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Firstborn posted:Yeah, that'd be something, though. I'm trying to think of any game that tries to model combat similar to d&d also having those things be completely divorced from one another. OSR games will just let you roll a d6 or two for a lot of skill systems. Splicer posted:No, the opposite! In 5E you have your class, optional class features, various archetypes, your background, and your species. What numbers do you really need that couldn't just be derived from combining them instead of fiddling around with ability scores? Exactly. While we’re talking about skills, a single d20 roll is a terrible mechanic from a probability distribution angle. That’s one reason so many systems use groups of d6s instead. Maybe the main reason is d6s are more common, but the probability distribution coincidentally works much better!
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Feb 5, 2021 19:25
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As a wizard, do I need to be holding a weapon? Can I just hold a shield and have a free hand to do the somatic part of spells? I'm asking because I'm going to be getting the first feat choice soon and I'm debating on if I want to go with Warcaster or Lucky. I already have CON save proficiency (and medium armor/shields) for starting as an artificer at L1. And because I'm a warforged, my AC is 18 while wearing a chain shirt and holding a shield.
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Feb 5, 2021 19:29
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ihatepants posted:As a wizard, do I need to be holding a weapon? Can I just hold a shield and have a free hand to do the somatic part of spells? Nobody is required to hold a weapon. My group's wizard punched out a dragon because he had no weapon in hand and the dragon tried to flee with 1HP left. As I understand it, so long as you have proficiency with your armor/shield, and you have a hand free for somatic components (which can be the same hand you use for material components), you can cast spells.
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Feb 5, 2021 19:48
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ihatepants posted:As a wizard, do I need to be holding a weapon? Can I just hold a shield and have a free hand to do the somatic part of spells? You can either wear a component pouch or carry an arcane focus in one hand. There's not much of a difference, and either one would allow you to carry a shield and perform any somatic gestures required. Oh also you can use a Staff as an arcane focus, which has the statistics of a Quarterstaff, so if you want a weapon and a shield and spellcasting then that's how you do it. Kaal fucked around with this message at 20:56 on Feb 5, 2021 |
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Feb 5, 2021 19:49
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:Nobody is required to hold a weapon. My group's wizard punched out a dragon because he had no weapon in hand and the dragon tried to flee with 1HP left. your wizard is now the immortal iron fist
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Feb 5, 2021 20:01
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Ignite Memories posted:your wizard is now the immortal iron fist My lizardfolk character made him a trophy necklace from the dragon's fangs and stinger (it was merely a Large dragon), so he's now walking around like some kind of fantasy Flavor Flav.
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Feb 5, 2021 20:09
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Splicer posted:Step one is acknowledging they exist. You don't fix something you don't think is a problem. You think there's a problem, great, welcome to team Fighters Suck poo poo and How To Fix Them. Your first mission: Read all those words from Bobby Deluxe saying "no fighters are fine actually it's those filthy minmaxers who are the problem" because that attitude is the actual reason we're still talking about it, and tbh, the reason why fighters such poo poo in the first place. Seriously though, I was replying to someone who implied that the game had two parts (combat and non-combat), and that fighters had nothing to do out of combat. I'm not sure I 100% agree with the first part, and even if it is true I offered multiple examples of why the second part is wrong. I also did post that the class has problems, the problems just don't seem to make 90% of players seethe with rage. But maybe you didn't hear that bit with all the fighter butts in my mouth.
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Feb 5, 2021 23:45
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Everyone should get some sort of magic in D&D, even if that magic isn't spells but is FIGHTING MAN BIG STRONG SHOUTS or whatever. Maybe each class should just get a list of abilities that they can use once a day, once an encounter and some smaller stuff they can use at will, like wizards can do some spells and strong men can lift things good but also make it so wizards can't lift things good maybe? Just spitballing here
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Feb 6, 2021 00:00
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It would be at least interesting to decouple some of the more universally useful checks like Perception and Investigation into something more universal, since it seems like 75% of the checks I'm having my players make come down to "do you hear that" or "how well do you search this room" and then expand the rest of the checks with STR and CON and maybe even a couple DEX or make some checks an either/or with one, like the variant rule to use STR for Intimidation checks or like instead of making a Perception check on watches, high CON characters can make a CON check to not fall asleep, with the same effect, etc. Granted, some of that is on me as a DM for not coming up with more varied situations for checks, but my players are definitely conditioned to ask for those checks too, and were long before they started playing with me.
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Feb 6, 2021 00:46
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I've taken to letting my players make common checks with whatever stat they want just to vary it up a bit, and making them come up with explanations how they search a room for treasure using Persuasion or navigate a jungle with Insight is a load of fun, and it lets characters use their high stats more and gives the players a little bit more narrative choice on how they interact with the world. It's working well so far but it's also a very casual rules loose game so idk how well it'd work with a more rules focussed group.
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Feb 6, 2021 01:21
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"I would like to roll to persuade the room to reveal its tricksy secrets"
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Feb 6, 2021 01:36
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Disargeria posted:"I would like to roll to persuade the room to reveal its tricksy secrets" The room was a mimic.
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Feb 6, 2021 02:06
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Okay, so the Tomb of Annihilation campaign I've been talking about for ages is winding down and I figured now would be a good time to take a look back on the module and what my thoughts are. Overall I've enjoyed running it and think it has some really interesting encounters and adventure sites for players and GM to tinker with, but does suffer from some fairly noticeable design problems (Spoilered for those who haven't played the module yet): -While it's clear Wizards was trying very hard to avoid the more obvious unfortunate implications inherent to an African-based fantasy setting that has historically been developed mostly by a bunch of white guys, I think they still manage to make some major missteps in how they portray the society of Chult. For all the space the book devotes to talking about the resilience of Chultan society in recovering from disaster and reinventing itself, The existence of Port Nyanzeru is still entirely the result of outside forces intervening and Chultan society is still utterly beholden to White analog societies within the setting. Essentially it feels like the impression is that the African analog nation would have been hosed without the outside intervention of White analogue nations. -This also gets into the problem with the module being written entirely from the assumption that the party is going to be a group of adventurers from generic fantasy not-Europe coming into the exotic world of fantasy not-Africa. It leads to the setting being presented in an overly exotified manner and doesn't take into account the concept that a player might be interested in portraying a character who's actually from this society rather than the generic Sword Coast bullshit we've seen in every other module up until this one. -The actual hook to get the party involved in the adventure is terrible. The party really has no narrative reason to give a poo poo about Syndra Silvane suffering from the Death Curse as written, and the fact that she just sort of teleports the entire party to Chult in the snap of a finger ends up potentially depriving the party of some really cool set dressing with the Dragon Turtle that guards the harbor. -In general, the module suffers from a lot of common Forgotten Realms problems. One of which is, given the fact that the whole Death Curse is something affecting the entire setting, this really raises the question of why the dozens of other high-level, good aligned NPCs that are established in Forgotten Realms. -Speaking of: Hey, Forgotten Realms, please stop putting the same five factions in every goddamned corner of your setting. Surely we can have a major crime syndicate that isn't involved with the Zhentarim, or a bunch of knights who aren't members of the Order of the Gauntlet. It makes the setting as a whole feel really small and homogenous to have the same organizations loving around every nook and cranny. -Given how exploration-heavy this module is, it's really weird that it's one of the only ones with a hard-coded time limit to it. That very unforgiving ticking clock seems like it's just going to discourage the PCs from exploring and they're going to miss out on a bunch of the cool, optional adventure sites in the book as a result. -While the module gives a lot of information regarding Port Nyanzeru, it doesn't really give the DM much in the way of an actual, introductory adventure to get the party into the swing of the setting. As written, the party is likely going to spend maybe 20 minutes of in-game time hanging around Port Nyanzeru to get supplies, and are then never going to visit this place again. -The fact that Port Nyanzeru is the ONLY major settlement in all of Chult ends up being a really stupid idea, given the plot of the module. Beyond a certain point, it's going to be a really stupid idea for teh party to ever waste time going back there to resupply or sell their poo poo. Couple that with the fact that this module falls into the usual 5e trap of constantly giving out gold as a reward over magic items and you end up with the party hauling around 10s of thousands of GP they've dug out of ruins with no way to spend it. I had to throw a random, travelling magic item merchant into Omu just to give the party somethign to do with all the useless treasure they'd acquired. -So, while the game seems to be mindful about not feeding into using the usual stereotypes of "African Savages" in its portrayal of the people of Chult, it seems to have no such compunction about using nonhuman enemies to feed into those stereotypes. Nanny Pu'pu, the Green Hag in the ruins of Mbala is terrible in so many respects. I ended up renaming and heavily revising her for my own game and only shared her original name and description with the party after they finished the encounter to share the pains I had to deal with. -The way the wilderness encounters and travel pace are set up, the party is going to be spending a lot of time wandering through the wilderness and dealing with really easy, and therefor boring combat encounters. The fact that they're usually only going to be running into one hostile encounter a day at most means that they're free to dump all their daily resources into the battle, trivializing every one. -I know I've complained about this a few times in this thread already, but gently caress Artus Cimber so hard. The module spends way way way too much time on this chucklefuck despite him having absolutely no bearing on the module. He's going to end up completely overshadowing the rest of the party if he joins up with them, carries an artifact-level magic item with him that would be completely game-breaking in the hands of the PCs, and his personal story and motivations have nothing to do with what the party is trying to achieve. This all wouldn't be so bad if this was a character with some degree of name recognition, like Drizzt or Eliminster, but he's weirdly obscure, even by the standards of D&D tie-in novels. It's just so much effort and page space devoted to a useless cameo that only a fraction of a fraction of the audience will ever care about. -God drat this module likes tag-a-along NPCs! Now, some of this comes from the fact that I reskinned the Red Robes to tie into two my players' backstories, so they ended up dealing pretty heavily with that faction, but in the most recent session I realized the party had a retinue of more than 15 different NPCs, Trickster gods, and others hangers-on following them around the Tomb of the 9 Gods. And 2/3rds of those they picked up in the Tomb itself! -For all the module talks up those four secret treasures hidden in the Tomb of Nine Gods, the items themselves are really underwhelming. They're all basically just expensive treasures with no magical properties that could fetch a few thousand gold at auction (That the party doesn't give a poo poo about because they've been trapped in the wilderness for months with nowhere to spend the small fortune of treasure they've accumulated)
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Feb 6, 2021 02:12
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Bobby Deluxe posted:No yeah, I love fighters so much and kiss them on the bottom sometimes. Me, and yeah, the game has basic accessible noncombat options for everyone, except everyone else also gets some stuff baseline and when they take from the general pool they're good at it. This is like saying "Everyone gets the drinking fountain, what are you complaining about?" when everyone else on the peewee soccer team but you gets a soda. I also love Fighters. In better games. 4e fighters whip rear end.
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Feb 6, 2021 02:13
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KingKalamari posted:Okay, so the Tomb of Annihilation campaign I've been talking about for ages is winding down and I figured now would be a good time to take a look back on the module and what my thoughts are. Our group really enjoyed the puzzles, but the travel felt hectic. Our DM had to eventually tell us “I know the backstory says you’re on a ticking clock, but don’t worry and take whatever time you want to explore!”
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Feb 6, 2021 03:53
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KingKalamari posted:Okay, so the Tomb of Annihilation campaign I've been talking about for ages is winding down and I figured now would be a good time to take a look back on the module and what my thoughts are. I'm running the same campaign and my players have just hit level 6, so I guess we're about halfway through. I've picked up on almost exactly the same things as design flaws, and have had to make pretty much exactly the same adjustments to cater for them, which really makes it feel that WoTC didn't even play through the module before releasing it if the same very obvious solutions to very obvious issues are presenting themselves to DMs completely independently. There's not a huge amount of work in actually resolving most of these issues either, but by the time you address and fix a dozen or so different things you end up going quite off module. I'd be happy to do an effort post on how I ended up resolving a lot of these issues but idk if it'd be a useful resource for anyone, or really even offer anything different to KingKalamari's post Bogan Krkic fucked around with this message at 04:12 on Feb 6, 2021 |
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Feb 6, 2021 04:09
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KingKalamari posted:Okay, so the Tomb of Annihilation campaign I've been talking about for ages is winding down and I figured now would be a good time to take a look back on the module and what my thoughts are. Thanks for this. When my main group gets back to D&D, our plan is to run a party through Tomb and another party through Rime and then mix and mingle the two parties to do a home brew 11-20 campaign about another civil war in Tethyr. This kind of critique will help me make the most of the module.
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Feb 6, 2021 04:31
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For the ticking clock, our DM revealed it to us when time was up and we couldn't figure out a way to actually beat it given travel time.
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Feb 6, 2021 04:43
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I tend to ask to roll for Insight under a very broad definition as to what "insight" means, like if I hear someone explain something but I don't really understand it out of character, I roll insight to get a ELI5 explanation from the DM what I'm hearing. Or things like if I hear a set of certain facts that feel like implies some sort of plot, I ask for insight to try to piece it together basically. Basically I like to view insight as something beyond just sense motive, but as a general purpose Sherlock skill.
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Feb 6, 2021 04:56
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I straight up told my party that there was a ticking clock but also that they could feel free to ignore it and we'd work around it if they did, and then they promptly forgot about literally anything other than finding Vorn and riding a big robot around the jungle blowing poo poo up
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Feb 6, 2021 04:57
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Raenir Salazar posted:I tend to ask to roll for Insight under a very broad definition as to what "insight" means, like if I hear someone explain something but I don't really understand it out of character, I roll insight to get a ELI5 explanation from the DM what I'm hearing. Or things like if I hear a set of certain facts that feel like implies some sort of plot, I ask for insight to try to piece it together basically. Yeah, running Insight as a general "drawing conclusions from reading people" skill to Investigation's "drawing conclusions from reading the physical environment" makes it a lot more useful.
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Feb 6, 2021 05:31
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Bogan Krkic posted:I'm running the same campaign and my players have just hit level 6, so I guess we're about halfway through. I've picked up on almost exactly the same things as design flaws, and have had to make pretty much exactly the same adjustments to cater for them, which really makes it feel that WoTC didn't even play through the module before releasing it if the same very obvious solutions to very obvious issues are presenting themselves to DMs completely independently. There's not a huge amount of work in actually resolving most of these issues either, but by the time you address and fix a dozen or so different things you end up going quite off module. I'd be really interested to hear that, actually! I've been thinking of doing an effortpost along the same lines as I've recently been toying around with the idea of reworking the module to fit into a homebrew setting so I could run it for other groups and comparing notes would be super helpful! I'll get started typing up an effortpost of my own and we'll see how our ideas compare!
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Feb 6, 2021 05:34
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theironjef posted:Me, and yeah, the game has basic accessible noncombat options for everyone, except everyone else also gets some stuff baseline and when they take from the general pool they're good at it. This is like saying "Everyone gets the drinking fountain, what are you complaining about?" when everyone else on the peewee soccer team but you gets a soda. 3.5 Warblade reaching tier 3 as a completely non-magical martial fighting person is also proof that the best way to put fighters and wizards on equal footing is to give them the same kind of ability progression. Fighter needs a 1-9 spell progression with moves like "Target armed uniformed person retroactively becomes one of your old comrades" and "A squad of your old mates spontaneously appears, fully equipped and carrying any nonmagical piece of hardware." Their 9th level spells could include stuff like "An army, fully-equipped and loyal to you, crests the nearest hill to come to your aid" or "Take two full turns, back to back, right now, to do as you please."
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Feb 6, 2021 05:41
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lightrook posted:Fighter needs a 1-9 spell progression with moves like "Target armed uniformed person retroactively becomes one of your old comrades" and "A squad of your old mates spontaneously appears, fully equipped and carrying any nonmagical piece of hardware." Their 9th level spells could include stuff like "An army, fully-equipped and loyal to you, crests the nearest hill to come to your aid" or "Take two full turns, back to back, right now, to do as you please." I'm reminded of a gimmick 3e character build that was basically stuffed to the gills with strength- and carrying-capacity-boosting bonuses, such that they could throw objects weighing upwards of IIRC 20000 pounds at their enemies. Damage scaled with the weight of the object thrown so this build could do stupid amounts of damage. Basically you grab boulders and throw them at your enemies, or if there aren't any boulders handy, you rip giant chunks out of the ground DBZ-style and enact spontaneous burials of your foes. What I'm saying is, fighters should get to cast Meteor Swarm.
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Feb 6, 2021 05:59
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Is it actually even possible to make a broken fighter? I have a bunch of character concepts (was thinking of a polearm-using psychic warrior with a war wizard dip for that AC bonus reaction and shield) but always worried they're too overtuned... before realizing martials don't get fireball etc
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Feb 6, 2021 06:22
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fighter kicks rear end and is my favourite class by far. its so good E fighter >>>>> paladin >> cleric = barbarian >>> warlock > rogue >> the rest in some order but the top six is clear as day
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Feb 6, 2021 06:41
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I need an idea for a curse for a player kinda newish to TTRPGs. I've been running Frost Maiden and he's made kind-of an edgelord barbarian that keeps skinning things' faces off to alternatively wear/make into clothing even when the rest of the party (in-character) has been a little weirded out by it, and last session the captain of the guard told him to take it off or get the gently caress out of town which is more generous than I *should* be but I don't wanna crush his fun completely. The thing is the party is about to come across a hag, and it feels like a good opportunity to maybe let him have his fun while also making his character pay for being such a creepy weirdo. I want her to offer him a deal where she can give him the chance to make the cape he's making out of faces "acceptable to wear in town" by turning it into a Cloak of Many Fashions so he can disguise what it is while he's in town and such, but I'm having trouble coming up with some sort of thing it should cost him as a curse. It's worth noting that while his character is a bit much, he's the nephew of one of my regulars and is only seventeen while the rest of us are in our 30s, so I don't wanna put him off playing entirely by just ending what he's finding fun entirely.
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Feb 6, 2021 06:44
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ArchRanger posted:I need an idea for a curse for a player kinda newish to TTRPGs. as the cloak gets sown together for the barbarian the hag pulls the life experience and traumas out of these things and makes the cape cursed so that the barbarian live every bit of suffering his victims have felt dripfed into him bit by bit with increasingly horrific nightmares, periodically when he starts inflicting violence on other people he feels an out of body experience and witnesses these attacks from the second person, etc, (maybe throw in some wisdom saves against frightened) and in each dream the hag is always looming over him the cape cannot be removed by any means. if the barbarian tries taking faces with the cape on the cape swallows them and they disappear. eventually the barbarian will want to come to this hag to demand the curse be removed , and then the second part of the deal comes... she needs a favour. to do Something. but you dont need to come up with that yet
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Feb 6, 2021 06:50
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KingKalamari posted:Okay, so the Tomb of Annihilation campaign I've been talking about for ages is winding down and I figured now would be a good time to take a look back on the module and what my thoughts are. Alright, so here's my follow-up post about how I tried to solve or mitigate some of the issues with the module, some of the extra stuff I threw in there to pad things out and how I would change the module if I run it again. Keep in mind a few of the things I'd want to change are dependent on the homebrew setting I've been working on that grew out of running this module. I'll try not to bore y'all with the details specific to that, but I did a post about the setting in the Setting Discussion thread Warning, Tomb of Annihilation spoilers follow! -A quick note that the version I originally ran ended up skewing a lot goofier than the revised version I've been working on for my homebrew setting. General Setting Stuff! -So, first and foremost, I think running ToA in another setting does at least a little bit to alleviate the lack of agency on the part of Chultan society as a whole. Pretty much every nation in the homebrew setting I was using was in a similar boat to Chult, being isolated pockets of civilization created by the survivors of a setting-wide, society-ending event. This means Chult is on way more even footing compared to neighboring civilizations. -I am one of the whitest goddamned people alive, so I made a specific effort to not try to approximate anything resembling an African accent. I just upfront told my players that the majority of the native Chultan's they met would have accents similar to the cultures on which thei society was based, but I was going to voice them whatever North American or European accent I thought would fit their character and place in society. -Just out of personal preference I wanted the setting we played in to be more low magic than the typical Forgotten Realms romp. This didn't affect player options in any way, I just established with them beforehand that the ones playing casters were rarities in the setting as a whole. This led to a bit of a hiccup with the Death Curse, since it's supposed to affect people who had previously been raised by resurrection magic, which I didn't want to be a common thing in the setting. I generally tried to play it up more as a seemingly random wasting disease that was affecting the masses, and added that when players tried to use healing magic it felt more difficult than it should (Again, this was just a flavor detail and I didn't impose any mechanical penalties on healing). -If I ran the module again I think I'd instead play up the effect the Death Curse was having on the undead: With the seemingly mindless hordes becoming craftier, more intelligent and more aggressive. Areas that had previously been reclaimed from the undead were now being overrun again and the Chultan military is on the verge of being overwhelmed. The Factions! -This still leaves the problem of the plot being primarily shaped by outside groups, so I went to work replacing the typical Forgotten Realms factions at work in the area with equivalents that were specifically Chultan in origin and focus. -I removed all reference to The Harpers entirely, since they didn't really have any bearing on the module to begin with. -The Emerald Enclave became The Abaqaphi, an order of Chultan Rangers and Druids dedicated to pushing back the forces of the undead and preserving the peninsula's cultural heritage. -The Lords' Alliance became The Highborn Alliance, and while it remains much the same from a narrative standpoint, their presence in Chult was specifically the result of some of the Merchant Princes brokering an alliance with them to try to push back the undead. I liked the theme they had going with Fort Vengeance of the outsiders from The Lord's Alliance not really knowing what they were doing ala Vietnam, so I tried to lean into that with this faction. It was ostensibly supposed to be an equal partnership between Chult and its allies, but leadership of their combat forces was largely given to officers not originally from Chult, which led to the entire operation becoming an unsuccessful clusterfuck. -The Flaming Fist became the Order of the New Dawn, a mercenary group specifically organized by the Merchant Princes who didn't throw their lot in with The Highborn Alliance. Unlike The Highborn Alliance, this faction was organized and run entirely by native Chultans, and have been far more successful in their efforts as a result. While they were ostensibly concerned with fighting the nation's undead problem, their more pressing concern was looting treasure from the ruins of the Old Chultan Kingdoms for the Merchant Princes. I still tried to portray them as a morally ambiguous faction, but shifted the focus from 19th century colonialism to questions about preserving cultural heritage. The major cultural conflict of the area is between the New Dawn and The Abaqaphi over what to do with the stuff left behind by the Old Kingdoms. -Finally The Zhentarim was replaced by The Black Hand, a criminal/smuggling organization with operations in Chult and some of the surrounding nations. I, unfortunately, didn't get much of a chance to flesh these guys out as the players didn't end up interacting with them that much. Port Nyanzeru -So, to get the players more invested in the campaign's storyline, I ended up removing Syndra Silvane entirely and instead had the players work together during session 0 to create an NPC with a connection to the party to take her place. I was actually quite pleased with the results: They came up with an older Dragonborn lady who was a sort of surrogate Aunt to one of the characters (A former Dragonborn prince deposed in a coupe who was now in hiding) and had mentored another (A Fire Genasi Ranger with an alchemist background) in Alchemy. -The new setup was that the two party members had gotten word that this old friend of theirs had fallen ill in the city of Port Nyanzeru and probably needed help! -So rather than have the party teleported to the city, I opened the campaign on their ship arriving in the Bay of Chult so they could see the Dragon Turtle as a bit of opening spectacle. -The change in opening set up also meant they didn't know where the NPC they were trying to help was located beyond "somewhere in Port Nyanzeru". This meant that actually tracking her down ended up being the party's introductory adventure and the reason for them to actually explore Port Nyanzeru before heading off into the jungle. -I used some of the (Very vague) side quest suggestions in the book and had them help out a local merchant who had been dealing with the Dragonborn NPC in exchange for information on her whereabouts. -This ended up taking the form of them them delving into a reskinned version of AAW Game's Crypt of the Sun Lord to help out one of the local beggar princes so he would forgive the merchant's debt to him. -I also ended up changing the optional encounter with Volo: Rather than another FR cameo, I had the party run into Monster Manuel, a self described "Monsterologist" who sold them a copy of his new book, which was a veritable manual of the all the monsters one could encounter. He titled it "Monster Manuel's Book What Has All the Monsters in It". Inspection of the book reveals it to be written from the perspective of someone doesn't seem to have ever encountered an animal before. I worked out some simple mechanics for how the book worked: Whenever the party encountered a new creature they could use a bonus action to consult MMBWHatMiI and I would secretly roll a 2d6. On a roll of 6 or less, Manuel's information on the creature is wildly, potentially catastrophically wrong; on a roll of 7-9 Manuel's info is accurate, but not necessarily applicable to the current situation; on a roll of 10+ there's actual a useful nugget of info hidden amongst Manuel's ramblings. While it was only occasionally useful, the party ended up consulting it religiously just to hear the weird nonsense descriptions I came up with. The Land of Chult -One of the biggest problems with the hexcrawl portion of this adventure is the fact that there are no other permanent, friendly settlements on the peninsula besides Port Nyanzeru. I would change the ever-loving gently caress out of that if I ever ran the module again and am in the process of rewriting the region to fit into my afore-mentioned homebrew setting. While I've changed most of the names, I've also gone ahead and made the equivalents of Port Castigliar, Jahaka Anchorage and Shilku into actual towns with permanent populations the party can visit to unload some of their gold and resupply. I'd also probably thrown some more towns or small settlements in along the banks of the River Soshenstar North of camp righteous so it's not quite as long a trek for the party to return to civilization early in the adventure. -The Naga at Orolunga ended up being a pretty fun encounter to write (I ended up writing out the advice she gave the party beforehand so she'd speak to them in iambic pentameter). Around this time one of the players ended up multiclassing into Warlock from Mystic and stumbled on a wiki article for The Night Serpent and wanted to use her for a patron. From this I ended up coming up with a lot of lore for Ancient Chultan religions as being heavily based on duality, with the Naga at Nangalore at the Night Serpent being "sisters" who represented opposite sphere. -The Night serpent ended up tasking the player with stopping the Yuan-Ti at Omu from trying to wake her, since it was going to throw the entire cycle of cosmic balance out of whack. She might be the personification of darkness, night and construction, but that doesn't mean she's a bad snake monster! -The Red Wizards also ended up playing a significant role in the adventure as I ended up tying them directly into the backstories of two of the characters: The Dragonborn Prince's estranged father (Who had done magical experiments on his son to make him a Sorcerer in the first place) had been a member of their order and they were now trying to track the player's character down. They were also the ones responsible for the coup against the Prince's family as part of their efforts to capture him, which they carried out through enslaved members of another PC'c race. -This other PC was playing a Changeling Monk, and had worked out an entire societal system where Changelings are stripped of their identity and sold into indentured servitude as penance for a major screw ups. So this all led to some very fun intrigue in the latter half of the campaign! -By the time they met with the Red Wizards in the Heart of Ubtao I could tell the party was starting to get fatigued by the wilderness travel, so I had them skip over the last leg of the hexcrawl by using some teleportation magitech care of the Red Wizards. Something went wrong with it, however, and it led to me running the party through a reskinned version of The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan that let them out just outside Omu. Dwellers of the Forbidden City -This ended up being one of the smoother sections of the module, though I think it helped that I didn't force the party to go through all of the trickster god shrines. Since they were working with the Red Wizards at this point, I had the tagalong NPCs split off from the party and clear some of the shrines for them. This also led to some of the Red Wizards getting captured by Yuan-Ti, which was a good way to introduce them as a threat. -This is also where I inserted a magic item merchant so the players could finally spend their damned gold. This took the form of Ten-Foot-Paul, a weird hooded guy sells magic items out of the back of a cart that moves around on a pair of giant, human legs. Fane of the Night Serpent -Another pretty solid section of the module. My players ended up fighting almost the entire population of the Fane in a giant, epic encounter after their stealth was blown. They managed to pretty handily kill Ras Nsi, but weren't able to recover the loot from his body. I took this as an opportunity to have Sekelok assume the mantle of leadership and seek vengeance against the party, while Fenthaza helped them get out of danger and set them up to kill Sekelok so she could take his place. She ended up betraying them immediately after Sekelok was dead, of course and was handily dealt with. Tomb of the Nine Gods -The major problem I ran into here is that, after recovering the bracers of defense and flametongue warhammer from Ras Nsi/Sekelok, the party's Kensei Monk became a goddamned one-man army. The combat encounters in the Tomb were already a little on the easy side, but I ended up having to buff a bunch of them up after the party defeated four giant Gargoyles (CR10 each) without breaking a sweat. I supplemented a bunch of the monsters in the tomb with more powerful equivalents from the Monster Manual Expanded and it seems to have worked quite well. -Acererak has been very fun to play, mostly because I've leaned into him being a bit of a goofy weirdo: I've played him less as "Scheming supervillain playing five dimensional chess" and more "lich who got too powerful and now finds everything boring except building weird death traps". I've been voicing him with a high-pitched New Jersey accent and have included the detail that taking over the world with the Soulmonger isn't actually the final goal of his plan, it's just a step towards him building bigger and stupider deathtraps to run adventurers through. As well, per his original plans, the Soulmonger was supposed to have already consumed all the souls on the planet months before the adventure even started, but the plan is crazy behind schedule because Acererak keeps getting distracted building new traps for the Tomb of Nine Gods. -One of the additions I ended up being proudest of: Instead of that weird loop on the second floor that leads to an identical illusion of the Tomb of Nine Gods Acererak uses for testing (How is a GM even supposed to run something like that?) I instead had it lead to VR video game version of the original Tomb of Horrors module. All the characters had multiple lives (I ended up giving them 16 each, if I did it again I'd give them closer to 5) and they'd respawn at the entrance if they died, the one catch was that if they respawned like that they'd have to wait for the party to return to the Tomb's entrance before they could reenter so the party couldn't just kamikaze the whole dungeon en masse. Final changes for a custom setting -As the homebrew setting I'm adapting the module to is a science fantasy one heavily influenced by the likes of Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun, Jack Vance's Dying Earth or the video game Horizon: Zero Dawn, a lot of the changes I want to make involve reflavoring stuff to fit on this sort of fantasy setting built on top of the ruins of a technologically advanced civilization. -Acererak is changed to the digitized consciousness of an ancient transhuman and the Soulmonger becomes a piece of lost technology he's trying to use for his own ends. So that's a lot of words of campaign recap and ideas to tweak the module, hopefully some of them are useful for people!
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Feb 6, 2021 06:55
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I could use some help with picking spells for my Divine Soul Sorcerer. If I'm understanding correctly, at level 5 I've got access to 6 total spells known (not including cantrips) of which none have to be first level, max four can be second level and max two can be third level. I've got access to both the Sorcerer and Cleric spell list so there's a lot of choice. Because the other caster is playing an illusionist wizard with an affinity for fire damage spells, I'm looking to be more of a support character with some (non-illusion) crowd control and damage options. The only other for sure character is a paladin. So far I've narrowed down my choices to the following: Level 1: Mage Armor Magic Missile Shield Sleep Bless Healing Word Sanctuary Witch Bolt Level 2: Aid Tasha's Mind Whip Hold Person Enhance Ability Level 3: Counterspell Dispell Magic Haste Revivify Melf's Minute Meteorites I already get Cure Wounds from my sorcerous origin, but I think Healing Word will still be useful. Magic Missile as a damage spell that I could cast using higher level slots if those aren't used for buffing/crowd control, although most of my damage output will be cantrips. Either Shield or Mage Armor to protect myself a bit. My thinking is that I should probably save very situational spells such as Counterspell and Revivify for later levels when I have more options (and maybe even leave the arcane options to the illusionist), and stick to always useful stuff like Haste, Aid, etc for now. How does this list look as a first selection? Any things on there that would definitely be a bad choice, or glaring omissions? Taeke fucked around with this message at 11:06 on Feb 6, 2021 |
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Feb 6, 2021 10:43
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Taeke posted:Level 1: Sleep will struggle to have much impact at level 5. Spiritual Weapon is really efficient bonus action non-concentration damage. I would be inclined to take it over Magic Missile and Melf's. If you're looking to be more of a crowd-controller, Web, Hypnotic Pattern and Slow are the stand-out options for your level. Hynotic Pattern is very good with Careful metamagic if you have it. Assuming you're going to be quite squishy and work from range, Spirit Guardians is probably a waste despite being an amazing spell. At the same time, consider at least one mobility/escape spell such as Misty Step, Thunder Step or Fly.
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Feb 6, 2021 11:41
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Thanks! Hypnotic Pattern and Slow are amazing, but the illusionist already has those (and used them to great effect, especially hypnotic pattern) and I don't want to step on his turf, since he's been playing a caster a couple of sessions and I'm the new character joining. That's why I'm also not taking Fireball, for example. I'm trying to stay away from the illusion and evocation schools, suits my character concept better too. We ran a couple of one shots with me as the DM but because I'm getting too busy with life stuff and kind of burned out someone else is taking over from me, so there's some established characters and I'll be the new kid. e: I decided on the following: Cantrips: Mind Sliver, Prestidigitation, Guidance, Mage Hand and Spare the Dying (for when I can't or don't want to spend spell slots to save someone. I was thinking of Sacred Flame instead because I thought loads of creatures like undead were immune to psychic damage but it turns out that's not the case.) 1st level: Shield and Cure Wounds 2nd level: Misty Step, Tasha's Mind Whip and Spiritual Weapon 3rd level: Haste I've still got a couple of days to mull it over and change things if I want, but I think this is a good start. Taeke fucked around with this message at 17:10 on Feb 6, 2021 |
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Feb 6, 2021 11:54
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pog boyfriend posted:as the cloak gets sown together for the barbarian the hag pulls the life experience and traumas out of these things and makes the cape cursed so that the barbarian live every bit of suffering his victims have felt dripfed into him bit by bit with increasingly horrific nightmares, periodically when he starts inflicting violence on other people he feels an out of body experience and witnesses these attacks from the second person, etc, (maybe throw in some wisdom saves against frightened) and in each dream the hag is always looming over him This is good, thank you! I think I might shift it around towards some long-term goal of the hag's, that if he doesn't work towards her goals he doesn't get the benefits of a long rest each night, maybe.
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Feb 6, 2021 12:01
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pog boyfriend posted:as the cloak gets sown together for the barbarian the hag pulls the life experience and traumas out of these things and makes the cape cursed so that the barbarian live every bit of suffering his victims have felt dripfed into him bit by bit with increasingly horrific nightmares, periodically when he starts inflicting violence on other people he feels an out of body experience and witnesses these attacks from the second person, etc, (maybe throw in some wisdom saves against frightened) and in each dream the hag is always looming over him
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Feb 6, 2021 14:58
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I only needed 1 charisma to bump it up to 18 and instead of taking an ASI I took a good luck at the feats list, and thanks to Everybody's Friend I now have a +10 on my persuasion rolls lol
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Feb 6, 2021 19:35
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Taeke posted:of which none have to be first level, max four can be second level and max two can be third level. There's no such restriction. Enjoy the character! I'm playing one now, and twinned haste is beautiful. 
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Feb 6, 2021 19:42
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Luceo posted:There's no such restriction. Taeke is correct to an extent, as you can only replace one spell per level. Therefore a level 5 sorcerer can have 5 cantrips and 6 spells known, of which only two can be level 3. But as I count it there can be up to six level 2s, assuming you didn't want any level 3s.
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Feb 6, 2021 19:54
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e: fb
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Feb 6, 2021 19:55
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Yeah, that's my bad. You can absolutely have 6 level 2 spells known, and I know that, I just worded it bad. Man, I'm just so freaking excited to be playing a character again, especially one that I've been conceptualizing for so long.  I took Twinned Spell (of course) and Quickened Spell, although I'm thinking of changing the latter to Distant Spell so that instead of slinging spells I can Cure Wounds (and other touch spells) at a distance. Not entirely 100% sure yet, though.
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Feb 6, 2021 20:01
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I started helping out with the tabletop club at the middle school I work at, and after doing board games with them, I offered to run DnD for them. Most of them are beginners, and it's going to be herding cats. With that said, which premades are considered the most friendly towards people who are both new to the game and also 13-14 years old? Or should I just put in the work to make my own? Part of me wants to do Phandelver, but I think the ones who have played have played that one, and I want to make things exciting for everyone.
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Feb 6, 2021 20:03
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