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For what it's worth, page 175 of the PHB says group checks should succeed if at least half the group (presumably rounded down, since it doesn't specify otherwise) succeed on their rolls. If something has to happen for the game to proceed or if there's cool lore that adds flavor, it's usually best practice to find a way to provide that in a way that doesn't use rolls; even better if earlier events in the campaign springboard into it somehow or that it lets players make use of their characters' background or passives like languages. But, for stuff like the players spotting something or remembering something, I've had good success with having every player make the relevant check, and then declaring that the person who rolled highest is the one who sees it or remembers it. It gives them a prompt for starting an inter-party conversation and it's biased toward people who picked proficiencies so character choices matter, but also (due to D20 swinginess) gives the less-likely suspects a chance to pipe in about something.
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Sep 28, 2020 17:51
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pog boyfriend posted:yo i dont have this book but someone that does please respond to this I got my answer in the Advice thread!
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Sep 28, 2020 18:12
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:My DM is trying to figure out whether it'd be worthwhile to shift over to Fantasy Grounds instead of Roll20. We've been using Roll20, DNDBeyond with the Beyond 20 app, and Google Hangouts (one guy could never get his roll20 sound to work right) for months now and it's working ok. There's a great comparison doc here. I personally use Astral and it really suits my purposes. I haven't fiddled around with how well it integrates Beyond much, but I believe you can import character sheets. Speaking of Beyond: My party's Warlock just hit level 3, and his Fiend patronage says he should automatically learn Scorching Ray and Deafness/Blindness at this level, but they don't appear in his spell list. Fiend was already unlocked in the free version of Beyond, so why doesn't he have them? Do I have to buy the PHB on the Marketplace to make them available?
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Sep 28, 2020 21:52
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Warlocks don't get patron spells added to their list for free like clerics do with domain spells, it just allows them to choose to learn those spells whenever they level up.
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Sep 28, 2020 22:01
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BattleMaster posted:For what it's worth, page 175 of the PHB says group checks should succeed if at least half the group (presumably rounded down, since it doesn't specify otherwise) succeed on their rolls. Likewise, "everybody who's trained gets to roll" is a really lovely DM call. Ability scores are extremely, extremely limited in 5E and someone putting a high score in anything is one of the few choices a player is allowed to make to customize a character. With the flattened math, a 16 in an ability score is worth as much or more than training until level 9. A 14 is as good as training until level 5. And likewise, the mental ability scores are much more skill-oriented, so having high mental abilities comes at the cost of combat ability. It's better to do things with less rolls in general, but for gently caress's sake, don't tell people they can't even roll when you're doing a roll-based challenge, especially when it's not even aimed at a specific character.
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Sep 28, 2020 22:28
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Our second session (1st session since getting class levels) both I and our wizard blade singer (since we're both level 1) almost immediately get downed. :X Level 1 sucks. Luckily we have a NPC cleric along with a PC cleric to keep us up, but maaaaaaan. In my case its because everyone rushed past a NPC bandit that was in the back corner by the entrance and I was the last one in and they rolled max on their shortsword damage. The Bladesinger, the warlock and the bard flanked to the left and were face to face I think with 3 other bandits? He lasted a few more turns before being downed but got better. We came back and our village is being invaded by ogres and some weird foreign ships so now we're refugees fleeing the warzone 
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Sep 28, 2020 22:55
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Is there a Right or Wrong way to play D&D? The earlier discussion about interesting failures brought to mind the GM of two campaigns that I played in for the last 6-9 months and how I just left both those campaigns over his GMing. For context, my first and still favorite system is still 13th Age, and I haven't played 5e, let alone D&D until earlier this year. I'm used to campaign worlds that are essentially established, but with enough wiggle room that players can insert ideas and concepts and make the game feel more inviting. This GM is using Feyrun and the Forgotten Realms for both campaigns and, outside of getting to create 3 gods in one of the games, he plays them to what I assume to be a tee. Nothing is left to player input. History rolls give laundry lists of census data, every tavern we come to has a specific menu, and we don't even just roll with it when we insist on giving one town a funny name because we all keep mispronouncing it. If its not in the established lore of FR, and he does have a database of it, it doesn't go in. Except for Chtulu Mythos. Motherfucker loves his outsiders. After the last session I played with him, I asked him if I could retire my rogue. I was playing a CN AT rogue and while no one actively complained, I could still tell the way I was playing her wasn't going to be fun for anyone. During that same conversation, I took the time to tell him about some of the things I was used to seeing in campaigns, since I know he wanted was interested in what would make the game more fun for me. I told him about the ideas of failing forward and partial successes, since, besides other problems, I was getting sick of being told to keep redoing my lockpicking rolls when I failed, even when there was no danger and no rush. His response started with this: quote:So, what I hear you saying is, you want things to go your way, even when you roll poorly or don’t take things into consideration. That’s not how dice rolls work, and that’s not how DND works. He levied a lot of criticisms about my rogue and how I played her, which I didn't dispute, but it still hurt to have him sum up my argument in such a condescending way, not to mention that blaming the game for things you have control over just feels disingenuous. Also I just found out tonight that the purple worm poison he threw at me in the last session definitely should not have had a DC of 27 and paralyze me for a minute. 
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Sep 29, 2020 01:25
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Is it frowned upon for the DM to play during a campaign? We had a member unexpectedly drop and I am eager to play a character I've been developing. They would have a diminished role, healing and just enjoying the thrill of the adventure.
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Sep 29, 2020 01:26
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I've had a few GMs play someone when our group was small. Generally they'd just fill in a passive combat role that was missing and a bit of RP back and forth, and it's worked out well. On the other hand, there's no end to the stories where the GMPC becomes the campaign focus.
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Sep 29, 2020 01:34
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I hate to sound like a weirdo here but if the players can't find the trap door needed to advance to the next part of the dungeon, then does it need to be a trap door? At some point the players will try something that maybe makes sense and as the GM you can have it just work and then lead where the trap door would have gone. "I check the walls to see if there's anything unusual" "yes that one's an illusion and it leads to this room oops I forgot to include the entry door it's right here." If no one's having fun constantly failing: you've got that power to make a judgment call between how funny they'll find it when they finally figure out where the trap door is, or whether the scenario is actually bullshit and a worthy use of your God powers to change reality and move things along. Azza Bamboo fucked around with this message at 02:03 on Sep 29, 2020 |
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Sep 29, 2020 01:58
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MelvinBison posted:Is there a Right or Wrong way to play D&D? The right way to play D&D is the way where your group is having fun. The GM you described is an excellent example of how not to do that -- at least as far as you're concerned. I suppose it's possible that the other players all strongly prefer this style. Having said that, my impression is that D&D is one of the more rules-heavy tabletop RP systems out there. Consequently it's going to attract people who are more comfortable working within established rule sets instead of striking out on their own and improvising. So while I don't think anything you want is remotely unreasonable to want to have in a D&D group, I also would expect that, compared to other RP systems, you'll tend to find a lower percentage of GMs in D&D who are willing to improvise and roll with player ideas.
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Sep 29, 2020 02:00
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PastaBakeWizard posted:Hey guys, how do you handle INT checks? It seems like if I let the whole party roll, at least one of them is going to roll high. If I ask for a single roll with advantage (i.e: the "help" action), it precludes anyone from knowing poo poo other than the fellow with the highest INT. What do you reckon is the best move? The group check rule from the PHB is perfectly usable for group knowledge. Basically everyone rolls and you pass if half pass. For something a little less swingy I've seen it run as multiply the DC by the number of players rolling, then add up their checks - this also helps if some characters are interested and others aren't.
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Sep 29, 2020 02:02
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Thanks everyone who offered ideas for the vampire cabaret-inn-brothel a few pages ago. They were pretty good and gave me some inspiration for some other characters. Unfortunately we had to delay the game because irl stuff is taking over all our lives right now. When I finally run the session I'll let you know how the ideas are received. In prepping for this session I had a minor lore building epiphany about dwarven booze. In my homebrew setting the Dwarves are a unified empire based heavily on the Inca. As a result the typical dwarven alcohol is wine, specifically Argentinian and Chilean wine. If you're in a high class establishment the sommelier is going to be a dwarf. Anyway, the real life Romans discovered lead acetate makes an excellent artificial sweetener aside from the whole lead poisoning aspect. So in my setting dwarven sweet wine is not only very high strength, but carries a high risk of heavy metal toxicity. Export grade wine is safe, but domestic grade is very high alcohol content and full of lead. Dwarves with their poison resistance don't care, but it's one tough non-dwarven adventurer who dares drink domestic grade dwarven sweet wine. One of the patrons the party can hit up for information is going to be a dwarf who insists the party drinks cups of dwarven sweet wine while at her table.
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Sep 29, 2020 02:03
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My flavor for dwarven whiskey was slightly different to your wine. I had it that Dwarven whiskey made any of its drinkers unusually bold, rash and overconfident: The alcohol makes their drinker immune to fear effects, but anyone under this effect is unable to willingly withdraw from combat against a foe who has not surrendered or succumbed.
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Sep 29, 2020 02:09
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That's a really neat idea and I think I'll keep that in mind as a fun consequence of failing a CON save vs alcohol (or lead) poisoning.
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Sep 29, 2020 02:12
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I wouldn't have it as a nasty surprise. I have it that an old adventurer has it in their collection and they warn the party "you've got to be careful with this stuff, I've seen people get killed under the influence of this. If you want to fight a dragon, though, you have to be drunk or stupid" then explain to the players how it works before they imbibe.
Azza Bamboo fucked around with this message at 02:24 on Sep 29, 2020 |
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Sep 29, 2020 02:18
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Definitely. I'm of the opinion it makes a better story when the players know "this is gonna be stupid, but it's exactly the stupid my character would do." There is a dwarf in the party so I can always inform the player and let them warn the rest of the party. I also feel "my character tries to go shot for shot with the dwarven pirate" is the kind of self evident poor decision my players won't get too upset if (when) it goes poorly.
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Sep 29, 2020 02:54
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Little late on VTT chat but I'll say that in my RotF group the DM is running on Foundry (linked into DDB) instead of Roll20 and it has been a game changer. I assume it's a lot of work on the back end but as a player it's smooth and easy and mostly just works without more than maybe one weird hitch per session.
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Sep 29, 2020 04:45
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The best way to DM 5e is to totally ignore D&D lore and history unless you're rummaging through its pockets for fantasy content and inspiration. A lot of the background poo poo just doesn't matter, have fun and let the players do the world building for you
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Sep 29, 2020 04:53
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I've largely stopped handling failure as an all-or-nothing precisely because of these issues. As a rule I keep with failure resulting in a choice. If an important knowledge check is failed, the character remembers enough vague details to keep things moving. From a meta pov the players can choose to spend time or resources to research or ask around. If they fail to open a secret door, it's either a shortcut they miss out on, or they open it but it costs them something (time, an encounter).
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Sep 29, 2020 08:52
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There is no one right way to play D&D but there are innumerable wrong ways. This includes wrong ways to play D&D that are the right way to play other RPGs, and vice versa. A lot of D&D's mechanical issues are due to a lack of clarity of what D&D is for.
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Sep 29, 2020 11:30
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MelvinBison posted:Is there a Right or Wrong way to play D&D? There are a lot of potential responses to this, but my main insight on the situation you're describing is that you're exceedingly unlikely to win an argument with the DM, especially a DM who responded to your concerns the way that one did. Getting them to change styles is probably not in the cards. Ultimately you're going to need to decide whether you can enjoy playing in a game run the way this person is running it, or not. Having said that, unless there's either some level of time pressure or you're dealing with some sort of masterwork lock (where getting it open is some kind of significant Plot Thing) then it's silly to have the Rogue repeatedly roll lockpick checks to see how many dice they have to roll to do the thing they're supposed to be good at. Similarly having the Ranger roll Survival "to see if you find a suitable campsite" is silly, they should just be able to do what they're good at unless it's some unusual scenario like trying to find a safe place to hunker down in a hellish wasteland.
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Sep 29, 2020 15:18
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My rule of thumb for lockpicking is that every point under the DC you are is 1 minute longer to pick it. If there's literally no time pressure at all I probably wouldn't bother, but I struggle to think of a situation where you're picking a lock and there's no time pressure at all, not even the risk of someone or something wandering past and noticing. Sometimes other failure states are appropriate, but if I've ever painted myself into a corner where I've put something absolutely critical behind a skill check I'd consider that a major fuckup on my side and no way am I pulling the absolute game-killing move of "please do the check until you pass". Honestly unless a lock is magical or so old that it has rusted beyond function, nobody trained with thieves tools ought to fail to pick it, there's virtually no lock that can keep out an experienced picker.
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Sep 29, 2020 16:00
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Reveilled posted:Honestly unless a lock is magical or so old that it has rusted beyond function, nobody trained with thieves tools ought to fail to pick it, there's virtually no lock that can keep out an experienced picker.
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Sep 29, 2020 16:42
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Conversely, the time when all four members of our party, despite having thieves tools for one reason or another, were unable to pick open a safe and we just took it with us and smashed it Office Space-style remains a great memory
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Sep 29, 2020 16:54
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The concept of Players being good at what they do was one thing I brought to the GM's attention, since I believe that PCs are "heroic" in the classical sense. They're just inherently good at doing certain things, as demonstrated by, you know, having levels in a class at all. He also railed against that, saying "that's never realistic outside of something like Skyrim." Which, again, . We're still somehow friends, we just came to the conclusion we work better when we're both players rather than when he's GMing. Even though I'm still somewhat mad about the people worm poison. I lent him my 13th Age corebook since that explains fail forward better than I obviously was going to and he said he'd look at it. Though when I mentioned some of the people behind it were ex-4e developers he said he hated 4e. I can't confirm but apparently that's a red flag? 
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Sep 29, 2020 17:16
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MelvinBison posted:The concept of Players being good at what they do was one thing I brought to the GM's attention, since I believe that PCs are "heroic" in the classical sense. They're just inherently good at doing certain things, as demonstrated by, you know, having levels in a class at all. He also railed against that, saying "that's never realistic outside of something like Skyrim." Which, again, Ever encounter I've had where someone unprompted says they hate 4e has turned out to be loving trash.
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Sep 29, 2020 17:23
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MelvinBison posted:The concept of Players being good at what they do was one thing I brought to the GM's attention, since I believe that PCs are "heroic" in the classical sense. They're just inherently good at doing certain things, as demonstrated by, you know, having levels in a class at all. He also railed against that, saying "that's never realistic outside of something like Skyrim." Which, again,
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Sep 29, 2020 17:45
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My group needs a new campaign, I ended my DM tenure at our last session when they all managed to kill themselves by actively deciding to deliberately slice a gash in the bubble in White Plume Mountain, despite being told repeatedly that the walls of the bubble were flimsy and scalding hot to the touch. Something about thinking that the crab would be freed and merrily toddle off into the lake so they could bypass fighting it? They’re a very mixed ability group who come up with the odd gem of an idea but also as evidenced above some absolutely terrible ones, how do people find new-to-low skilled players handle Descent into Avernus? They’re all old school BG fans so I thought it might be a nice one to get them invested but their tendency to do incredibly dumbshit things coupled with their group desire to not have too many get out of jail free cards floating around (I’d already thrown them several very generous gimme’s by this point and we’d all agreed beforehand this would be on a limited basis, because if there’s no stakes there’s no fun) means I don’t wanna fork out for and then end up dropping part way through what could be a lengthy module if they’re all dead by level 5.
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Sep 29, 2020 18:09
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Re: the previous discussion about skill rolls (and this is not specific to D&D necessarily), here are a couple more options you can houserule in and use:
The first option means it's not always the expert in the party who succeeds, but over the long run they'll tend to be the one; it means the party moves forward without getting stuck, and someone gets to feel like their character did something cool. As a GM you can set this up in advance for this kind of roll instead of having a specific target number/DC for the roll. You can also do both: if two+ characters roll above a particular number, they both succeed, but if nobody rolls above that number, just the highest-roller succeeds. No need to tell the players what that DC was or if it exists. I think for that second option in particular you have an opportunity to inject some fun into a game from a failed roll. So... the ranger studies the dung and thinks it's either hippogriff dung or griffin dung but isn't sure which. The rogue thinks about the thieves' guild hierarchy in this area and isn't totally sure whether if the guildmaster dies the deputy takes over, or if they have an election from among senior guild members. The herbalist thinks yellow spore cough is treated with either trefoil fumes or silverslip fumes but isn't totally sure which is best. This gives the characters options... pursue both possibilities, find an expert to resolve the question, just flip a coin and hope it's the right answer, investigate further, etc. That last one may skew your XP progression and you have to avoid the obvious exploit of "my character tries this extremely difficult thing for no special reason" attempts just to farm XP.
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Sep 29, 2020 19:09
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XP bad.
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Sep 29, 2020 19:31
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Yeah. When I started my campaign as a first time DM half a year ago tracking xp wasn't even a consideration. loving useless busywork, and the players agreed milestone leveling made much more sense. They level after completing a quest or achieving a goal, which more or less always coinsides with the end of a session, giving players the time to figure out what they want for the new level, as well as some ingame downtime. That way it also makes narrarive sense. The character spends some days honing their skills, learning something new with the experiences they had on their last adventure. Instead of being in the middle of a dungeon and suddenly being able to do something they couldn't do 5 minutes ago.
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Sep 29, 2020 19:50
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e: misread something
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Sep 29, 2020 20:23
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Toshimo posted:XP bad. i’ve actually never been in a campaign that used xp over milestones in any system besides pbta
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Sep 29, 2020 20:29
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MelvinBison posted:The concept of Players being good at what they do was one thing I brought to the GM's attention, since I believe that PCs are "heroic" in the classical sense. They're just inherently good at doing certain things, as demonstrated by, you know, having levels in a class at all. He also railed against that, saying "that's never realistic outside of something like Skyrim." Which, again, When I DM I use the insane interpretation of fall damage where if you are jumping on your turn, you don't start "falling" until you run out of movement, so you can jump off a 60 foot building without taking damage by using the dash ability. Is it realistic? gently caress no! But is it the sort of thing a person fated to become a legendary hero sung of in tales of bards for centuries to come might be able to do? Absolutely.
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Sep 29, 2020 22:19
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Declan MacManus posted:i’ve actually never been in a campaign that used xp over milestones in any system besides pbta I like doing a hybrid system, where I'll give them a party-wide XP reward each session, but it's mostly just to ensure that they see that they are making progress towards the next level. The XP is loosely based on both combat and exploration/socializing, with bonuses for achieving plot milestones. I keep track of it and inform them when they level up. As a player I find the milestone system can be overly opaque ("It's been four sessions, how have we not leveled up?") so having some feedback in the form of XP appeals to me. Kaal fucked around with this message at 04:53 on Sep 30, 2020 |
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Sep 30, 2020 04:50
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One of the players in my group made some fanart for how last week's session went. 
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Sep 30, 2020 05:13
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So the game last night with dynamic lighting went off perfectly and seemed to run fine for everyone (maybe it's just more taxing on the DM side since you're seeing everything at once?). Only issue was that I chose a narrow crypt map to test it out on, and everyone got bunched up at the doorways and enemies could just wail on them (Update: One player messaged me and said she couldn't actually see any of the combat because she was stuck in the back, oops) change my name fucked around with this message at 17:00 on Sep 30, 2020 |
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Sep 30, 2020 15:00
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So I had just about the coolest session last night of 5e that I think I've had in a while. As a bit of background - My character is a Dwarven Eldritch Knight with an Archeologist background and the Ritual Casting feat and trained in both History and Arcane. His background is that he's a historian focusing on the historical magical traditions of various cultures and the genesis of discrete magical traditions - with the intent that at some point he's going to start leveling into Rune Scribe. During our travels in the past I've been collecting information on dwarvish runic magic with his ritual casting being treated as specifically being tied to those runic traditions. We did White Plume Mountains a couple months ago and during our run through that, I wound up with Whelm and I used the opportunity to do a long form interview with it - trying to figure out some of the methods of it's creation and it's binding and wound up with it sharing what it remembers of the runes that allowed the intelligence to be bound to the weapon - but it didn't remember the whole sequence and my record wasn't fully complete. During downtime I had been researching those binding sigils, trying to figure out the missing pieces. Last night we were in a dwarven mine where the miners came across a unstable magical lodestone that was damaged and leaked out unstable elemental energy. The walls of the mine were shifting from burning heat, to ice, to creeping vines, to arcing electricity and the miners that were there when the accident happened were taken by the elements and driven completely mad. In the bottom of the mine, we found a swirling morass of an elemental that had aspects of the myriad elements we had seen to this point and the ground shifted between these elemental properties from step to step. All Transmutation magics were haywired - you had to roll a d% too see if it behaved normally or if you turned into an elemental for the duration of the spell. I tried to enlarge myself and basically turned into Metal Mario instead. After the bossfight, the elemental was sucked into this cracked gemstone that was the source of all of this - spinning wildly a few inches off the ground. It basically turned into like a Hollywood bomb defusal scene in real time. Having had all that practice my character had with binding runes and rituals, my character slides in and replicates the unfinished rune of binding he had from Whelm, but it was still missing a piece. I pull from my historical contexts and improvise the missing piece of the binding using traditions from Elvish and Gnomish traditions. DM tells me to roll an arcana check. Natural 20 With a faint glow, the binding runes snap shut around the gem, the spinning stops. and the unstable elemental energies drain from the mine walls and floors and melt back to normal. We literally have the sigh of relief moment after a movie bomb has been defused. My character grasps the gem in his hand and he can see and feel the elemental energy pulsing - inside of it arcs of green electricity pull to my character's fingers like a plasma globe. But the binding is only a preliminary to get the energy bleed to stop - I still need to take it back to my workshop and reinforce it with proper materials and components to keep the power from re-rupturing out of it. When I talked to the DM after the game he told me I just bound my first Rune Scribe master rune and I can take the Rune Scribe Class on next level. This rune is explicitly going to be minor artifact level (of which we have like 2 other ones right now in the party) though I haven't seen what the Complex or Simple properties are going to be. We haven't hit the level up point yet (probably after the next major adventure/dungeon) so I'm figuring that per the rune scribe - I'll be limited to the simple properties of this thing, and leveling into Rune Scribe will be flavored as me learning how to safely tap into the deeper reserves of power in it. DeathSandwich fucked around with this message at 19:10 on Oct 1, 2020 |
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Oct 1, 2020 19:05
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Made my own custom foraging/crafting thing for Waterdeep: Dragon heist which is heavily based on the one created by Dael Kingsmill. Looking for ways to balance and spice it up. 1. I want some of them to have unique properties to abuse (such as particular leaves that will ignite on fire 2. I want some of the ingredients to have both positive and negative properties 3. I want stat buffs to some of them 4. Particular poisons to deal with specific enemies 5. Niche potions for specific encounters (but nothing crazy like making you able to fly) https://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/qIvWxXqcf For now, I removed some redundant effects (bone restorative), lowered most of the poison, added some stat bonuses or losses. Some of the inconsistencies are intended, such as ingredients being in different quality based on region or cultivation by citizens. Midig fucked around with this message at 23:50 on Oct 1, 2020 |
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Oct 1, 2020 23:28
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