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LeSquide posted:Clearly, they're armed by the Derro in a continued attempt to wage their genocidal war upon the Other through screaming, unyielding proxies. PurpleXVI posted:The Adventurer-Industrial complex is mass-producing shortswords for level 1 adventurers at a loss due to government subsidies, the spare shortswords, rather than being melted down or put into storage, are just tossed into a big hole outside of town. That's where the gibberlings get them all. I choose to believe these are all simultaneously true. Thanks for ending my sleepless nights!
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Sep 26, 2020 23:44
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90s Cringe Rock posted:summon Your username and smiley combination are perfect.
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Sep 26, 2020 23:53
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Hunt11 posted:As a side note I would love to play in a game set after said civil war ends because it seems like an interesting setting to mess around with. What the hell do you do with yourself as an individual and a species where for longer then human civilization has existed all you have done is fight and now it is all over. Isn't this basically Eberron's Warforged? The comics also do play with that a lot, More Than Meets The Eye in particular. (It basically has Megatron pulling the Cybertronian equivalent of 'Only God can judge me' so they set off in their spaceship to find God to judge him)
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Sep 27, 2020 05:56
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  Velociraptor: You’re a dinosaur! Who is intelligent! And can talk! You use the existing tables (base attack progression, saves, etc) of the Halfling class but you have a d6 hit die and are not trained in any weapons although you can wear custom-fitted armor. You have talons as natural weapons that can be wielded a la two-weapon fighting, can also bite as a third attack (albeit a d14 roll), and can move 40 feet per Action Die and charge without suffering an AC penalty. You also gain a limited Mighty Deed of Arms, but whose die is dependent upon having a predatory advantage against a target: the Deed Die goes one step up the dice chain for various conditions such whether or not the target’s fleeing, surrounded, injured/bleeding, etc). You do have a weakness: you are a carnivore and can only subsist on raw meat, and starve to death from 1d3 hit point damage per day if unable to eat such faire. You’re a mobile melee fighter, although you have a surprisingly small hit point value for such a role. Raw meat isn’t exactly hard to come by in most fantasy games with their uncharted wilderness, but overall the class is a rather weak warrior type. Wolf Girl: You’re a woman who’s a defender of nature. You have a d6 hit die, get a third Action Die at 10th level, cannot use equipment of an “industrialized nature” without suffering hit point damage and so your weapon and armor proficiencies are similarly limited (nothing metal). You also have a wolf animal companion who advances along with you in stats, can detect magic and spirits like how a dwarf can smell gold, and you have a Spirit Die (d3 to d14 depending on level) which you add on damage against opponents who hit you and on the number of feet added when you “jump from one place to another.” This sounds like it applies evenly to both vertical and horizontal jumps, which is pretty sweet. You have the ability to create spirit charms that act like scroll magical items via making sacrifices to mother nature. You also add your spirit die to rolls to cast spells from such “scrolls,” although the specifics of the sacrifices and magic gained is subject to the GM. You can also speak with wolves and learn other animal languages over time, too. This class has some pretty strong druid vibes, albeit with more of a martial focus. I overall like it, but I do feel that the spirit charm class feature could’ve used more specific examples or even a small list of appropriate spells like we get with the Knave or the Puppet Master. Xenocyte: You’re basically the monster from the Alien movies! As is to be expected you are a mobile fighter and are like the velociraptor in more or less being limited to your natural weapons, although you have a sturdier d10 hit die, an excellent Reflex save progression (+1 every level save 4th) and have alien senses which can sense unseen foes via heat patterns. Beyond this, your major class feature is Xeno Morphology, which is a mix-and-match list of abilities keyed to major body parts and all chosen at 1st level. You have a Xeno Die which is relevant to several of them, starting at d4 and increasing to a mighty d20 at 10th level. There’s a lot of good choices here, ranging from armored exoplating which grants +1 AC and reduces melee damage dealt to you by your xeno die, grappling spines which deal xeno die in damage and initiate a free grapple on a 3 or better result, and a stinger tail which can lower a foe’s AC by burning luck. But most notable about this class is that not only does it get a 3rd action die at 10th level, you can gain a d14 action die via the Quad Arms option and a d10 action die with a Prehensile Tail. Said options have other minor features, but you can effectively move and attack 3 times as early as 1st level and get up to 5 actions at 10th! This really makes the Xenocyte a strong ambush predator.  Youthful Musician: You’re basically the protagonist of a Hannah Barbara Saturday Morning Cartoon show. As a young optimistic believer in peace, love, Law, and music, you are a pacifist. You have a d8 hit die but your base attack progression remains at 0, and you suffer two steps down on all action die rolls when wielding a weapon of any kind but can inflict this very same penalty on anyone who attacks you. But to make up for this you are a great team player: you can force a target on a failed save (doesn’t say but I presume Will) to join you on their adventures as a Boon Companion but are limited to a number of such companions equal to your level. You can burn any of your ability scores to add as a bonus to a fellow PC’s non-combat roll on a 1 for 1 basis, can have the entire party move 1.5 times their normal movement speed when running away from danger, can regain Luck via helping out the downtrodden and oppressed, and can summon instruments into the hands of fellow PCs and Boon Companions which can restore their Luck and redistribute their Luck between each other. I recall a post about how DCC Halflings’ primary feature is to serve as “Luck batteries” for the party, and the Youthful Musician is no different. However they’re worse in the fact that they cannot reliably fight back and are an ill fit for a game whose majority of modules involve violent dungeon crawls. They’re kind of like a video game Healer class in that they’re beneficial to have for the party but can’t really do much on their own. The Boon Companion ability may be potentially overpowered in that it’s a means of turning just about anyone into a long-term hireling. The book even says that an entire party of this class “will often be very lucky, and frequently running from combat to friendlier places,” which...sounds better suited for an entirely different game system. Zealot: The final class of the book is strangely...ordinary in comparison to the earlier gonzo options. You may not be a Cleric, but that doesn’t stop your enthusiasm. You have a d8 hit die, are proficient in the favored weapons of your god, add your Luck modifier to damage rolls with said weapons, and your Base Attack Bonus, critical hit table, and saving throws are all appropriately martial. Your major class feature is Fervor, which is a spendable resource you gain via performing significant actions in line with your deity’s ethos or via sacrificing material wealth. You typically cannot gain Fervor more than once per appropriate action per day, but gaining more than 1 Fervor for a single action is possible. You spend Fervor to add as a Fervor Die bonus to any attack, damage, or skill roll, or can turn said Die into a Deed Die for Mighty Deeds of Arms. The Fervor Die can range from a d3 (1 Fervor spent) to as much as a d16 (21 Fervor spent). This is a rather simple yet versatile mechanic, although it’s limited in that the amount of Fervor you gain is capped at a relatively slow rate by the examples provided: killing 10 undead for a Lawful deity grants 1 Fervor, while sacrificing wealth grants 1 Fervor per 100 gold pieces worth. As such, the Zealot feels like a more restricted Warrior. Although they can theoretically save up enough Fervor to “go nova” on a single roll, it’s not something that they can consistently do on a frequent basis. Most of the time you’ll feel like a Warrior with less hit points, less weapon proficiencies, and without a Deed Die. Or in 3rd Edition D&D parlance, about as powerful as a Fighter without Bonus Feats. Our book ends with a small selection of notes and appendices. They range from inspirational material (mostly OSR blogs) to suggestions on how to “remix” the classes by swapping features from others here and there, although two entries jump out at me. The first asks for how to justify taking a level in some of the classes if you’re a level 0 human, with rather silly suggestions: the peasant was an ogre wearing a human skin-suit all along, or said peasant was eaten offscreen by an ogre who later befriended the party. Finally, there’s a table which groups the classes by roles. Said roles are both thematic (Beast, Robot, Undead) and class-specific (Skilled, Warrior-type, Spellcaster) with the Musician category as the odd man out. The Editor doesn’t belong to any entry, and 12 of the 26 classes fall under Warrior-type. The other roles range from 2-3 (Musician, Robot) to as much as 6 or 8 (Beast, Spellcaster). In a book with so many odd and gonzo classes, a table like this can be useful for those groups that want to retain a sense of consistency and role division even when your party looks like something out of a RIFTS session. If it were up to me, I’d also add one more entry of commonalities I noticed: six of the classes in this book are Alignment-Restricted. As Alignment in DCC is more the classic “cosmic allegiance” option for determining team players and less of a personality type, it can still lead to a different kind of inter-party conflict. The Goblin Gang, Hellfont, Intelligent Weapon, Ninja Vampire, Wolf Girl, Youthful Musician, and Zealot all have alignment restrictions. Zealot is a bit versatile in that their alignment must match their god so technically can be ‘any,’ although the Hellfont and Wolf Girl must be non-neutral. Youthful Musician is the only Lawful only class, with the remaining three of Goblin Gang, Intelligent Weapon, and Ninja Vampire being always Chaotic. Finally, none of the classes by default have versatile healing in the same manner as a Cleric. A few of the classes such as Ninja Vampire have means of restoring hit points, although in their cases are situational either to themselves or their minions like the Monster Trainer or Puppet Master. Others are unreliable like rolling one of the two human options for the Flesh-Forged’s original race, the Knave’s Moon Major Arcana which only triggers on a specific favorable result. Final Thoughts: I enjoyed this book, to the point that it reignited my interest in trying out a Dungeon Crawl Classics session albeit with everyone having a class from this book. Or perhaps the allowance of a single core class PC serving as the “straight man” to an oddball group. A lot of the classes lean quite heavily towards a more light-hearted campaign style, although quite a number of them such as the Lemurian and Zealot fit quite well in a traditional swords and sorcery or medieval setting. Although the classes vary in quality, they are extremely distinctive from each other in a way that can only come with a collaborative group effort. I’d like to thank everyone who read this far. For my next review I’m going to cover Magical Industrial Revolution, an OSR setting that has been sitting on my review backlog for quite some time. See you all then!
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Sep 27, 2020 11:07
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Wolf Girl gives me strong Princess Mononoke vibes and that’s fantastic. Wouldn’t mind a more combat-focused druid with some feral elements.
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Sep 27, 2020 12:38
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I feel like having Velociraptor practically next to Literally The Alien From Alien, Probably is a bit awkward and the former kind of suffers for it. Wolf Girl definitely made me think of Mononoke.
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Sep 27, 2020 12:45
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90s Cringe Rock posted:I feel like having Velociraptor practically next to Literally The Alien From Alien, Probably is a bit awkward and the former kind of suffers for it. The book suffers a bit from having to conform to the A-Z format. When you have to make 26 different classes, there’s bound to be some repetition.
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Sep 27, 2020 17:09
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90s Cringe Rock posted:summon Crit fail and you summon a hostile vampire who can stop time.
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Sep 27, 2020 17:13
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Little piece of trivia: flumphs are the only Lawful Good monster in The Deck of Encounters Set Two Part 81: The Deck of Golems, Intellect Devourers, and Ki-rin 409: Rust in Peace An elaborate graveyard with statues and iron gates and windy roads. Why are the PCs there? The card suggests maybe they’re gravedigging for an item they need or to speak with dead with a corpse. Our heroes! But the graveyard is guarded by an iron golem, fashioned like a giant man-at-arms with religious symbols on its chest. Ritzy place! The golem detects their presence, and the PCs need to hold it of while they finish their business. If it goes too long, town guards show up as well. I mean, that’s a decent mini-scenario, but you can’t have it happen randomly. Pass on keeping it in the deck, but put it aside as inspiration for the future. 410: Them Bones Takes place in a wizard’s laboratory. Restrictive, but I guess I could drop that easily enough into some types of dungeon. Anyway, the area is full of bones, which upon inspection are oddly warm and hard. They reform into a bone golem and attack if touched, but can be moved magically without activating them. There’s also a tuning fork in the laboratory with a shatter effect, which the wizard had made just in case, before the golem was thoroughly under his control. The treasure is a spellbook with fourth and fifth-level spells. Replace or supplement that spellbook with scribbled notes about bone golem creation and binding, and that’s cool. Keep. 411: The Sad Child The PCs are camping in a creepyish forest, and notice a child’s doll under a shrub. If they approach it, it stands up and totters off, leading them to an abandoned, desolate house. Inside, there’s a ruined bed, soaked through and crawling with insects. A child zombie is there, and croaks out “mommy?” but only has a vestige of its personality. If they’re laid to rest, the doll golem goes inert. (But presumably it could be reactivated if given to another child? That’s the call I’d make, anyway.) Also, there are six bottles of fine wine in the cellar. Nice creepy vibe. Keep. 412: Little Puppy Lost Somewhere where there are dead mind flayers - probably a dungeon, but potentially a spelljamming port or whatever. An intellect devourer starts trailing them - it was a pet and its masters died. It's skittish and will retreat back towards the room where the mind-flayers died if they try to follow it. It’ll attack them if they try to loot the mind flayer bodies, but otherwise can sort of be adopted? (Though “its alignment and dietary habits might make that difficult.”) Also, it won't leave the dungeon. I’m not clear on how to play this. It doesn’t seem like the PCs are expected to get this thing as a pet, given that it is evil, intelligent, and eats brains. And I’m not really sure what the creature’s motivation is, either. Pass. 413: Could You Watch This? “Higher powers” (like the DM?) have decided to test the PCs’ righteousness. A ki-rin visits them and gives them a box, asking them to watch over it until the ki-rin returns in six nights. It’s a cool-looking box, all unlocked and with a cool inlay! But if you open it, the tiny golden ki-rin statue inside melts away. If they wait, they get to keep the token, which summons the ki-rin itself to them, once. Feels like more of a test of patience than of righteousness. But sure, that works. Keep.
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Sep 27, 2020 18:30
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Dallbun posted:the area is full of bones, which upon inspection are oddly warm and hard. That's what she said. Also I never noticed they hyphenated kirin. What the hell is going on with that?
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Sep 27, 2020 19:32
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Xiahou Dun posted:Also I never noticed they hyphenated kirin. What the hell is going on with that? Well, you wouldn't want to confuse a ki-rin with a kirin
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Sep 27, 2020 21:40
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Xiahou Dun posted:That's what she said.
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Sep 27, 2020 21:57
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Dallbun posted:Well, you wouldn't want to confuse a ki-rin with a kirin Or a karen. In that version of the test if you open the box, the Karen demands to speak to your manager.
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Sep 27, 2020 22:00
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Everyone posted:Or a karen. In that version of the test if you open the box, the Karen demands to speak to your manager. There must be quite a line to speak with the average D&D party's manager.
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Sep 27, 2020 22:15
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Battle Mad Ronin posted:Wolf Girl gives me strong Princess Mononoke vibes and that’s fantastic. Wouldn’t mind a more combat-focused druid with some feral elements. 90s Cringe Rock posted:I feel like having Velociraptor practically next to Literally The Alien From Alien, Probably is a bit awkward and the former kind of suffers for it. For what it's worth this is the class image. I needed to use Velociraptor as the header image but didn't want another image immediately thereafter.  I realize I spoke poorly on the Tenacious D-Fender's class, making it sound like it can only use slings. Well it can use any melee weapon, so it's far more versatile on that front. Gatto Grigio posted:Crit fail and you summon a hostile vampire who can stop time. Jojo's has been sitting in my anime backlog forever. Yes I know it's good, but I don't want to spread myself too thin in watching too many shows at once. Back to reviews at hand, I'll need some time to get up Magical Industrial Revolution. I first want to write up RPGNet front page reviews for Unbreakable and the Class Alphabet so then I can really move on and focus my attention fully on Skerples' OSR magnum opus. Libertad! fucked around with this message at 05:56 on Sep 28, 2020 |
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Sep 28, 2020 05:52
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So it’s San from Mononoke only they gave her a bikini top and short shorts for no good reason. Stay classy, RPG nerds.
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Sep 28, 2020 06:12
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Also her wolf hat looks very concerned.
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Sep 28, 2020 08:26
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Didn't even notice your mistake on the Tenacious D class. I just assumed that of course they could bring out their broadswords.
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Sep 28, 2020 08:49
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Surely they use axes.
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Sep 28, 2020 10:26
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PurpleXVI posted:Also her wolf hat looks very concerned. The expression of shock was forever frozen on its face.
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Sep 28, 2020 10:36
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Unlike other wizards, sha’ir use magic by calling upon The Deck of Encounters Set Two Part 82: The Deck of Lamias, More Mind Flayers, and Murder 414: The Ladies’ Tea and Hospitality Society Some PCs who are trying to break into the upper crust of society in their home city are invited to a party hosted by the titular organization. Five of the hostesses are actually lamia nobles, and the PCs have a chance to notice this, as per the Monstrous Compendium description. The card implies that there’s danger here, by stressing that the PCs are without arms and armor, and asking rhetorically whether they can “make polite excuses and recover their weaponry in time.” But “in time” for what? There’s no textual evidence that the lamias are planning to start poo poo. Surely the only way this would become dangerous is if the lamias become aware that the PCs know their secret. I like the possibilities here. Keep. 415: Visit from an Old Friend Here’s how the card starts: Visit from an Old Friend posted:Area: This encounter occurs in any poorly traveled area far from help. Anyway what actually happens is that the PCs are hit by horrible attack spells including (cloudkill and finger of death), from above. It’s an old enemy who they killed, but is now… a lich! “The PCs don’t have much time for subtlety; their objective is plain. It’s them or the lich.” That’s… so boring. It’s just a fight. If you’re going to have an old enemy become a lich, aim a little higher than having them cast cloudkill at the party. Pass. 416: Graffiti Artists Beware The PCs are in some kind of ruin, which features a single oddly study wall, perfect for taking shelter next to so they can rest up before going into the dungeon that’s under the ruin. “The only discordant element is the audible noise of many voices wailing around the wall. It might just be the wind, but still…” Uh, no, it’s not the wind. No player or PC will ever think that it’s the wind. The card says the living wall will “wait patiently for all the PCs to be in range before it attacks,” but I guarantee you that one PC max, if you’re lucky will get within melee range. The wall can look forward to being fireballed to oblivion from afar ASAP. The other problem here is that the card provides an exhaustive list of creatures absorbed into the wall but says that “the DM must chart out where these creatures are [within the wall] when setting up this encounter.” Could it be that some AD&D monsters… are not suited to being used on encounter cards? Pass. 417: Too Good to be True In a “dockside tavern frequented by spelljamming crews,” the PCs are offered to sign on to a mind flayer ship - good wages, adventures in distant spheres. Sounds good. “The PCs catch word from a couple of tavern patrons that they’ve never seen these four mind flayers in the bar before. ‘Some of them feel free to skip town after a crime,’ one says over a mug.” I don’t think I understand this. Skipping town after a crime would be a reason that you don’t see individuals again, but it has nothing to do with never having seen them before. Am I missing something? If they meet up at the spelljamming dock at nightfall as requested, though, the mind flayers are lying in wait to jump them, eat their brains, and skip town. They’re “betrayed by their shadows on a wall - they are obviously lurking around a comer, waiting for their chance to attack.” Wait, they’re mind flayers - their main attack is a psionic blast. You don’t need to lurk behind a corner to ambush someone with that. You would probably just wait for the PCs to walk up, then hit them all at once, right? Or more likely, wait until they’re physically on your ship and can’t escape? I’m so confused. Pass, somehow the card writer and I just aren’t on the same wavelength. 418: Little Red Bottle In a bazaar in an implicitly Al-Qadim-ish city, there’s a stand named “Oddments from All Over,” and one of the things for sale is a small bottle with a reddish mist swirling inside it. The merchant calls it a curio, to decorate a mantlepiece for example, and will sell it for 2,000 gp, but is anxious for people to be careful with it and says it should be opened only under the direst circumstances. So… can’t you just tell us what’s in it or something? Maybe that’s all the person who he got it from told him. What’s inside is a crimson death mist that will attack everyone if it escapes. Written on the bottom of the bottle, though, is a command word that will protect the user from being attacked, and also let them command it to return to the bottle. “Getting the pronunciation of the word correct would involve hiring a sage.” I dunno. I don’t really want to give the PCs even potential access to a flunky that’s immune to non-magical weapons and has 95% magic resistance. That’s the kind of thing that warps problem-solving for the whole rest of the campaign. Maybe keep, but remove the command word. Just make it a bottle of indiscriminately-murderous crimson death. That’s what I call a good magic item.
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Sep 28, 2020 18:41
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Man, the living wall is surprisingly creepy for a DnD monster, bus this?quote:Once absorbed, characters are lost forever. A wish spell, worded carefully, can remove one or more trapped characters This is grogs.txt poo poo!
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Sep 28, 2020 22:27
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Pretty sure that was a Ravenloft transplant, which doesn't excuse the neckbeard-stroking 'scared yet' implicit in that rider.
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Sep 28, 2020 22:43
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JcDent posted:The expression of shock was forever frozen on its face. In death he can see the creepy nerds whacking off to the bikini-clad bod of his killer...
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Sep 29, 2020 04:10
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Bieeanshee posted:Pretty sure that was a Ravenloft transplant, which doesn't excuse the neckbeard-stroking 'scared yet' implicit in that rider. *System Mastery Jeff voice* Oh, but when you WISHED for Bob the Fighter to be returned to life, you didn't specify that has to be revived outside the living wall - so he is reabsorbed immediately and most horribly. Perhaps the next time you gather the components for the spell, you'll be more careful with what you WISH for, dohohohoho"
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Sep 29, 2020 05:11
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Instead of using the Living Wall as a malicious trap, you could use it as a creepy questgiver. It seems like those trapped within would want the wall's creator to be captured, brought near, and slain to break the curse.
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Sep 29, 2020 07:31
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BattleMaster posted:Instead of using the Living Wall as a malicious trap, you could use it as a creepy questgiver. It seems like those trapped within would want the wall's creator to be captured, brought near, and slain to break the curse. Oooh, I like that idea...
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Sep 29, 2020 08:19
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If a living wall in the forgotten realms doesn't pick a god does it go to the wall of the faithless, kind of a Saturn devouring his son situation?
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Sep 29, 2020 08:30
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A wish spell, worded carefully, can remove one or more trapped characters from The Deck of Encounters Set Two Part 83: The Deck of Mummies, Neogi, and Plot Railroads 419: Revenge Delayed The set-up here is odd. “If a PC is curious about his family’s history, he might come across a strange amulet brought back from a dreadful adventure by some remote ancestor; it’s origin was never explained. The PC can then set aside the amulet or sell it.” OK, cool? This is a Desert encounter card, though? Basically, a greater mummy comes wrecking poo poo and looking for the amulet (and also revenge). It arrives within a week after the PC got it. But if the PCs did sell the amulet, isn’t this mummy someone else’s problem now? Or does the mummy not actually sense the amulet’s direction, but has been following rumors and leads for decades and decades? Whatever, it’s not a terrible idea, but it’s kind of awkward as a card since it has two things that happen days apart. Pass. 420: Bigger than a Breadbox In a deep swamp, the PCs are hunkered down waiting out a thunderstorm. They hear a big explosion “a league” away, and when the storm lets up they can go explore and find a crashed neogi deathspider (that’s a Spelljamming ship, folks), and a great old master neogi staggering out, confused and also ready to burst with offspring. A lot like card 406, with the githzerai. It’s perfectly cromulent if you’re running an AD&D game where the PCs are not Spelljamming, but you want to introduce Spelljamming. How often that happens, I have no idea, but I’ll give the card writer the benefit of the doubt, say that this is part of the AD&D 2nd Edition experience, and keep. 421: For a Handful of Feathers A high-level encounter in which “someone close to the PCs lies dying of a terminal illness.” Cure disease. Nope, doesn’t work. Restoration? Regeneration? Let them die and then use resurrection? No. Look, the healer says they need “The mountain range is hard to traverse; it requires nearly a month of travel to reach the legendary peaks.” Well, that’s okay, we’re going to be flying there anyw… “PCs notice that some of their magic (such as communication and movement magic) doesn’t work properly here.” Dammit! On the peak is a hermit. Tell him why they’re there and he’ll approve and summon the phoenix, and they can grab some feathers. “The PCs must roll under their Wisdoms on 1d20 or be awestruck by the phoenix’s beauty for 2d10 rounds.” Well, I’m glad to see we’ve got exciting, high stakes here. If the whole party fails, the phoenix might have to wait awkwardly for as long as 20 minutes! “The PCs must hurry, but the potion works perfectly.” Yaaaay. Look. Having a phoenix sidequest for when an NPC is at death’s door is a cool idea. Just don’t label it as high-level! Make it very low-level! And then make this encounter more interesting. Maybe the NPC is dead by the time the PCs return, leaving them upset, but with a handful of genuinely powerful phoenix feathers. Maybe it’s Osamu Tezuka’s Phoenix and everyone’s going to have a cosmic revelation about the cycle of life and reincarnation. I dunno. Something besides an uneventful fetch quest. Pass as an encounter card, but keep the concept on the backburner. 422: A Plot of Ground This Big The PCs are at dinner with the archmage Tinkabul, who is an rear end in a top hat wizard (you know the type) and has a reputation as such. And one of the PCs “makes a thoughtless remark about the value of friendship meaning more than power.” I’m dying here. How, in a practical sense, is the DM supposed to engineer this encounter, whether this is random or planned? You… tell one of the players… that their character says this? You… open the session at exactly this point, and tell them that this has already happened? You get the PCs into the dinner party and then just pray? Pass pass pass. Anyway the rest of the encounter is Tinkabul teleporting the party to the top of a 4x4 foot platform where the ground below is covered with black puddings, making a dumb pun about dessert, and forcing the PCs to remain there for 10 minutes before he relents and teleports them back. And it’s supposed to prove some point about how friendship has its limits, except that honestly I feel like friendship could probably be very helpful in that situation? We’re not missing much, in other words. 423: Good Thing We Didn’t Swallow Any The PCs are lunching next to a clear, blue lake with some marshy area off to the side. The ducks in the lake start to disappear. (There’s a brown pudding under the water, you see.) The card also says that “at some point, a picnic basket falls into the water” and dissolves as well, but… do you really think the PCs are carrying around a picnic basket? If nobody goes swimming or whatever, there’s a 40% chance the brown pudding emerges and attacks anyway, retreating if down to 66% HP. Guess I can’t complain. Keep.
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Sep 29, 2020 16:53
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I dont know what you lot get up to in America, yes I know about your definition of pudding, but black pudding specifically is a blood sausage and not even a dessert.
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Sep 29, 2020 23:21
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feedmegin posted:I dont know what you lot get up to in America, yes I know about your definition of pudding, but black pudding specifically is a blood sausage and not even a dessert. It doesn't excuse his pun, but a D&D black pudding is an acidic gelatinous mass. So presumably it would be considered a wine sauce.
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Sep 29, 2020 23:48
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Dallbun posted:So presumably it would be considered a wine sauce. Time to ask Ryōko Kui!
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Sep 30, 2020 09:05
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A faction in Sigil believes that the thing that undergirds all creation is The Deck of Encounters Set Two Part 85: The Deck of Cats, Birds, and Frogs 424: Who Do You Trust? “The PCs are doing some routine patrol work in a very nasty area. (They ticked off an employer and this is his idea of revenge.)” No, card, that’s not happening! I’m not opening my game in media res, or worse yet, trying to set this situation up organically, all for the sake of this little encounter card. Give me something more granular! Anyway, one PC is off getting water from a well when their old mentor approaches. It’s actually a greater rakshasa that will try to kill the PC before their shouts draw the others, and take their place. “The rakshasa fights until it manages to kill each PC or is exposed, at which point it attacks as itself, using its powers to their fullest.” But the MM entry says it “must drop their disguise when it attacks,” so. Whatever. What’s this thing’s motivation? Well, “Ultimately, the rakshasa hopes to kill off the entire party, not to mention any friends and relatives the PCs have.” Because it’s eeeeeeevil. Eh. Pass. P.S. The card suggests that if the first PC is killed, that player could play the rakshasa. Fun in theory, a quick road to bitterness and hurt feelings in practice. 425: Wings The PCs are attending a wedding when a roc appears, snatches up the bride, and flies away. The PCs and the groom pursue it to a mountain near the city, where it tries to harry them and stop them from landing on the mountain themselves. (This is a high-level encounter, the PCs are gonna be flying one way or another.) Actually the bride is fleeing her arranged marriage and eloping with her love, a powerful druid. The bones here are OK, but there would need to be more specifics for the PCs to care. Hopefully there are NPCs and factions that I can draw in here? Keep? EDIT: Actually pass, there's just not enough there to run it without major prep work. 426: Stalagmites The PCs enter a dungeon area with a lot of stalagmites and stalactites. A bunch of bats fly around as they enter, stirred up by one of the ropers hidden in the cavern waking up. There are eight (!) and they wait for the PCs to be halfway across the room before attacking, focusing on the weakest members first. An encounter with eight exceptionally intelligent grappling monsters who have good cover, huh? That’s… potentially killer. But it is a high-level encounter, and high level D&D characters generally have no end of problem-solving options, so I guess that’s fair. Keep. 427: Tadpoles In the Wizard’s Quarter, on the Street of Mages, a 14th-level wizard who runs an “Emporium of Strange and Wondrous Creatures” tried to summon exotic frogs and got slaad instead. Three blue, five red. “Only the PCs are armed and equipped to fight them, but there is backup available within a couple of minutes if the PCs get into serious trouble.” I know some people ran 2E as a high-magic wonderland, and if that’s the kind of game you’ve got, then sure, keep. Establishing a friendly NPC who runs a magic creature emporium is the kind of thing that could be handy in such a game. Really, though, I’d rather it be a Planescape encounter, in which the summoned slaad have a genuine grievance against this incompetent wizard, and the PCs must help these creatures of pure chaos navigate the local legal system. 428: Storm-Tossed Tentacles There’s a terrible thunderstorm as the PCs are sailing the high seas. But then as they’re busily lashing down the sails, a sailor is grabbed by a kraken, woken by the storm! It’ll assault the ship for as long as the storm does, then withdraw and return that evening. (If the PCs haven’t killed it, which, let’s be real, these high-level PCs probably have.) I mean, “storm” is an extremely plain sailing random encounter. And so is “kraken.” So is “storm+kraken” interesting content? Well, my standards are pretty low, so maybe. Keep? Dallbun fucked around with this message at 20:17 on Sep 30, 2020 |
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Sep 30, 2020 18:15
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I rather like the Wings! Adventure seed, it's a fun thing that could be adapted.
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Sep 30, 2020 19:52
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Yeah, Wings! seems like it be a really easy adaption. Either your party has pre-existing hooks where they can effectively be plus ones for a wedding of someone they sort of know about, or they can just be hired to be at the wedding because of course you hire a group of morally flexible sellswords for weddings. poo poo like one of the couple getting grabbed by a huge bird is a noted risk in D&D fantasy world.
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Sep 30, 2020 22:42
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Mr. Maltose posted:Yeah, Wings! seems like it be a really easy adaption. Either your party has pre-existing hooks where they can effectively be plus ones for a wedding of someone they sort of know about, or they can just be hired to be at the wedding because of course you hire a group of morally flexible sellswords for weddings. poo poo like one of the couple getting grabbed by a huge bird is a noted risk in D&D fantasy world. Particularly if the groom has a reason to suspect the bride wants to engineer an escape with her druid 'friend'
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Sep 30, 2020 23:23
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Speleothing posted:Particularly if the groom has a reason to suspect the bride wants to engineer an escape with her druid yoga instructor
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Oct 1, 2020 06:38
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Dallbun posted:423: Good Thing We Didn’t Swallow Any
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Oct 1, 2020 10:36
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Mr. Maltose posted:Yeah, Wings! seems like it be a really easy adaption. Either your party has pre-existing hooks where they can effectively be plus ones for a wedding of someone they sort of know about, or they can just be hired to be at the wedding because of course you hire a group of morally flexible sellswords for weddings. poo poo like one of the couple getting grabbed by a huge bird is a noted risk in D&D fantasy world. Or, if you want a total farce - the groom wasn't thrilled about the arranged marriage either, and he was aware of the bride's plan. He hired the PCs because he assumed random traveling bozos wouldn't be as good as actual professional guards. Now he's trying to sabotage your 'rescue' attempt, while not being willing to admit what's really going on out of fear of the parents finding out their kids are trying to sneak out of the marriage they arranged.
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Oct 1, 2020 11:59
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Angry Salami posted:Or, if you want a total farce - the groom wasn't thrilled about the arranged marriage either, and he was aware of the bride's plan. He hired the PCs because he assumed random traveling bozos wouldn't be as good as actual professional guards. I love a good farce.
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Oct 1, 2020 14:10
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