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TheKingslayer posted:I don't know if this the exact place but I've suddenly had the urge to run a supernatural or slightly supernatural investigation type game. Some combat but not the centerpiece of course. Monster of the Week is basically that. If you check out the Resources section you can take a look at the playbooks and reference rules - the book goes into far more detail about how the rules work but it'll give you a good idea of what it'll be like playing it.
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Feb 27, 2021 08:13
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achtung cthulhu
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Feb 27, 2021 08:49
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TheKingslayer posted:I don't know if this the exact place but I've suddenly had the urge to run a supernatural or slightly supernatural investigation type game. Some combat but not the centerpiece of course. Night's Black Agents. Spies vs. vampires. Has a source book if you want spies vs. Dracula.
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Feb 27, 2021 10:30
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Unknown Armies could work for supernatural investigation. The system is fairly flexible and is set up for player-motivated plots. It also focuses on non-combat skills. However, it skews heavily on the postmodern urban fantasy side of supernatural in its established fiction.
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Feb 27, 2021 11:46
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gonna second call of cthulu or monster of the week based on my own personal experiences
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Feb 27, 2021 14:25
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TheKingslayer posted:I don't know if this the exact place but I've suddenly had the urge to run a supernatural or slightly supernatural investigation type game. Some combat but not the centerpiece of course. monster of the week is my heartfelt recommendation, but city of mist is a newer title which is really great for this as well. FATE is also really well suited to this type of game if your players are able to buy in to FATE, but its a hard game to get around to. E: call of cthulhu is good but it has some pretty obvious systemic leanings which you might have to fight depending on the type of story you are telling. trust your judgement on if you think call of cthulhu(and everything lovecrafts writing entails ... probably minus the cat name) fits your game pog boyfriend fucked around with this message at 17:31 on Feb 27, 2021 |
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Feb 27, 2021 17:27
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I've been kicking around a magical system and would like a little input. It might become part of a new campaign setting, because I keep having other ideas and going "Well, poo poo, these don't really fit any of the settings I know." So at some point in the past, a bunch of groups were gifted with magical sigils/runes/marks on their bodies (I've been calling them runes, just for a reference point). They can develop naturally or be granted through rituals, so most of the runebearers have congregated into noble-ish houses that are mostly hereditary. It's very like Eberron's dragonmarks, yes. I'm not sure yet how this interfaces with more traditional magic, what the runes actually do, or even what system it's for. The whole reason it even exists is I had a sentence drift across my mind as I was settling down to sleep. Just because my mind is mostly steeped in D&D/PF mechanics, I'm picturing the runes themselves as level 1 feats that provide X/day cantrips or level 1 spells (Or level-based casting of a spell series), and bigger effects are created by runebearers working together, which could in theory produce any spell in the multitudinous books. The runes are divided into diametrically opposed sets: Life/Death Motion/Stillness (Maybe some overlap with Life/Death, although Death+Motion is absolutely a necromancy effect) Creation/Destruction (Fire is in here, because I didn't want to just have a Fire rune) Animal/Plant Mind/Body (? Without it, everything Body falls under Life/Motion/Animal, and Mind falls under Knowledge) Land/Sea (Perhaps overbroad, without further categories it's basically just Earth/Water and I'm half trying to avoid classical elements just because) Knowledge Knowledge seems to be alone, which should make the players suspicious and does make a lot of philosophers suspicious. The only thing anyone knows about any type of missing runebearer (And the thought that got me up in the night) is "One house was gifted a rune and faded from existence." This rune is Forgotten, and obviously it's still around, as are people who have it. The rune partially to completely erases its bearers from the minds of whoever witnesses them. You might have a conversation with one, and as soon as you turned away you'd have forgotten who you were talking to, what you talked about, or even that you'd had a conversation. So obviously they've been running things from the shadows. Granted, it is hard to whisper advice into a king's ear like that, but swapping out forged documents or assassinating key figures is a doddle. It would be very, very difficult to use in an antagonist role against the PCs without feeling massively unfair, although there is room for "Okay, that old guy gave me this thing we'll be needing." "What old guy? You've had that thing for, like, ages. You don't even remember when you got it, you've had it so long." Because I haven't actually decided what system this would be used with, it's tempting to say this would be the only magic system in the world, but that's entirely "this is my baby and you shall love it" syndrome. Other than that, any obvious issues with this system that y'all can see? Is downplaying the classical elements doing me any favors, or am I just being contrarian? Am I missing any glaringly obvious categories?
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Feb 28, 2021 09:07
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Maybe rename Land/Sea to Sun/Moon to make it slightly less of a straight up earth/water situation. But then you get overlap with Plant/Animal... Maybe every person has a combination of two really fundamental forces that then gets a higher designation. So a mage with Body/Motion is an Animal mage. A mage with Mind/Motion is a Knowledge mage, leaving Stillness/Mind for the Forgotten. My second thought is that this is a really cool idea to apply to a traditionally villainous race. So that the players always have a ballpark idea of what their enemies have to throw at them. Also you get cool fights where two+ enemies give up their turns to cast higher level spells. Giving the players a way to fight back against that sort of thing beyond saving or dying. Perhaps Knowledge circle folks are the only ones that remember the Forgotten. Leading to a reputation for being nuts, who are best locked in a tower to do research. PC questions: If I get an arm transplant from a another person with a rune, do I get that rune? What about freaky human skin leather? If I Reincarnate, do I still have the same runes? How about a Life mage who gets resurrected? Will I get another rune when I become an archmage?
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Feb 28, 2021 10:38
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Maybe the knowledge rune could instead be "truth/deception". They could be the only ones who understand the 'true nature of the world' or some equivalent trope, and as habiturallyred mentioned, they could be the only ones capable of combating the forgotten rune in any way. The deception component would also make them suspicious to the players. Perhaps the bearer's of this rune are notable villains from history, people who are remembered for committing acts of betrayal, treason and murder, but only other bearers of the rune understand (have the knowledge) they were acting for the greater good.
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Feb 28, 2021 19:37
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When your players come into a new settlement/community/whatever, and one of them says 'What's this place like?' what are the most important attributes to lay out for them?
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Mar 1, 2021 02:48
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Not sure if this is the best thread for it, but I finally, after a few weeks of tweaking and rewriting have come to what I feel like is a good v1.0 of what I've dubbed the Plot Prompter, built off of the randomizer code framework on RandomGen. https://orteil.dashnet.org/randomgen/?gen=7k6HHjK5 The main goal was to have it be something that would help me come up with ideas for side quests and one-offs and what started as a bunch of tables in excel kind of ballooned into this. Some of the Motivations, Goals, and Twists may overlap conceptually but should at least have different enough approaches to their given category to provide ideas on how they can connect with each other. With the 'Root' dropdown, there are some other options available, such as breakouts for each of the different sets of possible Initiator(s) and Groups and one that rolls up a Party of 3-5 characters. I will probably add more variants to the side as time goes on. Hopefully some others can get some use out of it
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Mar 1, 2021 02:50
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BlackIronHeart posted:When your players come into a new settlement/community/whatever, and one of them says 'What's this place like?' what are the most important attributes to lay out for them? General atmosphere comes first for me: Friendly (A passing farmer waves as you ride down the street), mercantile (Shop barkers kick into high gear as they see you), paranoid (People hurry out of your way. Someone closes their shutters as you pass, but opens them a crack again when they think your back is turned), oppressive (The guards keep their eyes on you as you pass, their hands not quite on their weapon hilts. People hurry out of your way, but they seem more focused on the guards than you), etc. After that comes visible signs of wealth/poverty/crime, any immediately obvious eyecatchers, any industries prevalent enough to be a major feature (A giant slaughterhouse visible a few streets away, three bakeries on the main drag and signs for more pointing into back alleys), what sort of activity is happening at the moment if any (market/festival/riot/ritual), and general architectural style.
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Mar 1, 2021 03:18
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BlackIronHeart posted:When your players come into a new settlement/community/whatever, and one of them says 'What's this place like?' what are the most important attributes to lay out for them? Mood or vibe is the most important thing. One word can imply a whole lot. Ever driven into an unfriendly or even a tense town? You notice it immediately. A town could also be quiet, lazy, hard, tired, booming, sleepy, worn-out, decrepit, loved, and so on. The word/s you use for this will help color and define all the details. For example, if you've said "a dusty, hot, worn-out town", the guy sleeping upright on the bench in front of the general store with his hat over his eyes has a totally different vibe from if you'd said "a dusty, hot, lazy town". And it'd be different again if you'd said "a dusty, hot, well-loved town". Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 03:30 on Mar 1, 2021 |
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Mar 1, 2021 03:26
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BlackIronHeart posted:When your players come into a new settlement/community/whatever, and one of them says 'What's this place like?' what are the most important attributes to lay out for them? Local economy, I guess. A fishing village or port city, for example, implies a certain kind of culture, so you can draw from real port cities for inspiration. Similarly, you could probably do a lot just talking about the main local crop. A cereal grain town is different from a fruit tree town is different from a grape town. Since the players are virtually guaranteed to visit an inn, I like to describe and offer a local specialty drink to give the players a literal taste of the area. A barley beer or a plum wine or a pear cider would imply a lot about the local climate, if that's the local specialty beverage made from the local specialty crop. From there, you can use the drink as a metaphor for the area as a whole, whether it's delicate and refined or bold and lively or strongly resembles paint thinner. When the players walk in, you could probably also mention if the town is lively or quiet, and if people tend to smile or frown. Is the ground paved or dirt? Is it clean or covered in suit? Stuff like that, I think, worked well for me.
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Mar 1, 2021 03:35
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What they can see in terms of geography, demographics, and commerce as well as their sense of the place. Plus whatever hooks I want to dangle in front of them.
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Mar 1, 2021 05:30
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BlackIronHeart posted:When your players come into a new settlement/community/whatever, and one of them says 'What's this place like?' what are the most important attributes to lay out for them? When introducing a new community to my players I try to give them three adjectives that seem apparent to their characters. One of those adjectives will turn out to ultimately be untrue. Maybe this town seems cheery, bustling, and idyllic - the people are nice, everyone's working hard, and everyone's life seems to be pretty okay. Give them that as a surface assessment. Later, when they find the secret cult running the local government from behind the scenes and sacrificing local virgins to their dark patrons they'll learn that "idyllic" may have been inaccurate... but the people are still nice, and everyone still keeps busy. Beyond that, let 'em ask questions. If they want to know that the town exists mainly to support the local copper mine, they'll ask; I don't need to give them a CIA Factbook entry right off the bat. Just three adjectives, one of which is bullshit.
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Mar 1, 2021 07:23
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:, one of which is bullshit. Gonna start doing this.
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Mar 1, 2021 07:35
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:When introducing a new community to my players I try to give them three adjectives that seem apparent to their characters. One of those adjectives will turn out to ultimately be untrue. that's really nice
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Mar 1, 2021 08:03
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I haven't been following the thread for a like a year with all the pandemic woes, but I wanted to chime in with some positive feedback for FoundryVTT Historically my group have always liked meeting face to face to play, but obviously the last year it's been basically impossible, so we've been having to use Roll20 and it's been kinda misery for the most part trying to wrestle with it Out of spite I grabbed a copy of Foundry and I've been pretty pleasantly surprised with how nice it is to use. Yeah, there's a couple of things that suck, like the drawing tools, but like 95% of it just seems like "Roll20 but not made in 2001". Plus there's also a crap load of plugins for it to do stuff Roll20 never could, which I've not really bothered to explore yet. I'm not affliated or anything, I'm just sperging out after a year of groaning at Roll20.
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Mar 1, 2021 11:40
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What in particular do you prefer about Foundry over Roll20/ what do you think sucks? I've been using R20 for a while pretty happily, but coming up against the free upload limit so have been considering Foundry as I'd prefer a one off payment to a monthly subscription. I've played around with the online demo server a bit - I assume with a proper copy you can add modules to auto-populate libraries of monsters / spells etc like Roll20 has? [e: ok, I found the compendium this time, not sure how I missed out before] The light/wall/door tools seem cool. Lack of a character-mancer tool might be a bit of a pain, but fairly minor and work-round able. Do you "self host" Foundry? How've you found that bandwidth-wise? I've seen a lot of varying estimates of what upload speeds the gm needs, particularly with video chat on. Clean Your Teeth fucked around with this message at 15:40 on Mar 1, 2021 |
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Mar 1, 2021 15:01
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I've only been using it a couple of weeks myself, so I'll try to answer your questions as best as I canClean Your Teeth posted:What in particular do you prefer about Foundry over Roll20/ what do you think sucks? I've been using R20 for a while pretty happily, but coming up against the free upload limit so have been considering Foundry as I'd prefer a one off payment to a monthly subscription. I used to pay for Roll20 for the unlimited storage, but I'm really pleased to pay the one off cost and never worry about it again to be honest. Clean Your Teeth posted:I've played around with the online demo server a bit - I assume with a proper copy you can add modules to auto-populate libraries of monsters / spells etc like Roll20 has? [e: ok, I found the compendium this time, not sure how I missed out before] It does do libraries differently to Roll20 and I'm just getting my head around it. It's very programmer orientated if you are of that mindset (players and NPCs are Actors and everything they can have like classes, abilities, gear, spells, etc are all Items) so it expects you to rely heavily on the Compendium, where as Roll20 baked a lot of that stuff into the character sheet for better or worse. Clean Your Teeth posted:The light/wall/door tools seem cool. Lack of a character-mancer tool might be a bit of a pain, but fairly minor and work-round able. Clean Your Teeth posted:Do you "self host" Foundry? How've you found that bandwidth-wise? I've seen a lot of varying estimates of what upload speeds the gm needs, particularly with video chat on. That said I looked into AWS and estimated like $12 a month to host a Foundry server myself, which isn't bad, but I'd like to avoid it. Hope that helps! edit: VV That's interesting I didn't know they had official hosting partners! Very handy for non-technical people VV kaffo fucked around with this message at 16:55 on Mar 1, 2021 |
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Mar 1, 2021 16:03
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It defeats the one-off fee purpose of buying foundry, but there are a few hosting companies that will set up and host your server for you: https://foundryvtt.com/article/partnerships/
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Mar 1, 2021 16:16
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kaffo posted:Hope that helps! Yeah, v useful, thanks!
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Mar 1, 2021 17:12
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If you're coming from Roll20 I think the foundry modules you'll probably want are Pings, PopOut!, and probably The Furnace. There're also some really popular 3d dice mods, but I don't use any of them. After that it depends on what system you're running and gets a lot more specific.kaffo posted:That said I looked into AWS and estimated like $12 a month to host a Foundry server myself, which isn't bad, but I'd like to avoid it.
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Mar 1, 2021 18:37
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Thank you all for the game system suggestions. I casually dropped the premise of them in the group chat and Monster of the Week seemed to really catch their interest. Now to watch a bunch of ocean adjacent and coastal town horror for inspiration.
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Mar 2, 2021 04:10
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I have attained DM Nirvana, and can go no higher; after a player somehow pulled off an impossible rescue for the arc's tragic villain, she was struggling to hold back tears and had difficulty speaking in character. Making a player cry, without being mean to them, is the highest honor. I'm deeply grateful that I've stumbled into a group willing to unashamedly commit to dicegames. Now, my challenge is that I had really planned to kill off this villain to harvest that sweet pathos, and now I gotta make space in a crowded plot for a redemption arc. I might have to put the villain on a boat and take them offstage for a bit.
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Mar 2, 2021 07:20
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kaffo posted:That said I looked into AWS and estimated like $12 a month to host a Foundry server myself, which isn't bad, but I'd like to avoid it. I host my Foundry server through Digital Ocean's lowest droplet at $5/month and then also got an S3 bucket through them (Digital Ocean Spaces) for an additional 250GB storage/1TB outbound bandwidth for another $5/month. I wanted the S3 bucket mainly because I have players from around the world (Australia and Philippines) and the built in CDN has points of presence in Sydney, Melbourne and Manila. I did try out the Forge for the very generous 14 day trial they offer and it was great and very very easy to use, literally just a couple of clicks and you're up and running. Unfortunately, they don't allow ftp/sftp access, so you have to upload everything through their website or from within a world in Foundry itself. I decided not to continue after my trial with them because I wanted something with much more space and no filesize limitations because I've been using UHD animated maps and those are sometimes 200mb+ each. I also wanted to use my own domain name, which they don't allow. kaffo posted:And we play with discord video + audio. I know Foundry has built in peer to peer video and audio, but I personally haven't touched it so I can't vouch. We play with Discord audio (so that we can still talk if something happens to Foundry and everyone disconnects from it), but with the built in Foundry video chat using Jitsi servers instead of peer to peer via the JitsiWebRTC module. I feel like Discord video kinda sucks for those with bad internet and Jitsi's servers are way better in that regard.
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Mar 2, 2021 08:02
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Squidster posted:I have attained DM Nirvana, and can go no higher; after a player somehow pulled off an impossible rescue for the arc's tragic villain, she was struggling to hold back tears and had difficulty speaking in character. Making a player cry, without being mean to them, is the highest honor. yup. sebmojo posted:that's really nice its also useful to apply this to npcs as well as an extremely lazy shortcut to depth in characters. throw in even a red herring and you can improvise an interesting person on the fly
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Mar 2, 2021 14:40
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BlackIronHeart posted:When your players come into a new settlement/community/whatever, and one of them says 'What's this place like?' what are the most important attributes to lay out for them? I often focus on sense-based description that opens a door for player reaction (even if that action itself is relatively insubstantial). I find it really helps improve immersion and connect players to their characters without running into the awkward, shuffling lull that so often happens when you just sorta plop a new location in front of players. e.g. "Brobnar, your feet are numb. Your boots are chafing your ankles as you have to yank them out of the mud with each step. You hear a clatter of hooves and all at once your right side is splattered with cold, heavy mud. A cart buckling under sacks of potatoes lurches past you" "Ellamura, you can smell ginger and saffron wafting on the warm breeze and your stomach starts to ache." "Izhik, as the others wonder at the stained glass domes of the painted quarter, a stray shaft of purple light sears your sensitive retinas." My GMing style is ABGHIPC (Always Be Getting Hooks In Player Characters) e: reread a bit and when defining places beyond the intro I'll try to give them what they could see or intuit from an hour of wandering, and anything they'd reasonably know. I do like to focus on senses here too to help ground the descriptions in the place, e.g. "You notice that the guild of masons is exceptionally well ornamented. Very much at odds with the worn marble facades across from it. They're not exceptionally famous or anything so this stands out to you." I don't love the practice of hiding necessary information behind rolls or further probing questions unless that's actually mechanically interesting for the system so I'll at least give them some clear hint as to where they could start, and one or two hints towards other things this place has going on. Macdoo fucked around with this message at 16:36 on Mar 2, 2021 |
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Mar 2, 2021 16:04
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I also rate the sesh I made a player cry among my best. Man, does it own to see someone invested in your fiction like that.
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Mar 3, 2021 01:12
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Clean Your Teeth posted:What in particular do you prefer about Foundry over Roll20/ what do you think sucks? I've been using R20 for a while pretty happily, but coming up against the free upload limit so have been considering Foundry as I'd prefer a one off payment to a monthly subscription. This has been answered extensively, but my two cents: Foundry is a bit more work to get used to, to set up and to behave how you'd like it to. But, it is way more customizable than roll20, and once you've got it going it's awesome. The only thing I prefer in roll20 is that monsters have token artwork, while you will have to do that manually in Foundry. But, making scenes like THIS dragon vs. airship encounter would not have been possible for me in roll20. With the correct mods installed, this took me 30 minutes in Foundry. Depending on the gamesystem, there's also a lot of automation which may or may not be your cup of tea. For example, in DND5E you can hit the long rest button and everything from spell slots to daily class features gets refreshed. If you truly want to put in some work and get into the system, you can also do things like animated spell effects, automated bless d4 on saves and attack rolls... the list goes on. There's basically a mod for anything you can think of. Want a calendar in your game? Sure, there's a mod for that that also gives the GM and/or players a weather forecast for the day. Luebbi fucked around with this message at 08:51 on Mar 4, 2021 |
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Mar 4, 2021 08:48
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I'd like to fish around ideas for an upcoming boss fight for my party. They're investigating an unknown occurrence at a hedge wizard campus. It's a group of buildings up on a lakeside cliff. The order is masonic and secretive - and the players have begun to realize it is because these hedge wizards are, in reality, warlocks. Mostly unknowing warlocks initiated into the order with a promise of arcane abilities. What they will discover is that the lodgemasters serve an extra-planar being sealed beneath the lake that is slowly trying to loosen its bonds. It's a member of a race called the Ratask which are contractual beings based loosely on Ahamkara from Destiny and demons from Chainsawman. The basic idea is they grant wishes and grow in power dependent on the exchange that takes place. One of the lodgemasters is an alchemist. He wants to transmute gold, learn how to stop aging (he's very old), that kind of thing. The issue is magical alchemy's equivalent exchange is busted: for a small amount of gold you need a ridiculously more valuable amount of material. Cue him making contact with this being who offers exchanges many more times generous. Anyhow, the gist of the adventure is the party has rolled up to this campus and found a bunch of wicker-men people with skulls for heads impersonating all the hedge wizards. This is because the lodgemaster equivalent exchange-d his lodgemembers to the being in exchange for... something. Probably elven immortality and youthfulness, since he's a human. I want him to be the final boss of the adventure, locked beneath the lodge in a secret cave, enacting a ritual to unseal more of this being. I'd like to incorporate lair actions and that kind of thing but also keep in mind he's an accomplished spellcaster without btfo'ing my party on accident. Some ideas I've had: - He didn't exchange away all of his lodge members and instead have some of them hostage with him. Either for fuel for the ritual or as "exchange" material for high level spells or other attacks during the combat, potentially as a lair action or a character feature. The warlock patron is there and listening and there is plenty of currency to offer up mid fight - I need to make the fight more than just my vengeance paladin Oath of Enmity-ing the boss and running up to him to crush him with a crit. Varied terrain in the arena? Maybe the boss summons adds as a laid action that appear as wicker statues for one round, then "activate" and enter initiative order? (I've been using Gnoll Witherlings for these) - He's a transmutation wizard with a warlock patron giving him double duty powers, so maybe a bit of both of those flavors. Enhanced transmutation spells? A petrifying ray that turns things to gold instead of stone? I've already had them fight these wicker-men in one encounter, as well as swarms of them when they entered the dorms to indicate there was some kind of mass transfer (thanks Ghosts of Saltmarsh for Swarm of Skeletons). I'm loosely running with necromancy as a theme for the patron but instead of bones its wood, roots, and skulls. Think Wendigo. It would be neat to combine that concept with the wizard as the boss fight.
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Mar 4, 2021 16:31
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How many people in your group? The fight could start with equal combatants with the thralled lodge members. Then as a lair action the big bad can instagib a thrall to power himself up for the ritual. This will be a -2 enemy action against the party in that turn and a moving forward -1 enemy action for the fight in exchange for increased lethality for big bad. This can help you reactively dial in the action economy to help the party stay in the fight. Instead of increasing lethality the big bad could also sacrifice to advance the ritual. You could have both options be present so that way if its getting too dicey for the party you can choose basically a narrative or fight mechanic bonus for the boss. For every narrative bonus you take it can alter the combat map in some way. Such as the summoning process creating walls of fire or something like that.
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Mar 4, 2021 16:57
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I've got 3 party members, all 4th level: Oath of Vengeance Paladin with GWM who has a habit of instagibbing my big dudes; Lore Bard who is mostly support; and Divination Wizard who's got Scorching Ray and has a habit of portent-ing the Paladin to wild feats of damage. The ritual-advancement is a good idea. It's something I've considered as they're also being subtly penalized for repeated long rests as they adventure around the compound. They barged in during the first attempt and got scraped up, then opted to take no short rests and instead camp for a long one. This lead to the patron magic reanimating a number of the wickers they had defeated (less than before, though). I'm keeping track of long rests and plan to roll them into the final encounter, so the ritual "timer" might be a good implementation. I guess the question is what are the implications of a successful ritual and does it affect the party, or does the boss/patron just peace out? I've also considered the idea of the boss using the hostages as collateral fuel for bigger spells. For example, Lightning Bolt is of decent CR to be fired off maybe once in the encounter. I could have an "exchange spell bank" that as an action he can use the hostages like an MP pool. Lightning Bolt for 2 hostages. That way when they're depleted he'll lose access to some bigger spells.
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Mar 4, 2021 17:29
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I ran a couple of Scooby Doo themed one shots for some friends last fall, and one of the mechanics they used was abductions. There were a number of opportunities for the party to intervene, and for each person they lost the big bad powered up (more health, higher AC) from ritually sacrificing them. I liked the way it played out, though I’m still pretty new to this and not sure how to balance it fairly.
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Mar 4, 2021 18:21
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Similarly, my 5E PCs are nearly finished with their latest adventure, infiltrating the cliffside Neverwinter magic university after being asked to go undercover to discover the truth about the ritual murder of some of the adventuring students. It's all sort of a ruse, though, as one of the main campaign villains, a mindflayer information dealer, has also disguised themselves to steal information on achieving immortality... and altering the memories of his fellow students so they'll conduct the ritual to get him there "willingly." Here's what I've been thinking of for the boss fight: After being drawn away from the campus to investigate the headmaster's sunken laboratory and activate the mythallar within (and find his phylactery, the headmaster is now a demilich who's gone totally senile without souls to feed on, up to giving away his secrets to a lowly TA), they come back to find some of the students have gone missing, as has the TA and groundskeeper they've been (rightfully) suspicious of. Investigating will bring them down into the catacombs/storage area beneath the school campus where they'll find the students, TA, and one of the archmage deans lying "dead" in a circle with the mindflayer at the center, claiming they interrupted his ascendance to lichdom. I'm 100% sure the party wouldn't want to talk to him about it as he's tried to tempt them with information on their deepest desires in the past only for the group to immediately attack, so the fight would then go: - First phase would be against a "mindflayer arcanist", actually a flesh golem with an intellect devourer inside disguised as its master (and previously disguised as the groundskeeper). He needs to protect the phylactery, and once he takes enough damage, the actual mindflayer will cast off his disguise as the TA and tell his golem to flee with the phylactery (though I assume players would try to stop him). Since the wizard's tower is now airborne again, I was going to have it being towed away by the central government just outside to provide a convenient escape route (and let the PCs chase it down if they so choose) - Then would be the fight with the mindflayer proper, though he's seemingly pretty chipper about getting his poo poo kicked in. He has the power to raise the dead students as extra backup at the top of the round so the entire party doesn't just pile on him - After they kill him (should be pretty easy, honestly), he rises as an alhoon, telling them that part of becoming undead is dying, duh, thanks for the help dumbasses. He toys with them and then can use planeshift with no components to get away if things get too hairy (ie, it can't be counterspelled) - The archmage who had secretly been helping him is pretending to be injured on the ground and will tell the party she came down there to stop the ritual but was overpowered; if they figure out she's lying and attack her too, she'll be forced to fight back. My level 8 party is a vengeance paladin, evocation wizard, light cleric, and a soulknife rogue; how do I stop them from just blasting through this? Maybe keep some of the students around and alive, and the villain threatens to kill them if the party doesn't let the phylactery get away? One of the students previously died and was revived during a chimera attack and everyone seemed pretty distraught afterward.
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Mar 4, 2021 18:26
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change my name posted:Similarly, my 5E PCs are nearly finished with their latest adventure, infiltrating the cliffside Neverwinter magic university after being asked to go undercover to discover the truth about the ritual murder of some of the adventuring students. It's all sort of a ruse, though, as one of the main campaign villains, a mindflayer information dealer, has also disguised themselves to steal information on achieving immortality... and altering the memories of his fellow students so they'll conduct the ritual to get him there "willingly." Here's what I've been thinking of for the boss fight: dont. make the encounter slightly more difficult than you think is necessary and then let the dice fall as they may. honestly just letting the villains plan fail is great because as you mentioned this guy can plane shift away and you can make a new plot but now with stakes because all the bad stuff that happened has a scapegoat for revenge. if they get the phylactery and save the day their next job is the wealthy parent of the student wants revenge on the criminal at large. if they fail to get the phylactery its the same thing, but the alhoon is much less bitter
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Mar 5, 2021 00:23
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Yah. Decide what the villain will do when the fight goes south then play it straight. You can always make another.
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Mar 5, 2021 00:42
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pog boyfriend posted:dont. make the encounter slightly more difficult than you think is necessary and then let the dice fall as they may. honestly just letting the villains plan fail is great because as you mentioned this guy can plane shift away and you can make a new plot but now with stakes because all the bad stuff that happened has a scapegoat for revenge. Hmm, I really like this idea of letting them gently caress it up and then the parents of the dead students blaming the party/their adventuring guild for failing to protect their children
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Mar 5, 2021 16:34
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| # ? May 13, 2024 14:49 |
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change my name posted:Hmm, I really like this idea of letting them gently caress it up and then the parents of the dead students blaming the party/their adventuring guild for failing to protect their children right? and if the group all falls in combat they dont die, outright, tell them they can use all their hit dice to recover as a short rest and they wake up to the aftermath of the academy absolutely hosed and undead students roaming the halls, probably having used the majority of their spell slots, and now they have to fight their way through easy encounters but while being badly beaten. the parents are pissed, the guild wants them to take responsibility, and the group? they want revenge
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Mar 5, 2021 18:05
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