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I'm about to play my first session with a "combat oriented" 5e group a coworker invited me. Trying out a lot of Tasha stuff as a halfling beastmaster ranger with the new bonus action attack on the pet, starting out at level 5. I think my animal companion is going to be an Emu. Bobby Deluxe posted:I'm taking advantage of Tasha's Stat Bullshit as well. Made a tiefling fighter, +2 Str and +1 con to fit his farming background. He never really got any poo poo from people for being a tiefling, and grew up mucking in with the chores rather than stealing or swindling his way round. I'm really happy with the alternate race rules. I always preferred playing more offbeat characters and it just works better now.
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Jan 9, 2021 18:54
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Seldon posted:This player needs to just play Pathfinder, the default setting is "homebrew planet of all the things". Or just go with Forgotten Realms, the "official planet of all the things."
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Jan 10, 2021 03:55
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Well I had fun playing my beastmaster. However, it would have been nice to know beforehand that I was player #7 including the DM. Who plays a player character at the same time. And just shares his roll20 screen and moves everyone for them..
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Jan 10, 2021 18:28
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TheAardvark posted:Well I had fun playing my beastmaster. Holy poo poo, this sounds like a tabletop group unable to make a successful leap to digital
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Jan 10, 2021 18:31
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please knock Mom! posted:Holy poo poo, this sounds like a tabletop group unable to make a successful leap to digital The DM is my coworker, and has informed me they thought the whole group had to pay for roll20 to use it together. I told him I would show him how to use it correctly before next session. It's only once a month so I am going to keep playing because I am a masochist 
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Jan 10, 2021 18:34
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TheAardvark posted:The DM is my coworker, and has informed me they thought the whole group had to pay for roll20 to use it together. Lmao please show this person how do use roll20. Oh my god, sessions will be so much better from now on if you show them how it works.
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Jan 10, 2021 18:36
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luv2see a literal dmpc
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Jan 10, 2021 19:16
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Thanks for the ideas everyone, my group had a great time finishing LMoP. The adventure ended with two PCs having an arm wrestling contest over an electrum goblet found in the last room of the mine, as well as a fun drinking contest where I had all my PCs take shots of beer. In retrospect, LMoP has a lot of issues, mainly in terms of flow and story. There are balance issues as well I feel. I think if I ever DM'ed the adventure again I would have to edit a few of the maps and maybe even move Thundtree's location entirely (it's really jarring and disruptive). However, as a first time adventure I thought it was super fun. My players said they especially liked the feeling of becoming part of the community of Phandalin.
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Jan 11, 2021 05:26
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I personally only attempted one session through roll20 because I found the interface to be very complex and daunting. That said, I've never had any positive online TG gaming experiences because very few people on my playgroup have good connections or non-crappy microphones.
Azran fucked around with this message at 10:28 on Jan 11, 2021 |
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Jan 11, 2021 10:26
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Roll20 is fine. It's not as good as moving physical miniatures around on physical grid terrain made for that purpose, it's not even as good as moving physical miniatures around on a gridded dry erase board with doodles for terrain. But those generally require being in-person. If seeing physical representation of character location is required?, Roll20 is a good substitute. I think Toshimo ran basically a roll20 training program a while back. - My best online D&D experiences have been with Discord + Avrae and participants with at least a reasonable level of competence with remembering the difference between !a, !c, !cast, !r, and !s and their modifiers. Sure, without visuals it's just theater of the mind, but it can work well if the group can play along.
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Jan 11, 2021 13:37
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Avrae is in dice jail for what it did to our first attempt at playing online. Six kobolds should not be able to knock out a paladin with a warlock and rogue for backup.
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Jan 11, 2021 13:50
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What level were you? Because at level one or two with action economy and pack tactics six kobolds should wreck a paladin regardless of of the paladin's backup if only the paladin is in melee combat.
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Jan 11, 2021 14:06
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Level one, chainmail & shield, bonus feat protection fighting style. Warlock was pact of the blade and standing beside me so I could impose disadvantage, and the rogue went ranged. There were 3 outside guarding, 1 melee, two ranged; so essentially a one-on-one encounter. They trashed us so bad I was out of healing when we went into the cave where the other 3 were. That was 2 melee and a caster. Everything went wrong. They kept critting and rolling really well, everything we tried either missed or they saved, all our saves failed. This wasn't just bad luck, this was even the DM saying 'something fucky is going on here.' Afterwards the missus did an experiment and found that over an average of 50 rolls, just asking it to roll a d20 trended towards midrange with a couple of crits, whereas when we asked it to roll an attack, it barely rolled anything above a 10. When the DM tried, there were so many crits and 10+ rolls it was hosed up. Also after that we got accused of being murderhobos despite the kobolds attacking first and none of us having a common language.
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Jan 11, 2021 16:06
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Azran posted:I personally only attempted one session through roll20 because I found the interface to be very complex and daunting. That said, I've never had any positive online TG gaming experiences because very few people on my playgroup have good connections or non-crappy microphones. I'm always a bit amazed at how many people seem to not have usable microphones. I use a set of $15 Brainwavz earbuds that I've had for years, and they work just fine. Pretty much any laptop should have a working camera/microphone built-in. And yet even in my group that has been playing D&D / Gloomhaven for years at this point, we still have people messing around with junky mics or struggling with push-to-talk settings.
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Jan 11, 2021 16:14
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https://www.polygon.com/2021/1/11/22224856/dragonlance-authors-weis-hickman-lawsuit-dismissed-dragonlance-dungeons-dragons-wotc I really hope the next setting isn't Dragonlance, it's so generic
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Jan 11, 2021 17:39
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change my name posted:I really hope the next setting isn't Dragonlance, it's so generic It’s probably going to be DragonLance. I don’t know anything about the setting other than there are dragons and it was really popular back in the day. Can someone give a good summary of what it is and what makes it different than Forgotten Realms (also a generic setting)?
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Jan 11, 2021 17:59
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nelson posted:Can someone give a good summary of what it is and what makes it different than Forgotten Realms (also a generic setting)? Little things, mostly dumb. Halflings are called Kender and are all irritating kleptomaniacs. They use steel pieces instead of gold. Divine magic is rare. Arcane magic is heavily regulated.
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Jan 11, 2021 18:13
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nelson posted:It’s probably going to be DragonLance. I don’t know anything about the setting other than there are dragons and it was really popular back in the day. Can someone give a good summary of what it is and what makes it different than Forgotten Realms (also a generic setting)? The primary things that separated in the past were Paladin "subclasses" baked into the Knights of Solamnia, and Wizards being separated into alignment based subclasses. There's also an entire continent ruled by rad minotaurs. I'd say it's a radically different experience from Forgotten Realms. It always had more of a Heroic vibe as opposed to FR's Epic vibe. Elves feel different, dwarves feel different (there's actually a difference between Hill and Mountain), Dark Elves are radically different. Halflings are replaced by Kender, who you will either love or hate. It'll be interesting to see how Dragonborn interact with Draconians (Dragonfolk created by corrupting the eggs of metallic dragons). Personally, I love the setting. It's one of my favorites. Devorum fucked around with this message at 18:18 on Jan 11, 2021 |
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Jan 11, 2021 18:13
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Devorum posted:The primary things that separated in the past were Paladin "subclasses" baked into the Knights of Solamnia, and Wizards being separated into alignment based subclasses. I'd change the words - Dragonlance is epic fantasy to FR's high fantasy (if even that). Dragonlance is pretty much defined by its origins - it's your setting for big 1-20 epic plotted storyline campaigns, not sandboxes or anything but huge epic set pieces that really put you in a fantasy novel of your own. Everything in the setting is crafted towards that end, with the various ideas all fairly clear and distinct so you can assemble conflict and archetypes wherever/whenever you want.
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Jan 11, 2021 18:55
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Not Dragonlance (Also not any setting)
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Jan 11, 2021 20:48
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Syrinxx posted:Not Dragonlance
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Jan 11, 2021 21:09
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Trivia posted:Thanks for the ideas everyone, my group had a great time finishing LMoP. The adventure ended with two PCs having an arm wrestling contest over an electrum goblet found in the last room of the mine, as well as a fun drinking contest where I had all my PCs take shots of beer. Heya! I am very interested to hear more details about the issues you had DMing LMoP and how you would have modified it to make it flow better. I am starting a first-time DND group with some friends and am going to run LMoP as the DM.
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Jan 11, 2021 21:56
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Anyone know where I can find a list of subclasses that's either easily sortable or just PHB, Xanathar's and Tasha's? Can only find lists that also include Eberron, UA, and/or Homebrew, and not sortable.
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Jan 12, 2021 00:38
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5etools
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Jan 12, 2021 01:05
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I wonder if it's going to be all old stuff like, I dunno, L2 The Assassin's Knot, or if we'll see some new adventures in that anthology.
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Jan 12, 2021 01:13
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Does anyone have a recommendation on what I should use to take notes as a DM? I was thinking of just using OneNote, but thought it would be a pain having Roll20 and OneNote on the same screen. I also thought it might be quicker to take notes by hand, especially for stuff like tracking monster hp during encounters and wanted to get some thoughts from people with actual experience running sessions.
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Jan 12, 2021 02:28
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A Single Sphink posted:5etools Thanks! MrSargent posted:Does anyone have a recommendation on what I should use to take notes as a DM? I was thinking of just using OneNote, but thought it would be a pain having Roll20 and OneNote on the same screen. I also thought it might be quicker to take notes by hand, especially for stuff like tracking monster hp during encounters and wanted to get some thoughts from people with actual experience running sessions. I'm absolutely loving Trello. Perry Mason Jar fucked around with this message at 02:49 on Jan 12, 2021 |
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Jan 12, 2021 02:42
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MrSargent posted:Does anyone have a recommendation on what I should use to take notes as a DM? I was thinking of just using OneNote, but thought it would be a pain having Roll20 and OneNote on the same screen. I also thought it might be quicker to take notes by hand, especially for stuff like tracking monster hp during encounters and wanted to get some thoughts from people with actual experience running sessions. onenote's fine for notes. in-encounter things like monster HP is handled by roll20, pretty nicely imo
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Jan 12, 2021 03:01
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MrSargent posted:Does anyone have a recommendation on what I should use to take notes as a DM? I was thinking of just using OneNote, but thought it would be a pain having Roll20 and OneNote on the same screen. I also thought it might be quicker to take notes by hand, especially for stuff like tracking monster hp during encounters and wanted to get some thoughts from people with actual experience running sessions. I use roll20 for initiative tracking, HP tracking, and anything that is attached to specific monsters or I want players to see. For big fights I also try to setup monster stats and roll macros for each token to keep things moving quickly. If it's something that requires thoughtful organization, like a D&D random encounter table or a set piece encounter in a PBTA system, I type it up in word, onenote, google docs, w/e and usually print it out before the session starts. For everything else, I use handwritten notes, including taking them in the middle of the session. If it's important I write more details shortly after the session concludes.
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Jan 12, 2021 03:41
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Arivia posted:I'd change the words - Dragonlance is epic fantasy to FR's high fantasy (if even that). I'd say that it's a setting crafted for one specific big 1-20 (more like 3-15 really) epic plotted storyline campaign, the DL series, and anything else done on Ansalon is gonna exist in its shadow. Which is why TSR ended up making the Taladas sub-setting, a place where you could have Dragonlance stuff without the War of the Lance looming over it all. Devorum posted:There's also an entire continent ruled by rad minotaurs. It's even better than that. Rad minotaurs only rule one of its major nations. There's also a crazy theocracy, a few different elf cultures, a diverse steppeland area, spooky jungles, competent tinker gnomes, non-kleptomaniacal kender, and wasteland nomads who wouldn't be out of place in Dark Sun. And it all takes place on another continent shattered by the Cataclysm, but this one is basically one giant volcano, like a bigger and crazier Morrowind. It leans harder into the post apocalyptic nature of the setting and doesn't have the starkly black and white morality of the Chronicles. It also doesn't have a lot of the setting specific classes, like Knights of Solamnia or Wizards of the White/Red/Black robes. Instead, it featured a lot of setting specific kits. Taladas is a really interesting setting. It's still mostly generic D&D fantasy, but in places it's just as weird or weirder than Dark Sun, Planescape, or Spelljammer.
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Jan 12, 2021 04:37
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Perry Mason Jar posted:I'm absolutely loving Trello. I've used trello and similar for work, how are you using it for DM notes?
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Jan 12, 2021 04:40
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change my name posted:https://www.polygon.com/2021/1/11/22224856/dragonlance-authors-weis-hickman-lawsuit-dismissed-dragonlance-dungeons-dragons-wotc i'm tellin u it's al qadim if i say "hey you know what wizards should do in their push to make more inclusory settings is to do a tasteful reinterpretation of a limited run setting that isn't a pastiche of contemporary fantasy as portrayed by lord of the rings" dragonlance is cool though because it's post apocalyptic fantasy if you play 5th age and if you're messing around with the actual political forces in the game world it was fun, plus getting an actual dragon lance was bad rear end edit: like, dragonlance didn't have working clerics in 5th age because the gods said "nah we are outta here"
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Jan 12, 2021 10:01
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MrSargent posted:Heya! I am very interested to hear more details about the issues you had DMing LMoP and how you would have modified it to make it flow better. I am starting a first-time DND group with some friends and am going to run LMoP as the DM. Awesome! I had a lot of fun and if you have a lot of time to prepare, I have quite a few recommendations for the adventure itself, as well as things I've found to make the game better. Just off the top of my head, LMoP has some issues with flow and villain motivation. If you're going to start soon I'll try to keep things to the beginning: Let the group actually meet Gundren. This lets them interact personally with him. Instead of starting them on the road, have them answer a marketboard flyer (for instance) and talk to him about work (meet him at an Inn or something). You could have there be several fliers about Neverwinter looking for carters for hire. This gives your characters all a reason to meet up in a group, but more importantly, gives them a reason to care about him beyond payment for services rendered, especially if you make him likeable. You could even add some rando NPCs that he dismisses for "looking weak." Following that, continue the adventure as normal. Make sure you read and understand the goblin statblock so you know how to use them; especially their bonus action of disengaging / hiding. This forces players to learn to use ability checks in battle (perception to spot hidden gobs), which my party didn't really do until much later in the campaign. Lots of ppl say that low levels are pretty dangerous for PCs in 5e (which I think is true). To give them a little bit of a leg up, have them eat a hearty breakfast before setting out from Neverwinter to give them some temporary HP. You can also use that to incentivize PCs to role play and buy food at taverns / inns. After the first battle they will, most likely, head for the Cragmaw Hideout. This is great and what you want, mostly because Gundren has been taken and you want to find him asap. One thing about the hideout: Switch rooms 8 and 6. The natural flow of the mini-dungeon leads players to what is officially room 8, where the Klarg the Bugbear leader resides. However, in room 6 there's Sildar, as well as a lot of opportunity to roleplay and gain intel on Klarg. You would need to finagle the layout a little bit, but it I think would make for a better experience. In fact, one of my PCs died because she was squishy and carelessly went into Klarg's room, only to be surprise attacked and one-shotted. Remember, at this point your players may not be experienced enough to know to be sneaky and scout ahead. Afterwards your party will find itself in Phandalin no doubt. I drew the whole village on a big whiteboard and had them take turns telling me where they wanted to explore or do. Have the townsfolk see them with suspicion, and treat them curtly. This is good because A: They WOULD be, considering the Redbrand threat (maybe you're new recruits) and B: It's SUPER satisfying for PCs if the town grows to trust and like them, then welcome them as part of the community. Play up the Redbrand threat. My party visited some nearby shops but mainly wanted to go to the inn for rest and relaxation. If I were to do it again, I'd have an idea of who is in the Inn (the adventure tells you), whereabouts / who they're sitting with, and some very basic descriptions (tall, short, brown hair, etc). Don't feel you need to quest dump every single thing to the party. Space it out. Qellin Alderleaf and Sister Garaele's quests are pretty good for lower levels. Ideally you want the party to go to the Redbrand's Hideout. Find a way to telegraph the blight that they are. I actually missed an EXCELLENT opportunity because of inexperience. My druid PC went to explore the Tresendar Manor ruins by herself late at night, and on her way back she noticed some Redbrands on their way back from the Sleeping Giant Tavern. She flubbed her roll but I kinda gave it a pass. Instead I should have ratcheted up the tension by making her fail forward (i.e. failed stealth roll > "You step on a stick and snap it. One of the thugs heard and is coming to investigate."). If they had found and caught her, the group would learn about attacking to subdue, as well as the danger of being outnumbered. Then you can split the group and roleplay in a different room with the captive, and the rest of the group has to find out what happened (and forces them towards the manor). That's just the beginning, but I'm happy to go through the whole adventure with things you can tweak. As for things to watch in your downtime, I recommend Matt Colville's "Running the Game" series on youtube. There are over 90 videos, but they are gold. One of the best is called "Action Oriented Monsters" or something. Talks about how to make enemies, particularly boss enemies, memorable. I also recommend this: https://theangrygm.com/return-of-the-son-of-the-dd-boss-fight-now-in-5e/ That alone made the end game boss battle super memorable, and my group loved it. Trivia fucked around with this message at 20:38 on Jan 12, 2021 |
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Jan 12, 2021 10:25
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aldantefax posted:i'm tellin u it's al qadim Syrinxx posted:Not Dragonlance
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Jan 12, 2021 11:05
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scooby doo d&d time
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Jan 12, 2021 11:29
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A summary of an event in the session I ran tonight: Most of you are probably familiar with the d10,000 Libram of Random Magical Effects Sometimes when the Wild Magic Sorcerer in the party wants to use Tides of Chaos I'll reactivate it by asking for a d10,000 roll. Among other effects, once all of his clothes were turned into cheese after another casting of the spell that caused the initial roll (#3724). When this session's d10,000 roll was inflicted after a reroll of a low spell attack roll against the sole remaining combatant (the reroll also missed), the Druid was a cave bear with a pair of dire wolves from Conjure Animals. The Ranger had a goose bestial spirit from Summon Beast. The Cleric explicitly had his Spiritual Weapon in the form of a spider and also -- having taken the Ritual Caster feat -- had just sent his owl familiar to swoop in using its full movement to deliver Inflict Wounds as a killing blow. They were all in or nearly in melee combat, and the Sorcerer was riding one of the dire wolves. d10,000 result: 8336: All magical animals nearby become their non-magical equivalents gently caress Druid is reverted to human form because I didn't want to deal with "now you're just a perfectly mundane cave bear, make a new character". The two conjured dire wolves are now regular dire wolves. Owl familiar is now a regular owl. Spiritual Weapon spider is now a weirdass dangerous-looking spider. Magical angry goose is now a confused and angry regular goose. The Druid had Animal Friendship prepared and cast it at level two to target both of the dire wolves. 7 and 8 vs. DC 15. Turned into a dire wolf himself with his remaining wildshape (Moon Druid bonus action, love it) and successfully directed them to slaughter the spider. Ranger got a 23 on animal handling to calm the goose down, okay. Cleric gets a nat 20 on animal handling for the regular-rear end owl, which figures "fine, gently caress all this, that saddlebag looks like it's made for me" which was technically correct since the Cleric is a centaur and carries a saddlebag which was explicitly designed to emulate the kind of tree hole some owls like. great, now there are four animal companions to account for love it emergent gameplay
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Jan 12, 2021 11:43
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aldantefax posted:scooby doo d&d time
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Jan 12, 2021 12:16
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vlad3217 posted:I've used trello and similar for work, how are you using it for DM notes?  This is my overview board. PCs on the left and their labels tell me who has the spotlight (starts with green so Bubba's spotlight just wrapped up and we're on Anais'). Consequences is my notes of what the PCs have done and how that impacts the world. The rest is kinda overview notes and I could stand to be more organized. But my favorite list on that board is Reference where I have Don Jon, 5eTools (thanks again!), Kobold Club, a name generator, et al (recommendations welcome!). Clicking on any PC card gives you:  I have a brief description of their NPC involvements and any other note I feel is important there. The attachment leads to their own board - I have one board per PC. Comments right now just have their session 0 character description and stats plus answers to some fleshing-out questions I asked.  This is Bubba's board. Overview list is an elaboration of his card from the first board. I also went ahead and made a card for each category of thing he has:  So his two class abilities are shown on that card with attachments to the Barbarian Class list on the Ability and Items Description board. So I can click through those to those cards where I just went ahead and copy and pasted. This helps me keep track of abilities when there's rules questions - much faster than opening a book or even a new tab - and also keep track of abilities so I can reference them for designing encounters and make sure PCs get to use all their stuff in clever ways where able. Then the rest of his board is Quests specific to him. I throw some loose description of a potential quest on a card then I ask the player to choose from a list of some potential quests with a loose description. After they choose I get down into the nitty gritty of the quest and the card for that quest will have attachments to stat blocks, NPC descriptions, location descriptions - whatever's pertinent. So besides the Omniscience (Overview) Board and the 5 PC boards I have: Ability and Item Descriptions, NPCs and Groups, Stat Blocks, and Locations. If I weren't using the free version I'd make more boards cause some of them are heavy on lists and require more scrolling than I'd like but I'm working with what I have. What's really nice about all of this is the ability to attach cards and boards (but not lists, which is kind of annoying) to any card and it's not terribly time consuming to copy and paste descriptions as needed. I found its NOT a good way to take notes during the game so I keep a pencil and pad handy for jotting things down and then I put the notes where they matter later on. Obviously you could do this in any way that makes sense for your group. Probably most people won't have any use for 5 separate PC boards - my campaign is a bit wonky in that I give players a spotlight, they choose the quest from a list during their spotlight, they do the quest (not really, it's just theatre of the mind and it goes fast, usually 5-10 minutes before the session), then all their actions are retconned when the rest of the PCs join in on the fun. So for example one of my PCs chose Blacksmithing Field Trip (it's a schools campaign): I described their teacher, the journey, the collection of materials, and the return home. Then the PC did it all over again with the other PCs except this time a harpy attacked (and later blood hawks but we haven't gotten there yet). This is for Reasons, in that they're very special not-Heroes whose very existence makes the world more dangerous, complex, and weird. Perry Mason Jar fucked around with this message at 13:48 on Jan 12, 2021 |
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Jan 12, 2021 13:38
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aldantefax posted:scooby doo d&d time honestly? sounds like a fun time
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Jan 12, 2021 14:13
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thanks, i hate it but also it looks useful as hell so maybe i'll use it or Scrivener instead of 3+ browser windows of varying utility
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Jan 12, 2021 14:16
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