair enough. I actually feel like I toned down some of the horror and grittyness of the setting but I still had a player in our debrief say "Can we play something less sad?" so you probably made the right call! General question, whats regarded as a good "City" adventure? I'm trying to find a new adventure and thats the only thing my players suggested. It seems Saltmarsh is kinda that with its fishing village? Avernus looked interesting but there was a big discussion in the thread that its all over the god drat place and is horrible to run? I would still run it if my players wanted it though...
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Sep 1, 2020 09:58
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Robiben posted:Haha fair enough. I actually feel like I toned down some of the horror and grittyness of the setting but I still had a player in our debrief say "Can we play something less sad?" so you probably made the right call! Avernus only spends part of the story in Baldur's Gate; if you run it per the book, technically the "city" part of the story is over in the space of probably two in-game days. most of the rest of the adventure is a linear railroad that takes you to various places in Hell. Even if you totally reworked it and spent much more time in Baldur's Gate and Elturel, I doubt you could set more than a third of the adventure in these places without completely inventing new scenario hooks and side quests. Not sure about Saltmarsh, but as I understand it you're mostly adventuring in the wilderness around Saltmarsh for most of the adventures, rather than doing stuff in the town itself. Dragon Heist is 75% just a linear chase sequence through the city of Waterdeep, but it's consequently the most "City" of the published 5e adventures I'd say. It's a lot of work, but with effort you can break each individual component of that adventure apart and turn it into a much more open adventure where the players visit various locations for clues in an order of their own choosing.
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Sep 1, 2020 12:50
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Reveilled posted:Not sure about Saltmarsh, but as I understand it you're mostly adventuring in the wilderness around Saltmarsh for most of the adventures, rather than doing stuff in the town itself. At its core, Saltmarsh is about the best part of DnD, which is players owning a boat and doing boat things. Saltmarsh itself is a pretty small town; if you're looking for urban adventures it's probably not it.
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Sep 1, 2020 13:03
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We've discussed this quite extensively before but while Saltmarsh is described as a small backwater village a LOT of it works way better as a small city. It's very inconsistent in that all the flavour descriptions and map describe a small village but everything else, the themes, quests, NPCs, numbers (of inhavitants, city guard, etc) are more fitting for a small city on the way to greatness.
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Sep 1, 2020 14:05
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Robiben posted:Haha fair enough. I actually feel like I toned down some of the horror and grittyness of the setting but I still had a player in our debrief say "Can we play something less sad?" so you probably made the right call! Dragon heist takes place almost entirely in the city. Also, this is a pretty good resource to spruce it up a bit if you want it to be a little more substantial. https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/41217/roleplaying-games/dragon-heist-remix-part-1-the-villains tgacon fucked around with this message at 14:14 on Sep 1, 2020 |
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Sep 1, 2020 14:08
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If anyone's watching the new MTG livestream, the latest set (return to Zendikar basically) is heavily D&D themed and a tie-in book will come in about 3 months after the expansion release
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Sep 1, 2020 18:51
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well...I guess I'm glad I took the advice to pick up Resilient (Con) for my 4th level feat since the DM decided to put us in an encounter against 9 bandits, 6 of whom had maces and could make 2 attacks per round and give each other advantage to attack rolls if they were flanking one of us. My paladin spent multiple rounds taking 4 attacks with advantage each round and went through a round eating 24 damage, using all her Lay on Hands pool, and immediately taking another 20 damage the following round. Never went down to 0, and never failed a Con save for concentration spells though!  Warlock and Blood Hunter did get reduced to 0 but fortunately the encounter ended before they had to finish making death saves so we were able to prop them back up with someone's Cure Wounds spellDid manage to end the fight by leaping up a tree and knocking the bandit out of his perch by impaling him on a longsword, which was kinda cool.
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Sep 1, 2020 21:43
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Azza Bamboo posted:All in all my group are saying to me that it's ridiculous how you can just have everyone fall and come back up again after a healer touches you. I'm not trying to kill the pcs and I'd welcome them realising the person is a threat and tunneling them. They solved the puzzle as it were despite that there'd be other stakes in the encounter. I think if you want to address the issue of people repeatedly going unconscious you need to come at it from the other direction: what could people be doing to avoid falling unconscious that they are not currently doing? Why aren't they doing that? Otherwise you're just punishing people when it gets dark out in the hope they'll find some way to make the sun rise.
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Sep 2, 2020 02:43
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I really need to figure out how to balance encounters better. My level 7 party of four got to the sprawling capstone battle of this adventure arc and absolutely steamrolled a draegloth, CR 8 drow priestess, and an army of chitines riding giant flying spiders in like 2 hours (and most of that was scouting/hit and run takedowns of the chitine patrols when they were trying to be stealthy, before they realized they could bum rush it). Not that I want to punish smart tactics, it just seems a bit too easy compared to the games I'm a player in...
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Sep 2, 2020 05:31
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change my name posted:I really need to figure out how to balance encounters better. My level 7 party of four got to the sprawling capstone battle of this adventure arc and absolutely steamrolled a draegloth, CR 8 drow priestess, and an army of chitines riding giant flying spiders in like 2 hours (and most of that was scouting/hit and run takedowns of the chitine patrols when they were trying to be stealthy, before they realized they could bum rush it). How many encounters did they have beforehand? If that was the first or second fight of the day and everyone was nice and stacked with spell slots and hp, the party will punch way above its weight. You should really be aiming for 3-6 combat encounters per long rest.
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Sep 2, 2020 06:38
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Madmarker posted:How many encounters did they have beforehand? If that was the first or second fight of the day and everyone was nice and stacked with spell slots and hp, the party will punch way above its weight. You should really be aiming for 3-6 combat encounters per long rest. Yeah, this is the biggest thing about D&D scaling. If you let your party go into every encounter rested, they are going to go top-down on it and lay it to waste.
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Sep 2, 2020 08:55
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I have an idea I want to run by the thread. Storm King's Thunder is supposed to take place after the events of the Rise of Tiamat. Having been a player in SKT and having read a little bit about how the story of RoT is supposed to go, wouldn't it be better to have their events run side by side? This way the giant ordening is in disarray at the same time as the dragons are uncharacteristically working together, creating a really awful combined disaster. It'd give Imyrith more purpose than "lol I'm a blue dragon" because she'd now be a general of the much bigger threat, and it could give the players really difficult decisions like do they oppose Duke Zalto and prevent the Voynindod being built or do they allow him to gain an upper hand in the ordening purely so they can have this dragon slaying robot on side? Do they focus on killing the dragons, allowing the giants to fall into disarray, or do they focus on getting the giants back together and building alliances, allowing the dragons to build their strength? I also think that, at the point where Klauth's cultists appear, I don't see why Klauth would accommodate the party unconditionally. Instead of offering a reward for killing "a giant lord" I think he should ask for Duke Zalto specifically, and if the party don't go for it the cultists say "well, you can walk there, then" and fly off. Azza Bamboo fucked around with this message at 09:09 on Sep 2, 2020 |
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Sep 2, 2020 09:05
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Glazius posted:I think if you want to address the issue of people repeatedly going unconscious you need to come at it from the other direction: what could people be doing to avoid falling unconscious that they are not currently doing? Why aren't they doing that? I disagree. I think DnD works best when you give the players the goal and allow them to work out the method rather than trying to interfere with the method. Give them a scenario where "don't go to 0" is the objective and have them figure out how. You'd be surprised how often players can make the sun rise when the dark is not an option.
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Sep 2, 2020 09:52
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Liquid Communism posted:Yeah, this is the biggest thing about D&D scaling. If you let your party go into every encounter rested, they are going to go top-down on it and lay it to waste. Yeah I think that was it. The day before they were ambushed after sleeping, snuck through an encampment at the bottom of a ravine, and ended up getting attacked by a hydra. They were pretty much out of spell slots so I let them take a long rest before moving on because there's another adventuring party on the other side of the same boss map they're supposed to be competing with, and I didn't want them to get stomped...
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Sep 2, 2020 14:39
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Somewhat related story, I just ran Death House as an intro to a curse of strahd campaign, and my party spotted the sleeping shambling mound at the end before touching the altar dais... So they unleashed every single thing they had on it from one long rest i gave them earlier. Only one person was hit two times for the entire encounter and that was it. Pretty anti-climactic end for Lorguth the Devourer. Learning my lesson about giving out rests.
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Sep 2, 2020 15:23
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So I restarted an old Descent Into Avernus campaign which was about halfway through. The PCs were just loaned a "Tormentor" Infernal War Machine by an NPC to go fight a local warlord in a "Demon Grinder" War Machine. Due to a series of bad tactical decisions, the car was split in two and the warlord is about to peel off into the sunset while flipping everyone off. I can't find any real listings for what an Infernal War Machine is supposed to cost, and what the NPC is gonna saddle the PCs with for debt. Since it's a 3-ton machine that runs on Soul Coins, I'm thinking at least 10 Soul Coins + about 8k Gold. I'm going roughly off of ship costs, where a Longboat costs 3k and a Galley costs 30k. Does that seem about reasonable?
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Sep 2, 2020 16:31
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Well, let the pc's argue salvage value.
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Sep 2, 2020 17:06
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You're about to find out who the lawyer of the party is when they start to argue about no one ever agreeing to a contract about loaning the vehicle. Perhaps you'll see the demonic equivalent of a dine and dash.
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Sep 2, 2020 17:25
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It's not about how much the debt is, but who's collecting.
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Sep 2, 2020 17:42
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Jeremor posted:Somewhat related story, I just ran Death House as an intro to a curse of strahd campaign, and my party spotted the sleeping shambling mound at the end before touching the altar dais... Isn't the balance in Death House like, notoriously bad? It's probably good that nuked that thing before it became an issue.
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Sep 2, 2020 18:23
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Glagha posted:Isn't the balance in Death House like, notoriously bad? It's probably good that nuked that thing before it became an issue. its not called "party survives" house
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Sep 2, 2020 18:46
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I skipped the Death House and just started them at 3 for my Strahd campaign because I didn't want to deal with the Death House, solely for its reputation as a meat grinder.
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Sep 2, 2020 18:54
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Bit of shameless self promotion for a moment: I'm doing a Robin Hood Let's Read over in Book Barn and just did a post about the historical antecedents and sources of Thieves' Cant that may interest those of you interested in such things: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3934938&pagenumber=4#post507752938 (scroll down about halfway through the post)
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Sep 2, 2020 18:58
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As a brit I know a little bit about thieves' cant. A small amount of our slang goes back to people trying to have conversations out of earshot. Just little things like "The Academy" being a euphemism for prison.
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Sep 2, 2020 19:19
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mind the walrus posted:So I restarted an old Descent Into Avernus campaign which was about halfway through. The PCs were just loaned a "Tormentor" Infernal War Machine by an NPC to go fight a local warlord in a "Demon Grinder" War Machine. Due to a series of bad tactical decisions, the car was split in two and the warlord is about to peel off into the sunset while flipping everyone off. I can't find any real listings for what an Infernal War Machine is supposed to cost, and what the NPC is gonna saddle the PCs with for debt. Since it's a 3-ton machine that runs on Soul Coins, I'm thinking at least 10 Soul Coins + about 8k Gold. I'm going roughly off of ship costs, where a Longboat costs 3k and a Galley costs 30k. Does that seem about reasonable?
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Sep 2, 2020 23:14
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Glagha posted:Isn't the balance in Death House like, notoriously bad? It's probably good that nuked that thing before it became an issue. I played through that in a 3-man level 8 group and we nearly lost two characters. It felt pretty nuts.
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Sep 2, 2020 23:41
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Well, let the pc's argue salvage value. SettingSun posted:You're about to find out who the lawyer of the party is when they start to argue about no one ever agreeing to a contract about loaning the vehicle. Perhaps you'll see the demonic equivalent of a dine and dash. Let me illustrate. During that fight one of my players-- the CN Hexblade Warlock whom I decided to let be a Simic-Hybrid Spider Monster (yes he's "that guy") decided to manacle himself to the Cleric in case either of them got knocked off. Fast forward 3 rounds of combat he decides to make a leap from the moving tank onto the enemy's moving tank, having forgotten he was shackled to a lady. He rolled a dirty 25 after a Bardic Inspiration, but since the lady was not aware/consenting to the jump... they ate dirt. Both succeeded on a DEX save enough to avoid the enemy tank mulching them, but that was when the PC's loaner tank got split in two. Splicer posted:"you do not owe... money"
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Sep 2, 2020 23:54
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Anyone got advice on DiA if the PCs leave the dungeon of the Dead Three to long rest? Like as far as what's changed, what opportunities have passed them by, etc?
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Sep 3, 2020 00:03
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mind the walrus posted:Let me illustrate. During that fight one of my players-- the CN Hexblade Warlock whom I decided to let be a Simic-Hybrid Spider Monster (yes he's "that guy") decided to manacle himself to the Cleric in case either of them got knocked off. Fast forward 3 rounds of combat he decides to make a leap from the moving tank onto the enemy's moving tank, having forgotten he was shackled to a lady. He rolled a dirty 25 after a Bardic Inspiration, but since the lady was not aware/consenting to the jump... they ate dirt. Both succeeded on a DEX save enough to avoid the enemy tank mulching them, but that was when the PC's loaner tank got split in two. So, a question about DM style -- when a player proposes doing something that strongly suggests they've forgotten something extremely relevant to their upcoming action -- do you remind them? Or do you let them eat poo poo?
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Sep 3, 2020 00:07
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