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15 minutes in Google Drawings + using Index Card RPG for image assets: "Your group has finally broken free of your Hell Prison and you've grabbed your stuff, and now it's time to make your daring escape. You need to handle the following tasks, and if you fail more than you succeed, then you must face the HELL GUARD. What do you do!?" "Talk about it as a team and each of you pick a skill and match it to a challenge. Get creative, and when we have everybody declared for skills, then we'll roll and see how the challenges go. You're on the clock here, so let's set a timer for 15 minutes."  (14 minutes and 59 seconds later): "Alright, looks like we're ready to go, let's take a look and see what's going on..."  edit: added helper text  "Who wants to resolve their challenge first?" aldantefax fucked around with this message at 07:24 on Jan 17, 2021 |
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Jan 16, 2021 22:07
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Of note in the above is that you can absolutely go into more detail on either the GM or the player side. How is Wizard Ace gonna know that the Crunching Bone Pit is magical (and thus try to do something to magically influence it) if you don't describe what the players come across with a suitable amount of magic, crunching, and bone???
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Jan 16, 2021 22:08
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KingKalamari posted:Honestly I wish more people understood this aspect of the game better. Like, in one of the games I'm in I'm playing as an Alchemist (3rd party class) with high INT, but I roleplay her as being kind of a weird ditz who always comes to the weirdest/stupidest possible conclusions about the world around her and doesn't pick up on very obvious details about the situation she's in. She has high INT because that's the "Be good at Alchemy" stat, and being good at alchemy is the important part of her character, how her INT score interacts with any other area within the game is immaterial to me. I always thought you could fix some of the problems with ability scores by just renaming them. Call them abstract game things like Precision or Magic or whatever. DTAS is even better, of course, but this requires zero effort.
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Jan 16, 2021 22:20
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KingKalamari posted:Honestly I wish more people understood this aspect of the game better. Like, in one of the games I'm in I'm playing as an Alchemist (3rd party class) with high INT, but I roleplay her as being kind of a weird ditz who always comes to the weirdest/stupidest possible conclusions about the world around her and doesn't pick up on very obvious details about the situation she's in. She has high INT because that's the "Be good at Alchemy" stat, and being good at alchemy is the important part of her character, how her INT score interacts with any other area within the game is immaterial to me. At what point do you just ditch stats altogether and give each class the max bonus (based on level) in Thing That Matters? It's odd to say that the stats don't matter to the fiction, when skills are based on them. The mechanics inform the fiction. The book literally says "if you have high Int, you are very smart. If you have high Str, you are very strong". "I have 20 Str, but I roleplay as a weak nerd. No, no...just ignore that I'm exceptionally good at everything strength related despite being a weak nerd." "I'm a doofy ditz, but also very good at everything related to Int." At some point, you have to explain via the fiction why you're good or bad at all the things you roleplay the opposite of. It seems like people just want to be able to roleplay whatever without any of the actual mechanical negatives of the reality of what they're roleplaying. I'm not saying that's bad...but I think the game needs to decide whether it wants to be a game where "high Int=Smart", or the type of game where stats are more abstract and class related like Megane suggested.
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Jan 17, 2021 03:59
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change my name posted:Has anyone played a rune knight, they seem fun I'm playing a Minotaur Rune Knight right now. I'm having fun with it. The different runes you put into your armor/weapons are pretty useful. I'm rolling with the Cloud Giant one, and the Fire Giant one. My group just finished up Lost Mines and we headed straight into Curse of Strahd. It's just really cool to go Giant Sized and smash stuff, I mean it's a fighter, so I'm sure I'll get out classed sooner or later, but level 7 I get more runes. "I mean. Strahd may be powerful and all that, but.. I get like, really, really big."
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Jan 17, 2021 04:17
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Devorum posted:At what point do you just ditch stats altogether and give each class the max bonus (based on level) in Thing That Matters? You don't, though. That's the point. You can roll a human character with 18str who's also 4'10" 110lbs. Or you can choose that same combination. The rules never say you have to justify it. At no point do the game mechanics care about the mismatch. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 04:52 on Jan 17, 2021 |
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Jan 17, 2021 04:48
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kingcom posted:Firstly, wtf is this poo poo, clearly you've posted on a forum before but this is real 2000's era breaking up each sentence into a different quote so you can cut all context out of what was being said and you fire off this little cutesy come backs that are incomprehensible to read back and follow. gently caress off of with that poo poo. If you want to respond to me, do it. It's real embarrassing to trying and imply the person calling you out has some emotional projection going on. Take some time off to reconsider being this aggro about stuff, even when it's as theoretically vitally important as teaching new players to improv or not, more gooder. Secondarily, and in response to the actually quoted bit above: No, actually, it is allowed to split quotes and reply to each bit, if someone wants to reply that way. Lastly, Trivia posted:It as a simple introductory SC; get from points A to B. Most of the player's weren't sure how to do an SC so the DM was pretty forgiving. In my opinion, and in support of aldantefax's helpful visual aides which are pointing you in the right direction: This bolded word was the source of your problem. An introductory skill challenge could in theory be "simple," but lacking any detail about why there's a challenge at all meant this was instead vague, and actually a "simple" skill challenge isn't a skill challenge, it's... maybe rolling on one skill once, in response to a simple obstacle or difficulty or immediately accessible goal. Because what you actually described was a vague skill challenge, the players had to invent obstacles that the DM failed to provide. "Distance" isn't an obstacle requiring any skill rolls, on its own, unless the players are literally immobilized. The feedback I'd give to the DM would be: give the players more meat to chew on, in terms of both detail and obstacle. I doubt you'd have had a problem if the DM had described your crew as needing to escape at speed through a downpour in a dense tropical jungle while being stalked by unseen ghost jaguars and needing to protect the Flame of Hope from being extinguished, and a player improvised the existence of some vines.
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Jan 17, 2021 04:54
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Devorum posted:"I have 20 Str, but I roleplay as a weak nerd. No, no...just ignore that I'm exceptionally good at everything strength related despite being a weak nerd."
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Jan 17, 2021 05:04
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Yeah it can be fun to just imagine stats as the levers by which you interact with the world, and extrapolate that those levers aren't necessarily inextricable from your person. Maybe your strength is just unerring usage of simple machines, or your intelligence is literally just that you carry a bunch of books around, etc. Strength doesn't actually do all that much in the rules, it sets a few prerequisites and adds to damage and some skill rolls. Those things could be easily performed by something other than muscles specifically.
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Jan 17, 2021 05:55
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There's something to be said about the desire to play a character however you want, but when you mostly ignore things that differentiate the character from others, it seems like in 5e the 'true' differentiators are aesthetic and not mechanically driven. The mechanics only serve binary outcomes, which also means you get characters that require other factors to define them than purely what the game engine provides. 5e is not great about giving narrative direction by its mechanics. It has minimal to no impact for leveraging character bonds or flaws or backgrounds unless they are practically useful - most to all social things are hand waved or forgotten. The spells and abilities are only useful to describe how a character fights and what their fight effects are. There is no mechanical upside or downside for following a holy code of conduct, taking a vow to do something, etc. There's also minimal incentive to tie stats to narrative. Stats are purely for conflict task resolution no matter how you think about it and it's very binary: either they give you a higher chance of success, or failure, thanks to there being a binary pass/fail for skills. The way that I handle stats and skills is that I use stats and skill pairs that aren't always the standard interpretation, and provide nonbinary skill check results (success/failure margins). I also allow/forbid rolls based on what is reasonable from a character's background and proficiencies - someone who is asking for specialized knowledge but has no proficiency in it will need to find someone who does, or find a different way to get their answer. I think re-interpreting what your stats or bonuses are and what that actually means is interesting but it does mean you have to take some liberty with the system that your group may or may not be comfortable with. As with pretty much everything else, talking it out is highly recommended for the type of experience you want to have with your group. When I run 5e I am pretty clear about how I handle skill task resolution, and I have and will continue to shut down rolls that are made with an expectation the result will happen when there is no context for the roll and it was made just because someone wanted to dogpile on something they have a big number in. That does happen enough times to validate someone's picks, but it should not happen on every roll. I've been thinking about this in greater detail and part of what gives me a minor amount of grief in otherwise smooth gameplay sailing is the orison/cantrip "Guidance". It's a spell that is inexhaustible and requires some artifice to mitigate (it's concentration based, so you'd need to figure out a way to disrupt the concentration or give the player a choice to use that versus something else), and if you don't plan for it then it causes things to get pear shaped. When you combine Guidance with players who feel a need to make every roll before the narrative is established, it can get tiresome very quickly. Not only does the spell provide a snowball effect and de-specializes Bardic Inspiration, but the fact that it is there has caused people to only not use it because of only a very few reasons: they forgot, they are doing something else, or they're in combat. Every other time, Guidance is there. These kinds of things to pad skill task resolution numbers means the core engine of 5e implicitly expects you to have this as part of your spell repetoire as a cleric, and it influences behavior in what I feel is an unfun way. I could go even further at length about this but the short of it is that if you change how stats work structurally in 5e and what that means for your character in terms of intrinsic narrative qualities, you get incongruency in other cascading systems unless you start examining those other ones. When you start picking at the other systems, things start piling up for headaches. I imagine that if I was going to get rid of stats and everything that cascades from them, I would start shopping for another game engine. I like the idea of relabeling stats to be more descriptive but it all just depends on the play group and how comfortable they are with whatever curation you want to do.
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Jan 17, 2021 06:29
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aldantefax posted:15 minutes in Google Drawings + using Index Card RPG for image assets: So, to build on this, it's extremely fuckin' stupid as a GM to just say to your players "tell me something you see", "tell me something that gets in the way", because it's an rear end in a top hat one-two combo of overtly putting somebody on the spot with zero guidance and covertly letting them know that, whatever they come up with, you're never actually going to care about it because you gave them no guidance so you're not expecting to actually use it. So give them the context you're expecting so they can react to it: "This place used to be a dining hall. How do you know?" "The swamp is home to dangerous predators. What do you find that tells you that?" If you want to have a more open-ended skill challenge, make up some prompt cards for things that would fit (a blockade, a natural disaster, menacing predators, dangerous prey, threatening people, potentially helpful people) and give people a choice from three.
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Jan 17, 2021 08:40
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aldantefax posted:I've been thinking about this in greater detail and part of what gives me a minor amount of grief in otherwise smooth gameplay sailing is the orison/cantrip "Guidance". It's a spell that is inexhaustible and requires some artifice to mitigate (it's concentration based, so you'd need to figure out a way to disrupt the concentration or give the player a choice to use that versus something else), and if you don't plan for it then it causes things to get pear shaped. When you combine Guidance with players who feel a need to make every roll before the narrative is established, it can get tiresome very quickly. I had some players that were kind of abusing it for a while. Then I started laying more on the fact it has verbal and somatic components. You can't do it sneakily, and they can't do it with the, "I cast guidance!" post roll. If they talk about doing it before hand, and planned it, sure, it's cut down on the abuse quite a bit, while having it still be useful. Most people, in most narratives I've played, don't like/trust people casting spells they can't see the result of, all willy nilly. Even people who are spellcasters, who may know the spell, may be put on guard by someone willing to cast blatant spells around them, which makes the concentration come into play more often.
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Jan 17, 2021 09:11
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Glazius posted:So, to build on this, it's extremely fuckin' stupid as a GM to just say to your players "tell me something you see", "tell me something that gets in the way", because it's an rear end in a top hat one-two combo of overtly putting somebody on the spot with zero guidance and covertly letting them know that, whatever they come up with, you're never actually going to care about it because you gave them no guidance so you're not expecting to actually use it. I also like the way AGON handles skill challenges. It is very extra but also super badass because it mechanically demands you announce your presence against the challenge and it's told like an epic: "You face the Lake of A Thousand Sorrows! None have ventured in and returned alive, but someone must go to retrieve the Sword of Star-Elders! Which of you will take on this task?" "It is I, Wendel the Crafty, who shall brave the Lake!" "Very well! Your bravery is rewarded, now tell us how you triumph -- or die!"
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Jan 17, 2021 09:20
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PicklePants posted:I had some players that were kind of abusing it for a while. Then I started laying more on the fact it has verbal and somatic components. You can't do it sneakily, and they can't do it with the, "I cast guidance!" post roll. If they talk about doing it before hand, and planned it, sure, it's cut down on the abuse quite a bit, while having it still be useful. Most people, in most narratives I've played, don't like/trust people casting spells they can't see the result of, all willy nilly. Even people who are spellcasters, who may know the spell, may be put on guard by someone willing to cast blatant spells around them, which makes the concentration come into play more often. That's definitely the 'artifice' part of it. It doesn't remove it, but it does mitigate it. It still is just kind of a thing that hangs out and if you don't use it every chance you get from a certain player perspective it means you're not D&Ding hard enough. That's a problematic approach in its own way, but relatable. Having it mechanically at all just feels incongruous. There's no risk to using it as written, and it takes the edge off of the stakes because it fudges with how likely someone is to succeed by a minimum of a plus one to plus four, which is kind of a big deal for bonuses. Or...is it? I generally find magic, particularly divine magic, that is used frequently and often to the point of abuse something that the game engine allows and think about ways to make this more of a thing that is special. By its definition, though, it isn't special because you can use it at any point in time. Social-wise, sure, the limitation is there, but in a dungeon, or on the road where nobody else is around? As soon as a task pops up which requires a roll, you better believe someone in the party is going to say "oh, please use Guidance", "don't forget to use Guidance, since we're not anywhere can see us", "use that Guidance spell or else I will poison your wine, churl!" and so on. I just think the spell is boring and encourages a very specific kind of thinking and I don't like it. I'd rather it have a trade off or limitation from the mechanics, but since it won't happen, I mostly just tolerate it at my tables and as long as the players are having fun, I just get to throw another acid spitting velociraptor with a top hat into a fight or something. Consider this: if skill tests are only done during stress and tense moments but there is no specific danger of a fight, would the situation not call for logically making it easier? If only there was an inexhaustible and easy resource that can just remove that stress and tension by making the skill test easier...Perhaps you see the beef I have with the spell now.
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Jan 17, 2021 09:29
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Glazius posted:So, to build on this, it's extremely fuckin' stupid as a GM to just say to your players "tell me something you see", "tell me something that gets in the way", because it's an rear end in a top hat one-two combo of overtly putting somebody on the spot with zero guidance and covertly letting them know that, whatever they come up with, you're never actually going to care about it because you gave them no guidance so you're not expecting to actually use it. If taken very literally, I do agree that just shoving the burden of narrative improv to someone not expecting it is in poor form, but if your group is good and you're willing to be a little more open with how you shape it, you can get some wonderful results. The two missing parts here are context and trust. If you aren't giving your players enough context as a GM and they don't trust that you will leverage their narrative points when you try to engage on that front, then you have a bit of a slog to go through for that bit there. I think you could spin this the opposite way as well if you are very chill with your players from the GM standpoint. However, it all comes back to context of why you're asking for these things in the first place. Maybe you are stuck as a GM and you need some inspirations. Your players may not be used to this kind of narrative control, so you could softball it. "Y'all, I am running into a bit of a mental block here so I need to poll the table for some inspiration. Reviewing what we have, you're traveling en route to your destination, but I'm struggling to describe things around you for the moment. Could you tell me a few things about your journey? What do you see along the way? What challenges would you like to face? What would you rather avoid?"
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Jan 17, 2021 09:47
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Elector_Nerdlingen posted:You don't, though. That's the point. I'm not saying the mechanics care, I'm saying the fiction does. How is your 110 lb person able to throw a horse? Regardless of how you roleplay, that is a thing you can mechanically do...and if not explained in the fiction, it's a real head scratcher. Yes, you can say you do it through application of mathematic principles...and that absolutely works! But it's also explaining it in the fiction. I also think that once you get to the level of "Strength doesn't actually mean Strength" stat abstraction, you might as well not even have traditional stats. Just give everyone a scaling bonus based on the class chosen.
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Jan 17, 2021 10:56
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Devorum posted:I'm not saying the mechanics care, I'm saying the fiction does. How is your 110 lb person able to throw a horse? Regardless of how you roleplay, that is a thing you can mechanically do...and if not explained in the fiction, it's a real head scratcher. It doesn't matter. D&D isn't a fiction-first game. The fiction produced by the mechanics that comprise the game of Dungeons & Dragons is that a 110lb person can throw a horse. This is my point. I opened this discussion with the statement that, being a big fan of fiction-first games, I would generally regard this situation as bad. But in the specific case of a new player thinking that they "have to" make their character not- or less-effective because of "roleplaying reasons", it works out well, because they don't have to do that. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 11:21 on Jan 17, 2021 |
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Jan 17, 2021 11:18
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Devorum posted:I'm not saying the mechanics care, I'm saying the fiction does. How is your 110 lb person able to throw a horse? Regardless of how you roleplay, that is a thing you can mechanically do...and if not explained in the fiction, it's a real head scratcher. If the GM presents a DC15 check and I roll 19, what excuse do I give for my int 8 character with (for some reason) training in arcana succeeding? If instead I have int 18, what mechanical or system aspect prevents me from using the exact same excuse? To give a more elaborate and practical example, let's say I have a Ranger Don, level 5, wis 18, training or expertise in all the wis skills, and I insist my character is an oblivious dullard who got Rangering drilled into him by Brian Greenstrider at knifepoint. Every time I succeed? "Brian Greenstrider said, always check the curtains." "Brian Greenstrider said, apply puceroot herbs to green wounds and greenroot herbs to puce wounds." "Brian Greenstrider said, there are 20 first magnitude stars and their arrangements are thus: Goldbright, the gold star. From first solstice it appears in the south sky..." Every time I fail? "I dunno, I was thinking about cakes".
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Jan 17, 2021 13:04
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aldantefax posted:If taken very literally, I do agree that just shoving the burden of narrative improv to someone not expecting it is in poor form, but if your group is good and you're willing to be a little more open with how you shape it, you can get some wonderful results. Yeah a big part of a narrative improv skill challenge is knowing how open or closed a prompt your group is comfortable with. I like to try new groups on the 'you need to get past a pair of guards' as a good template where I just need to give context for the scene, environment and a specific goal and use a bit of guess work to see how much more details they feel comfortable intuiting or just adding themselves. The short description could be where they are and what they are doing and what they look like and they working with each player to let me know what skill helps them take out or get past these guards. Some are good at some general safe ideas like 'I sneak past' so they roll stealth and then its good to springboard off that roll depending on the result, such as a failing letting the GM say 'well edged close to but they whirl around at the last moment as a coin slips out of their hand but good thing someone else handed you just the right tool for this moment', and helping everyone else with ideas for what would be the perfect thing they could have or made for this. Like a Alchemist toolkit being used to make something that knocks them or someone else pickpocketed their badge of office before the PC who tried to stealth etc. I also think its important to know they are going to overcome the obstacle regardless of success or failure, it will just cause some roll on consequences after this scene, I've found thats pretty handy to help players understand what the point of the exercise is on a gameplay level.
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Jan 17, 2021 13:09
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Did the Murder on the Eberron Express one-shot yesterday and it was a lot of fun. Out of combat dice rolls being hidden from everyone but the DM made it interesting because we could - and did - try to hide things from the other players. I stated to the other players that I was searching a chest for documents or correspondence that could shed more light on who the possible killer was, but I also sent a whisper to the DM that I was really looking for the letter the dead guy had been using to blackmail me, so my hidden roll included not just an investigation but a sleight of hand check *if* the letter was there. Nobody trusted each other and there were a lot of great reactions as backstories, bonds and possible motives were revealed. As time was running short tension was rising and we mistakenly jumped on one PCs shifty actions leading to a PVP encounter where a badger familiar was used as an improvised throwing weapon and a PC died. Much damage was done to the dining car of the train, as well, to my character's dismay. Of course the dead PC turned out to be innocent and three remaining players almost wiped when the real killer faced off against us in a tight space using spiritual guardians  We did catch the perp in the end, but at great cost and our bumbling actions almost landed us all in jail. I was let go from my job as conductor and have now taken to a life at seas.
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Jan 17, 2021 13:34
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Splicer posted:Strength is the only stat which has this kind of guaranteed success/failure table, and even then only for lifting stuff. Outside combat there's no mechanical difference between an int 8 person who rolled a 15 and an int 20 person who rolled a 9. I get that, but I still think it's counterintuitive to the description of the stats and expectation created by their names. Maybe it also boils down to a fundamental problem with binary success/failure using a die with flat probability, and basing classes around a single stat. There's no reason to ever not take the highest number possible in the prime stat...and that tends to limit RP options if the stats are tied too strongly to the fiction. I've already said way more words than I intended. I don't actually care this much, I promise. I've just never encountered this "stats don't actually represent what they're named for" concept in D&D and it's hard to wrap my head around why the game keeps the stat names if they've become that abstract. EDIT: But, then, I remember that the grogs don't deal with change well. Devorum fucked around with this message at 13:48 on Jan 17, 2021 |
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Jan 17, 2021 13:46
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Devorum posted:I get that, but I still think it's counterintuitive to the description of the stats and expectation created by their names. You should type more words you care about, we're a pro-caring-about-games subforum. e: Rereading this sounds vaguely patronising and I'm not sure why? I'm trying to say that's genuinely incredibly insightful analysis from a standing start. Splicer fucked around with this message at 14:53 on Jan 17, 2021 |
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Jan 17, 2021 14:49
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Splicer posted:I am genuinely, unironically impressed with how quickly you went from "I never thought about this" to hitting the nail home in one swing. Ability scores are kind of vestigial at this point and only really serve as one more limitation on what OOC skills you can be good at. Everything else they do could be taken up by classes, archetypes, backgrounds, or skills. Nah, it doesn't sound patronizing. I've thought about the problem with D&D's core mechanic a lot over the past thirty years or so, moreso with 3.x and beyond, but never really took it to the "stats don't matter to fiction" end point. Though I like the idea the more I think about it. I learned to play with a "stats are your character" philosophy way back in the day, and I guess it's just carried forward on inertia.
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Jan 17, 2021 15:05
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Devorum posted:Nah, it doesn't sound patronizing. I've thought about the problem with D&D's core mechanic a lot over the past thirty years or so, moreso with 3.x and beyond, but never really took it to the "stats don't matter to fiction" end point. Though I like the idea the more I think about it. I learned to play with a "stats are your character" philosophy way back in the day, and I guess it's just carried forward on inertia.
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Jan 17, 2021 15:11
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I disagree with the notion that the characters will succeed the challenge but they can certainly fail forward or go in a different direction based on the outcome. Skill challenges can be highly curated and choreographed with a specific outcome based on what combinations of challenges succeeded and failed or what skills are used with specific outcomes but as mentioned the consequences are what make it interesting because the narrative ought not be a foregone conclusion and you play to find out what happens. Normalizing danger such that players expect it and they are excited about succeeding because they know they can fail, rules aside, means that when you put a skill challenge in, it is truly a test of their ability to think through situations as a team and prioritize their strengths. But, it must happen after context is established whether or not it was given to them or asked of them. Summary of that conversation: - context - trust - tasks - delegation - nonbinary resolution - outcome that is dependent on the fiction from the challenges
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Jan 17, 2021 17:28
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Disargeria posted:Do you have a link to your alchemist? because the Tasha's version is very un alchemist like. I'm using this one from Mage Hand Press. I'd say it's pretty good and gets the thematic aspects down quite well, though the class is not a powerhouse from a mechanics standpoint.
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Jan 17, 2021 18:52
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change my name posted:Has anyone played a rune knight, they seem fun I've been running a Rune Knight for a while, I'm having a blast. It's kinda got the problem where there are like 6 runes and you have half of them by 7th so there's not much new stuff as you level, but it's really cool having relevant a relevant standard action, bonus action, and reaction every round. Storm rune also will make you beloved by casters, forcing disadvantage as a reaction is extremely spicy
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Jan 17, 2021 20:33
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PicklePants posted:I had some players that were kind of abusing it for a while. Then I started laying more on the fact it has verbal and somatic components. You can't do it sneakily, and they can't do it with the, "I cast guidance!" post roll. Guidance sort of seems like a crap version of the help action though, and seems like there are a pretty small number of cases where guidance would be better?
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Jan 18, 2021 04:03
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Advantage is worth +5, so at best it's slightly worse. But it stacks with advantage, so it's great.
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Jan 18, 2021 04:08
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Bobby Deluxe posted:It also has a touch range, so that's another one to limit it's usage. also it has awkward interactions with speech, as it takes 6 seconds to do(cleric starts chanting magic poo poo for 6 seconds and touches their friend who suddenly starts selling snake oil. seems legit), and it breaks concentration. it isnt that game breaking as a spell, but if you can get your setup where you can get the help action and a cleric using guidance advantage + 1d4 makes for comfy skill checks where you still somehow roll 3 dice below 5 and only get a 1 on the 1d4
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Jan 18, 2021 04:34
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Played for the first time in over a year. First time over discord as well. Felt good to actually play again. Apparently it went over well because a player typed up a summary of our session in the style of his character’s journal. I feel accomplished.
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Jan 18, 2021 04:39
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Oops, the blood hunter in our Frostmaiden game died to that stupid blind white dragon, it one-hit him with a frost breath cone
change my name fucked around with this message at 05:11 on Jan 18, 2021 |
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Jan 18, 2021 04:43
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aldantefax posted:I disagree with the notion that the characters will succeed the challenge but they can certainly fail forward or go in a different direction based on the outcome. Skill challenges can be highly curated and choreographed with a specific outcome based on what combinations of challenges succeeded and failed or what skills are used with specific outcomes but as mentioned the consequences are what make it interesting because the narrative ought not be a foregone conclusion and you play to find out what happens. So I didn't say they will they succeed the challenge, I said they overcome it, that is to say that the obstacle is going to be removed one way or another and the players can push forward. They will fail forward if you will,. Mechanically succeeding or failing the skill challenge is more about working out what the consequences of the obstacle being removed is. Be it something as simple as removing two more threats in the next encounter, its something tangible that matters after the fact. pog boyfriend posted:also it has awkward interactions with speech, as it takes 6 seconds to do(cleric starts chanting magic poo poo for 6 seconds and touches their friend who suddenly starts selling snake oil. seems legit), and it breaks concentration. it isnt that game breaking as a spell, but if you can get your setup where you can get the help action and a cleric using guidance advantage + 1d4 makes for comfy skill checks where you still somehow roll 3 dice below 5 and only get a 1 on the 1d4 Honestly just let guidance happen for the most part, its of those abstract mechanics things that only provides a small bonus for certain things that only really works outside of combat (a design space where you can't do much for the most part). It's also a weird thing in fiction to kind of explain because its a cleric praying out loud for an orator to make a more compelling and reasonable argument. In some ways you can explain it as manipulative magic but on the other had it is as much a moment of Odysseus praying to Athena for the wise words he needs to convince someone to not do something foolish or come up with a good plan. Also it's on a skill check, something that often has really minimum consequences for succeeding give how many you often need to roll. kingcom fucked around with this message at 05:50 on Jan 18, 2021 |
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Jan 18, 2021 05:44
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kingcom posted:So I didn't say they will they succeed the challenge, I said they overcome it, that is to say that the obstacle is going to be removed one way or another and the players can push forward. They will fail forward if you will,. Mechanically succeeding or failing the skill challenge is more about working out what the consequences of the obstacle being removed is. Be it something as simple as removing two more threats in the next encounter, its something tangible that matters after the fact. I figured that was the original intent but for those tracking that conversation thread, I figured it was worth re-clarifying. Good to know we agree!
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Jan 18, 2021 05:48
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kingcom posted:Also it's on a skill check, something that often has really minimum consequences for succeeding give how many you often need to roll. when you run this game you should only call for skill checks if the possibility of failure increases the drama, and when it makes sense in fiction for it to be possible. to that end, there should not often be that many skill checks if you cut superfluous and frivolous ones out. it is important to do so also otherwise you have players failing basic things they are supposedly experts at, which can work for some tables, but often does not
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Jan 18, 2021 13:16
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Skills are the weakest part of D&D. I think most of it has to do with the D20 system itself. I never felt like skill checks were a problem in Edge of the Empire for example.
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Jan 18, 2021 16:43
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Spoilers below for the beginning of Lost Mines of Phandelver. I finished my first D&D Session ever last night. I was the Dungeon Master for a group of 5 brand new players and we did the beginning of Lost Mines of Phandelver. I definitely used the advice given in this thread and really fleshed out the backstory for how each character came to be hired by Gundren to escort the wagon of supplies. I used parts of the background details that each player came up with for their character and gave them their own hook into the story with their own motivations for helping Gundren. I actually had two of the players linked to Sildar instead of Gundren directly for some additional flavor. I think this definitely gave each player a sense of their own motivations and helped them get into character from the start. Roll20 ended up working great for us, although I did spend quite a bit of time putting the maps together. This really helped give everyone a sense of where they were in the world and was especially helpful for the Goblin Ambush combat sequence. I was pretty impressed when my wife cast Sleep on two of the goblins and knocked them out of the fight completely and doubly impressed when our Half-Orc Barbarian immediately told the party to keep one alive so they could question him after the fight. I let him roll an Intimidation check using his Strength to threaten the goblin after the fight which I think he appreciated. The rogue ended up one-shotting one of the goblins with a critical hit on her rapier which I had fun describing in detail. The monk ended up hitting one of the sleeping goblins with his club and I decided to give him advantage on the attack even though the spell description didn't say that. I just felt that hitting a sleeping goblin should be a bit easier than one that wasn't sleeping but I'm thinking that might have been a tad overpowered. After the fight, they successfully pumped the goblin for information and one of our players definitely asked a few questions related to the hook I had provided for them which was really cool to see. Overall, it seemed like everyone had a blast which makes all the time I spent prepping well worth it. My wife couldn't stop talking about the session after we ended which I took as a good sign. Thanks to everyone who provided such great advice on how to make this adventure more engaging, it really paid off.
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Jan 18, 2021 18:01
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It's always nice when an initial session goes off that well. Sleep makes the targets unconscious, which among other things gives advantage on attacks within 5 ft and makes all hits automatically crit. Welcome to save or suck.
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Jan 18, 2021 18:14
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Hackan Slash posted:It's always nice when an initial session goes off that well. Oh poo poo that’s good to know! I kinda forgot to read up on the different status effects so that is a good reminder to do so. The monk ended up rolling max damage which killed the goblin in one hit but I’ll definitely remember it’s an automatic crit. Do enemies get a saving throw on Sleep? I didn’t see that mentioned in the spell description.
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Jan 18, 2021 18:19
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Sleep is a fairly uniquely powerful spell that doesn't have saves. It's based on HP. It's great against things like goblins because it can really tilt fights in your favor against large numbers of low HP targets by removing a few for a short time. It sounds like your session went really well and your players seem quite capable and smart already. How many players total? You may find yourself needing to add an extra goblin here and there.
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Jan 18, 2021 18:24
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