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Also known as the Johari Window, if you don't wanna quote ol' rummy.
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Sep 29, 2020 08:10
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Glory to Italia! 
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Tenik posted:If your Drow operate in politics, I imagine they are probably capable of installing Drow-friendly political puppets after they eliminate a political threat. If your zealous crusaders follow the Drow's strategy, but apply it to hell and demons, then that would mean that the zealots would need to find someway to replace the current head demons with someone more human-friendly. Like a human. Depending on how demons work in your setting, the zealots could try to corrupt various heads of state and religion to send them to a politically powerful position in hell after they are assassinated. Or the zealots could begin acquiring some magical mcguffins that control demons, and force those control devices into the hands of good-aligned NPCs. Or the zealots could instate themselves as the leaders of hell, and begin a war with all that is impure and evil throughout your main plane. Which really are not even separate tactics, they just have to keep conquering cities until enough city officials have gone to Hell
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Sep 30, 2020 09:15
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Tenik posted:Or the zealots could instate themselves as the leaders of hell, and begin a war with all that is impure and evil throughout your main plane. At which point all the demon-summonimg drow who've been previously having to do complicated negotiations with rear end in a top hat Lords of Hell to get what they want can now just send an internal memo instead.
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Sep 30, 2020 09:42
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Quick question for you guys about consequences for (in)actions. My party, especially the cleric, promised a pregnant woman in their camp a folk remedy in form of a rare swamp flower before journeying into the wilderness. The woman was scared that her child would not be well without it. The life cleric even had a nightmare about the woman suffering a miscarriage, and swore to her that he would help her. Plenty of motivation to take some time out of their busy schedule to search for a simple flower… or so I thought. But the players never bothered. Even when in the swamp, even when a DRUID joined the party or when talking with various swampdweller NPCs, they never brought the flower up or asked where it might grow. Tomorrow, they will get back to the camp and the woman will ask about the flower. I’m expecting some “Oh, poo poo, riiight…” reactions from my players. I’m actually pretty sure they all just simply forgot about the sidequest because they didn’t take any notes, and this was about 4-6 weeks ago in real time. Now what I’m unsure about: either I give them a costly “out” (a merchant has the flower, but abuses their need and wants an exorbitant amount of money and a favor). Or… I punish them and the NPC with the miscarriage from the vision. This is dark stuff I’d rather not see in my campaign. But on the other hand, I have a chance to hammer the point home that actions (and inactions) have consequences, to maybe make them pay a little more attention or treat the game less like a videogame. What would you do? Suffer the consequences, or give them a chance for redemption?
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Sep 30, 2020 10:54
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I think that's just "your players are actual humans with real lives and responsibilities, their characters are people they semi-successfully pretend to be a few hours a week" stuff. Chances are it's not the player choosing to have their character be forgetful about this stuff, or intentionally ignoring it. I'd just say something like, "As you pull yourself out of the swamp, you remember the woman from the camp who needed a flower. What do you want to do about it?" and they'll take it from there. Maybe some light-hearted chiding about taking notes next time, but you're not the teacher or the boss in this situation. Going, "Gotcha! You forgot about the pregnant woman, how could you" when they get back to camp isn't going to make anyone feel good.
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Sep 30, 2020 10:58
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That's true, but they're already on the way and teleported back. I guess I'll go with the merchant action to sting them a little, but nothing they can't afford. Thanks for the feedback!
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Sep 30, 2020 11:02
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If you want to do the reminder more organically: just as they exit the swamp, they meet someone from camp who's about to go look for the flower. Someone who is in no way equipped to handle the dangers of the swamp, maybe some half-grown kid who wants to do the right thing. That sets up the decision point. If they decide then they don't want to go back for the flower... ... well, you're gonna have to decide what you want on your table. You've already put "miscarriage" out there as an option. I'm gonna say in general terms, if everyone's okay with this kind of gritty tragic content, don't present it as an option and then go "nah that's not gonna happen." That, I feel, cheapens things. But something like this can suck the fun right out of a session and you're not okay with it, so it's not gonna happen, just like in many games character death doesn't happen but exists more as an abstract concept. So they don't go back for the flower. First, that 16-year-old with a pointed stick is still going. If they don't go, they'll have his death on their hands too*. If they're hell-bent on returning to camp right now, maybe another way to help this woman has popped up, but it's a bit unsavoury - say a travelling witch, elf or necromancer has arrived at camp. You can probably imagine the kind of price someone like that would demand for helping out from either the family or the party. (*or if they gently caress up the alternative plan - he comes stumbling out of the swamp with a tattered flower, and once he's recovered he'll be the hero of camp, while the party will not) A very minor additional consequence might be some very slight disadvantage on something appropriately time-sensitive for taking the time to go to the swamp twice. e: already teleported back? "Where have you been? Jack has gone to the swamp with his pointed stick in search of the flower!"
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Sep 30, 2020 11:20
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Oh yeah, this works for me. The players already know her husband and he’s one of the few merchants they have available. He’ll be missing the next morning, determined to go find the plant. The players will most likely try to catch up with him, and find him just as he’s about to pluck the plant… and witness as a mossy mound next to the plant starts to shift. Now they’ll have to protect the NPC from a Vine Troll (Tome of Beasts, a dead Troll overgrown by aggressive plantlife) and an assassin vine that’s hitching a ride on the Troll. This also allows me to use a random encounter that I had prepared for the Swamp, but never got to use. Nice!
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Sep 30, 2020 12:12
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Luebbi posted:What would you do? Suffer the consequences, or give them a chance for redemption? well, well before that, during a session, i would tell the player with the highest wisdom "because your character is very wise, you realize that you seem to be forgetting something" and give them a sufficiently high wisdom check(say, DC 16. i dont know. just throwing a number out into the void) and if they succeed remind them of the sidequest. forums posting phenom my lovely horse offers a very good out, but its important to remember that players can make characters who are more knowledgeable/wise/charismatic than they are, and to allow them to roleplay these characters you need to use your limitless power as a DM to accommodate this.
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Sep 30, 2020 14:57
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pog boyfriend posted:well, well before that, during a session, i would tell the player with the highest wisdom "because your character is very wise, you realize that you seem to be forgetting something" and give them a sufficiently high wisdom check(say, DC 16. i dont know. just throwing a number out into the void) and if they succeed remind them of the sidequest. forums posting phenom my lovely horse offers a very good out, but its important to remember that players can make characters who are more knowledgeable/wise/charismatic than they are, and to allow them to roleplay these characters you need to use your limitless power as a DM to accommodate this. This is a thing I have to constantly remind myself of. Fortunately my players are pretty drat clever and remember a lot, but I have asked them all to make a wisdom check a couple times to remind them of an "easy out" from situations that they're obviously not remembering because it's been two weeks rather than their characters are forgetful. Recently it was "you still have the writ explaining you're working for the Sharn watch..."
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Sep 30, 2020 15:26
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 If you are a player in a game on Sunday afternoons that involves a silly metropolis called Dragonsfund: Hello, this is your DM! Please don't read this. My players just entered a spooky gingerbread house made by a Night Hag, and I want to make it a creepy mini-dungeon. The first room will involve a riddle to set the mood. The players give their solution by sticking their hand into a hole to place the item they think the riddle describes. They will also be given a list of creepy spell components that the hag has collected. I want to make sure that the answer to the riddle is logical, and that there are no other plausible solutions. Would some other people mind reading it and telling me if they can think of any other plausible solutions? From the bones of the living am I wrot, yet inside of me there is no thought. I am bathed in delicacies yet cannot taste. I can only pierce, grind, shine, decay. What am I? Answer: Teeth
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Oct 1, 2020 02:54
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Luebbi posted:Tomorrow, they will get back to the camp and the woman will ask about the flower. I’m expecting some “Oh, poo poo, riiight…” reactions from my players. I’m actually pretty sure they all just simply forgot about the sidequest because they didn’t take any notes, and this was about 4-6 weeks ago in real time. Unless my players were like "oh no our party would totally do that", I would either run a flashback session where they go and get the flower at an appropriate place in the chronology, or brainstorm a more sinister or expansive in-game reason why they would have forgotten about it. Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 04:36 on Oct 1, 2020 |
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Oct 1, 2020 04:34
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Do you play with some real pedants? Someone might go totally off-track insisting teeth aren't bones . Otherwise your answer was the only thing that came to mind.
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Oct 1, 2020 08:22
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Esposito posted:Do you play with some real pedants? Someone might go totally off-track insisting teeth aren't bones . Otherwise your answer was the only thing that came to mind. Huh. Always thought that they were. No idea why that was, just guess I never needed to check it.
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Oct 1, 2020 15:01
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Morpheus posted:Huh. Always thought that they were. No idea why that was, just guess I never needed to check it. Fun fact: bones are a connective tissue, like blood, while teeth are a specialized type of skin tissue that started off as a modified fish scale! Another, much dumber solution to the riddle I thought of is "bone," which are constantly awash in tasty flesh and blood. The only reason to rule it out is that a riddle would never include its answer, but apart from that I think it checks most of the boxes? As a general advice I'd add that puzzles are naturally more obvious to the puzzle maker than they are to the solvers, so when my players have some kind of puzzle to solve I'm usually pretty generous about rolling with their solution.
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Oct 1, 2020 18:40
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I don't come up with answers to half of my puzzles. I take whatever answer they come up with that I like the most.
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Oct 1, 2020 18:53
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Dameius posted:I don't come up with answers to half of my puzzles. I take whatever answer they come up with that I like the most. thats fine until the players figure out and then it never works again and it breaks every puzzle you make from there on out. wouldnt recommend, tbh.
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Oct 1, 2020 18:55
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I once had to flat out tell my group "guys, you know the game goes on if you don't get the answer, right?" They were really determined to get it exactly right or not at all.
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Oct 1, 2020 19:06
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What system/approach do you guys use if you want to include sanity? I'm running a modern-day intermission for my main group right now that's supposed to be seasonally spooky, and wanted to include things like a dybbuk, Banderhobb, etc. Basically terrible monsters lurking in the darkness that they'd have no normal conception of and that it would make sense for them to be scared of engaging head-on.
change my name fucked around with this message at 19:27 on Oct 1, 2020 |
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Oct 1, 2020 19:23
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Made my own custom foraging/alchemy and brewing 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 23:59 on Oct 1, 2020 |
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Oct 1, 2020 23:51
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change my name posted:What system/approach do you guys use if you want to include sanity? I'm running a modern-day intermission for my main group right now that's supposed to be seasonally spooky, and wanted to include things like a dybbuk, Banderhobb, etc. Basically terrible monsters lurking in the darkness that they'd have no normal conception of and that it would make sense for them to be scared of engaging head-on. if you’re just frankensteining it on to an existing system, a simple token system would be the easiest to keep track of. each player has three sanity tokens (or more, depends on the pace) and each time they see something that would warp their brain meats, they have to roll pretty well to avoid losing a token, and you can decide what happens from there
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Oct 2, 2020 00:01
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change my name posted:What system/approach do you guys use if you want to include sanity? I'm running a modern-day intermission for my main group right now that's supposed to be seasonally spooky, and wanted to include things like a dybbuk, Banderhobb, etc. Basically terrible monsters lurking in the darkness that they'd have no normal conception of and that it would make sense for them to be scared of engaging head-on. what system?
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Oct 2, 2020 00:09
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Declan MacManus posted:if you’re just frankensteining it on to an existing system, a simple token system would be the easiest to keep track of. each player has three sanity tokens (or more, depends on the pace) and each time they see something that would warp their brain meats, they have to roll pretty well to avoid losing a token, and you can decide what happens from there You could also treat it as a narrative currency: they give you the tokens to do something that will push their sanity, like reading from the Book or not immediately turning their eyes away from the Monster, then you can spend the tokens to compel their PC to do something later.
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Oct 2, 2020 00:16
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pog boyfriend posted:what system? Oops, sorry, 5e. Should have specified.
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Oct 2, 2020 00:28
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What do you want sanity to do in 5th ed that couldn't be done with hit points and saves?
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Oct 2, 2020 02:04
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change my name posted:Oops, sorry, 5e. Should have specified. just do wisdom saves for what you are looking for in that case. if you are looking for a full on sanity mechanic, i loosely modified a variant sanity rule from the dmg and it works quite well. basically you create a new attribute called "sanity"(which starts at 12, or 10, your preference), and when sanity comes into effect, players roll sanity saving throws. on a fail, they are given a hard choice: take a permanent -1 penalty to their sanity, or suffer a negative sanity effect. make sure the negative sanity effects are loving bad or this system doesnt work. im talking like, "your character is fully convinced this person does not exist and is a figment of their imagination" ramifications. as long as the sanity saves come into play with particularly horrific and traumatic experiences, this system should feel very weighty and powerful. the idea of taking a permanent sanity loss, not knowing when the next opportunity to build sanity back up will come(if ever), knowing each time you put a minus you make every subsequent check that much worse. its a great system but it doesnt work as well for one shots. E: also, as your sanity goes down, you start making more sanity checks to mundane things as well. important caveat to the system. pog boyfriend fucked around with this message at 02:20 on Oct 2, 2020 |
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Oct 2, 2020 02:17
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Yeah I think I might do wisdom saves and just mix up fear and the short-term sanity breaks from the DMG. Thanks!
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Oct 2, 2020 02:26
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Also remember that psychic damage is a thing in D&D, so you can just use that as part of whatever you do. I know it's kinda mundane, but "your hit points went down" is the way you'd generally signal "this thing is hurting you" in D&D, so yeah.
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Oct 2, 2020 03:19
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I'd like to solicit some more excellent ideas from everyone here. I have a small, minor, and more immediate question, and one bigger, long term one for my game. It's 5e if that matters. The small question: I'm planning to have an environmental challenge for my 4th level players to overcome - a glacial cliff they need to climb. I'm going to make the basic tools (hand picks, pinions, harnesses, etc..) available and will have signposts to point the players towards this gear. I'd still like to have the process of climbing be a challenge. Any thoughts on how I can make it tense and interesting without it ending in 1) players fall down and die or 2) players can't actually climb the glacier? I think it makes sense to have the players lose some items, but that could get old as the only tool in my pocket and they don't have that much to lose at the moment anyway. I'm willing to just let them climb up, but if I can make it something more interesting, I'd prefer to do that. Larger and less specific question: The story has reached a point where an antagonist, who had hoped to use the party to help acquire some mcguffins, has realized their initial plan is not going to work and that they players will not assist them. I feel like it would be fun to have this antagonist form another adventuring party of more like-minded NPCs from the character's pasts to collect the mcguffins before the players can. I think this is a suggestion I've read in this thread multiple times too. I'm somewhat nervous about how to play/use this party though. Like how is it best to introduce the NPCs on this team, when (if ever) should I let the NPCs beat the players to the prize, and how can I communicate to the players the advancement that the other team is making?
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Oct 4, 2020 17:51
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Fishes_Swim posted:I'd like to solicit some more excellent ideas from everyone here. I have a small, minor, and more immediate question, and one bigger, long term one for my game. It's 5e if that matters. 1) dynamic fail states. you fail a task, you dont die immediately, something bad happens. if you fail to climb(with athletics in 5e btw. very important that you dont use acrobatics for this), instead of immediately falling down the cliff you might fall onto a cliff side or something. add small little caves that previous climbers have used to hide in. if you want to be fun, introduce psychic damage for failing where their foot slips and they feel like they are immediately going to die. 2) best way to introduce this sort of thing is to introduce the npcs well before the adventuring party shows up. have these guys help the main characters in some fashion, have them be good meaning mercenaries that save them(maybe they are in the glacier or something and help give them warmth..? who knows) but once the party is formed... create a dungeon that the party has to go in. every trap is disarmed. every enemy is destroyed. the place is totally looted, and recently. they have no idea who did it at first, but slowly peel back the layers of the onion over time.
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Oct 4, 2020 18:20
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Fishes_Swim posted:I'd like to solicit some more excellent ideas from everyone here. I have a small, minor, and more immediate question, and one bigger, long term one for my game. It's 5e if that matters. No idea about the larger question. I'm about to run into the same problem myself in my current campaign. Tenik fucked around with this message at 18:29 on Oct 4, 2020 |
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Oct 4, 2020 18:26
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pog boyfriend posted:1) dynamic fail states. you fail a task, you dont die immediately, something bad happens. if you fail to climb(with athletics in 5e btw. very important that you dont use acrobatics for this), instead of immediately falling down the cliff you might fall onto a cliff side or something. add small little caves that previous climbers have used to hide in. if you want to be fun, introduce psychic damage for failing where their foot slips and they feel like they are immediately going to die. Yeah, come up with a number of things that are midpoints between "we conquered the glacier with no adverse consequences" and "the whole party died". Like, maybe they get part of the way up and then find they can go no further, but there's a series of monster-infested caverns that'll take them to the top. Maybe on the way up, the pitons they're hammering in make a whole load of ice collapse, revealing a monster frozen in the ice. Maybe they're slowed, so that by the time they've arrived the event they're racing to avoid has already started.
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Oct 4, 2020 18:51
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As a player what I want is agency. I don't want to be just rolling athletics and having things happen based on that roll, I want to try to make informed decisions based on what I can observe. I want opportunities for my character's strengths and weaknesses to be relevant. I want the party to be able to demonstrate teamwork and conquer the mountain together. I think on that basis that what I'd recommend is coming up with some basic rules that make the actual climbing happen automatically, i.e. without rolling, and then come up with a set of scenarios where it can't happen at all without careful decisions on the players' parts. If there's an overhang that you have to scramble around, and you're a strength-8 wizard, I don't care how well you roll you simply aren't strong enough to haul your body around that overhang without help. Maybe the party gets attacked by harpies while they're on the side of the mountain. Everyone can anchor themselves to the mountain to get their hands free, or they can move very slowly (5'/round?) up/down the mountain, and they need to figure out how to dispatch or scare off the harpies because they sure can't climb the mountain while the harpies are around.
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Oct 4, 2020 19:05
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How do you want to pitch this climb, as an endurance test or as a race? Do they need to get up alive and well or do they need to get up fast? If the players are climbing normally: slow, steady and safe, have them essentially "roll 20" and make progress. Then give them an incentive to take risks. Is something chasing them? Has a McGuffin been stolen by a thief who is ascending the cliff as they speak? A successful test gets them up faster, a failure incurs some penalty that doesn't end the climb, but makes their lives more difficult. Fatigue, loss of supplies, injuries. Wildcard suggestion: have your opposing team of adventurers attempt the summit at the same time. Turn it into an adversarial climb, with players and antagonists slinging spells across a frozen waterfall, causing massive sheets of ice to come crashing down; thrown weapons could cut ropes; one player anchors another while they swing over to the opposite side to get up close and personal with the warlock firing blasts at the lead climber. All this noise causes an avalanche, of course.
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Oct 4, 2020 20:16
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I would suggest treating it like a dungeon with ice-themed traps. Use a cliff face map, and let players travel freely across it at half their movement speed. Some areas are so bitterly cold + dangerous that ending a turn there takes damage. Maybe there's frozen monsters to skirt around, or a shortcut that needs the melee characters to hack through an ice wall,. Maybe there's a broken rope bridge the rogue has to repair for the wizard to safely cross.
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Oct 4, 2020 20:26
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If this is a particularly long climb, one possible challenge they might face is needing to spend a night on the glacier. How do they deal with the cold? What precautions do they take to allow them to sleep without falling?
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Oct 5, 2020 01:08
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There is a game on Steam, Frost. It is more about general winter travel than climbing glaciers but a lot of the ideas can carry over.
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Oct 5, 2020 02:40
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So, my 4th edition players are currently off to defeat a super powerful boss monster. The road to get there involved maneuvering through some traps that keyed off the drowning mechanics reskinned as energy drain— if the slow moving trap zone overlaps you, make a dc20 endurance check or lose a healing surge (or your surge value in hp if no surges remaining). My intention was that the slow moving things would put pressure on the party to move forward and try to escape the three elites on the battlemat instead of insisting on killing them. You know where this is going. They insisted on killing the elites, which involved a LOT of getting caught by the drowning traps, which involved a LOT of lost healing surges. How many lost surges? It’s a level 3 party of 6– they lost 27 healing surges to the traps. Three of the party have no surges left at all, and one of those also has only 1hp left. Now they are deep into enemy territory. The massive boss monster, a custom statted level-appropriate Aboleth (classified as a “super solo” with puzzle mechanics in addition to combat mechanics) is basically right around the corner. They can’t take an extended rest— they’re underwater with water breathing potions. They can’t retreat— the way back still has monsters and energy draining traps and whatnot, they won’t survive. I was thinking of taking the energy that was drained from them and stick it into crystals or pools of mystic liquid or some such... but I don’t want to make what they lost meaningless either and just restore them to full. So I was thinking some sort of challenge where they compete with the aboleth over getting some number of their surges back so they can fight it. I’m wondering if you have any suggestions for how I can do this without wiping the party in the process. How to compete with the aboleth without actually starting the fight?
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Oct 5, 2020 09:03
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Then they die, and enter the nega-realm.
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Oct 5, 2020 09:06
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Crystal idea sounds good, but if they are competent players I would tune it quite hard and have an interesting result for a tpk in mind, because they have deliberately drained themselves. Luckily aboleths love having slaves that can walk on dry land...
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Oct 5, 2020 09:08
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