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Raenir Salazar posted:That brings up a good question actually, so for my group they're typically murder hobo-ey, what would be a naturalistic way of encouraging them switch to capturing/tying up enemies instead in a non-heavy handed way? Society has a social norm that dead bodies should be buried or burned. Killing a bunch of people, or even animals, stripping the corpses of valuable and then setting up a tent 10 feet away from the festering corpses to camp for the night is psycho. Plus it attracts scavengers. It spreads disease. It gives predators the idea that people are a source of food, and might be good to eat. None of this is conductive to a long rest. I watched several streams and none of them did anything with corpses except check the pockets for loose change. I think it would be cool if the DM occasionally asked how you want to dispose of the bodies. Leaving corpses rotting on the side of the road can't be legal inside civilized lands.
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Dec 19, 2021 06:09
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Facebook Aunt posted:Society has a social norm that dead bodies should be buried or burned. Killing a bunch of people, or even animals, stripping the corpses of valuable and then setting up a tent 10 feet away from the festering corpses to camp for the night is psycho. Plus it attracts scavengers. It spreads disease. It gives predators the idea that people are a source of food, and might be good to eat. None of this is conductive to a long rest. Yeah weirdly my group is extremely adverse to doing anything with dead bodies beyond looting them; my character regularly suggests burning the bodies, burying them, or constructing a cairn because at a minimum doing so should prevent them rising as zombies/undead behind us; which is what I would expect from playing say, Baldur's Gate 2 or Icewind Dale. But in our DM's current setting that doesn't actually seem to be A Thing(tm?) and they never want to spend time doing so except very reluctantly if there's some non-trivial connection between the dead and our characters. lightrook posted:If the party is facing off against sentient humanoids, I usually assume at least a few wounded survivors, as long as they haven't all been spectacularly killed by massive damage. If I have to draw a line somewhere, I use the -10 hp threshold to decide if a downed enemy is dead, but realistically it's just whatever I feel like doing. The wounded prisoner scenario does a few things - the players can make some skill checks, I can feed them some information via their captives, and it communicates that death is not the default result of combat. If they still want all their helpless captives dead, then they'll have to commit murder, and anybody who finds the bodies will be able to tell the difference between a combat death and a summary execution. At any rate, you can reward the players for humane treatment of captives with intel, rewards, or favors, while excessive cruelty could alienate the party from even their allies. Yeah it isn't helped that my DM currently draws a line between PCs, important NPCs who have class levels, and everyone else; and everyone else automatically are dead-dead when downed to 0 HP and only PCs and NPCs with class levels/are important get death saves/time to get potentially healed back up. So the only way a hostile sentient NPC survives an encounter is if they win or manage to run away. So for me the problem is I have a lot of (what to my mind are) bad habits to undo from our current DM to set the tone/expectations for my campaign.
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Dec 19, 2021 06:49
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I'm putting together a character for a Wildemount game coming up, and had an idea that I think could be fun, but I'm not sure how it would actually handle in combat. So he's a Half-Elf Warlock with the Celestial patron, Pact of the Chain. Backstory: He's a degenerate gambler who one night placed a particularly bad bet on a goblin eating contest, and just as it was going south he dropped to his knees and basically did a "God if you're out there, and you help me win this bet I'll do whatever you want, I'll pledge myself to you." Good news: He won the bet! Bad News: Now he's forever indebted to Avandra, The Changebringer, who urges him to take a better path through life, instead of wasting all his money gambling and drinking. His familiar is going to be a faerie dragon re-skinned as a celestial golden retriever, which he begrudgingly takes care of. We're going to start at level 3, any suggestions on good evocations/spells for this idea? I'm going to go with Agonizing blast, because that feels like a no-brainer. There are a couple of chain-specific evocations, but I'm not sure how useful they'd be applied to the faerie dragon.
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Dec 19, 2021 07:34
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Lazy like a Fox posted:He's a degenerate gambler who one night placed a particularly bad bet on a goblin eating contest, Were...you eating the goblins? Or were the goblins eating? Was someone else eating the goblins? Was David Hogan involved?
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Dec 19, 2021 07:47
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I know its only tangentially related because its a book and no doubt a terrible book but the protagonist of Hickman and Weis' upcoming Dragonlance novel Dragons of Deceit is named Destina Rosenthorn. If someone came to my table with that name, I would flat out refuse.
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Dec 19, 2021 08:05
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imagine dungeons posted:I know its only tangentially related because its a book and no doubt a terrible book but the protagonist of Hickman and Weis' upcoming Dragonlance novel Dragons of Deceit is named Destina Rosenthorn. If someone came to my table with that name, I would flat out refuse. I thought you might say that. *Shreds Destina' sheet and pulls out another* Rosena Destinthorn, at your service!
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Dec 19, 2021 08:13
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Raenir Salazar posted:
That's weird because the PH specifically says when you reduce a character to 0 HP with a melee attack you can choose to knock them unconscious. That just seems like it would make it harder to give you players plot clues.
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Dec 19, 2021 08:24
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If you want to get your players to not kill all the enemies, start by asking them to maybe not kill all the enemies. You can also turn this into a rule by saying that enemies who fall to 0 hp get knocked unconscious unless the player specifically kills them. This might backfire though, depending on how bloodthirsty your group is. Finally, remember to make enemies beg for mercy or run away if the fight goes against them.
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Dec 19, 2021 08:42
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Devorum posted:I thought you might say that. *Shreds Destina' sheet and pulls out another*
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Dec 19, 2021 09:31
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imagine dungeons posted:I know its only tangentially related because its a book and no doubt a terrible book but the protagonist of Hickman and Weis' upcoming Dragonlance novel Dragons of Deceit is named Destina Rosenthorn. If someone came to my table with that name, I would flat out refuse. this is an ancient article by ray winninger (the current head of D&D) about the power names have to sink or float your game https://www.darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/dnd/dungeoncraft/dungeon_craft_05.html there is nothing innately wrong with destina rosenthorn as long as it fits the game you and your players want to play. I would let it float because it's just fantasy enough to get everyone in the mood and being a little on the nose and silly really isn't a bad idea for players in D&D.
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Dec 19, 2021 09:49
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Siivola posted:If you want to get your players to not kill all the enemies, start by asking them to maybe not kill all the enemies. That last one is also just a good antifrustration feature. If the party accepts a surrender, it means they don't have to take the time to finish a combat they are clearly destined to win. At that point its just busy work with no tension to make it interesting.
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Dec 19, 2021 10:07
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Siivola posted:If you want to get your players to not kill all the enemies, start by asking them to maybe not kill all the enemies. Well, the point is I'm hoping for Play Conditioning/Affordances based solutions to start with, try to guide them without being explicit or heavy handed about it because it might rub someone the wrong way to have options taken from you; it just feels like better game design to let them have the option (especially when I can create foes for the party as a result!) while hopefully getting them to be less murder hobo-y. Again this is because I'm pretty sure they'll have some bad habits as a result of previous campaigns with a different DM, its pretty easy for me to make it so when reduced to 0 they have death saves like PCs, but that alone doesn't necessarily mean they'll start going out of their way to collect prisoners. So the best solution there seems to be to setup those expectations early, probably in Session 0 through ingame means.
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Dec 19, 2021 17:08
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Raenir Salazar posted:Well, the point is I'm hoping for Play Conditioning/Affordances based solutions to start with, try to guide them without being explicit or heavy handed about it because it might rub someone the wrong way to have options taken from you; it just feels like better game design to let them have the option (especially when I can create foes for the party as a result!) while hopefully getting them to be less murder hobo-y. Well maybe ask them out of game what their preference is. Surviving enemies has some heavy moral consequences, like the possibility of having to torture someone for more information, or what to do with prisoners (possibly heavily injured) when you're out in the wild, about to enter a dungeon and cannot afford to bring them with you - let them free or execute them? Maybe your players simply prefer a play style where they get to kill baddies and move on without having to worry about all that stuff. I wouldn't necessarily call that a bad habit in the first place, either.
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Dec 19, 2021 17:18
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It's a good example of the delicate line that DMs need to walk when crafting a campaign that they want to lead as much as the players want to participate in. There's going to be some disagreements large and small, and figuring out how to navigate them as a group is a big part of being successful.
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Dec 19, 2021 18:27
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imagine dungeons posted:I know its only tangentially related because its a book and no doubt a terrible book but the protagonist of Hickman and Weis' upcoming Dragonlance novel Dragons of Deceit is named Destina Rosenthorn. If someone came to my table with that name, I would flat out refuse. It's Dragonlance. Star Wars grade names are just fine. It's a setting that has featured the knight Sturm Brightblade, the dwarf Flint Fireforge, and the elf princess named after one author's wife Laurana.
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Dec 19, 2021 18:53
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Devorum posted:Were...you eating the goblins? Or were the goblins eating? Was someone else eating the goblins? Was David Hogan involved? Yes.
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Dec 19, 2021 19:03
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I've tried before to have enemies either run away or beg for their lives. Usually what happens is the player characters attempt to chase down or snipe runners, and those that beg for their lives are either ignored or get tortured for information before getting killed. I even tried in a session last night to have a fey offer a magical boon in exchange for being let go, but the creature ended up dead anyway (although I guess the player being appealed to might have assumed this magical boon would have a significant drawback to it and not worth the trouble). This has been the case with multiple players and gaming groups. I guess having enemies run or surrender at the end of a combat feels anticlimactic and unsatisfying to most players. It doesn't come up often in fantasy media, either.
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Dec 19, 2021 20:13
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PeterWeller posted:It's Dragonlance. Star Wars grade names are just fine. It's a setting that has featured the knight Sturm Brightblade, the dwarf Flint Fireforge, and the elf princess named after one author's wife Laurana.
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Dec 19, 2021 20:15
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Yeah, applying action movie rules is probably the best bet. 5e combat can be a slog as it is without adding in chasing down runners or PCs interrogating mooks for minimal advantage. I've had ranged enemies break and run a couple times when I wasn't sure about encounter balance, and all it really did was drag out the inevitable end of combat as the PCs pulled out all the stops rather than let Goblin Rando 4 escape.
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Dec 19, 2021 20:18
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Yeah I only really have enemies run if there’s going to be a consequence for them getting away: either early in the fight getting reinforcements or later in the fight warning another encounter up ahead about the players. Otherwise it just slows things down for the sake of realism. If I feel the need to justify why the last mercenary is fighting to the death I just invent that she is the sister of the first one they killed and full of blind rage or something.
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Dec 19, 2021 20:24
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BabyFur Denny posted:Well maybe ask them out of game what their preference is. Surviving enemies has some heavy moral consequences, like the possibility of having to torture someone for more information, or what to do with prisoners (possibly heavily injured) when you're out in the wild, about to enter a dungeon and cannot afford to bring them with you - let them free or execute them? Yeah, I think it's important to establish a distinction between game morality and real life morality. In-game, captured evil creatures expect to be killed because in that world, that's what happens. They'd kill any good creatures they captured and expect the same in return. It's not the world we live in, but it is the one our characters live in so that's what they do. Otherwise, dealing with captured enemies can get to be a bookkeeping headache, like encumbrance and counting torches and stuff like that. Just killing them all keeps the game flowing, rather than having to make detours constantly. Releasing prisoners could be dealt with two ways. One is to have the released enemies laugh at the chumps who let them go so they can form new war parties to ambush the PCs later, or have one of them reform its ways and turn up as a life-saving ally in a crucial situation later on.
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Dec 19, 2021 20:46
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Hexmage-SA posted:I've tried before to have enemies either run away or beg for their lives. Usually what happens is the player characters attempt to chase down or snipe runners, and those that beg for their lives are either ignored or get tortured for information before getting killed. I even tried in a session last night to have a fey offer a magical boon in exchange for being let go, but the creature ended up dead anyway (although I guess the player being appealed to might have assumed this magical boon would have a significant drawback to it and not worth the trouble). This has been the case with multiple players and gaming groups. On fleeing: It’s there, it’s just overshadowed by the impressive action. Lots of movies show the remainder of the bad guys scattering once the decisive cinematic action is done. Bring back morale checks at the first incapacitated opponent and a second check when they reach half strength and that might help. And on negotiating: it can help to have this cut both ways to get the players in that mindset. I once had a dragon let the party go without a fight in exchange for letting the dragon have their horses. It would have been a TPK, but still the dragon could have been injured. Hit points kind of obscure this, but getting hit with a sword, war hammer or fireball would really suck even if you could definitely walk away afterwards. It actually makes way more sense to negotiate out of fights when possible even if victory is assured.
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Dec 19, 2021 21:53
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Well, we played another session and my kid has gotten into the murdery aspect of it, he even wrote down an enemies list afterwards, with 'red cloke guys' being #2 on the list. Speaking of burying bodies, though, after they killed some elves, my wife said "we should bury them so that the other elves don't know they're dead." All those true crime podcasts she listens to are paying off.
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Dec 20, 2021 01:40
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sullat posted:Well, we played another session and my kid has gotten into the murdery aspect of it, he even wrote down an enemies list afterwards, with 'red cloke guys' being #2 on the list. Now I want a fictional true crime podcast set in a fantasy world.
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Dec 20, 2021 01:42
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Kaiser Mazoku posted:Like how is it even possible to have an all-evil race anyway, they'd have all killed each other long ago. It's impossible to build a society where everyone is evil because no one would work together. I don't understand why all-evil or mostly evil species would have more trouble forming society than a race of diverse alignments where maybe 15% are evil. Evil doesn't mean stupid. "Might makes Right" is a fine basis for a society, and one evil folk would have no problem with. The toughest tough guy (or strongest faction) is the ruler of the village, town, tribe or whatever. People band together not out of altruism but for mutual protection against outgroups. Evil people are still capable of love and affection, so the evil gang leader can still love his mom. An evil mom can still love her kids. A large scale society where the strong/rich run roughshod over the weak is . . . not hard to imagine at all? Plenty of societies have had different rules for the ruling class, or different rules for full citizens vs. non-citizens where a minority of the population are citizens. Societies where the majority of population are serfs or slaves with few rights at all. There are plenty of places on earth where you get a traffic ticket and have the option to pay a huge fine in a court of law, or slip the corrupt cop a bribe on the spot to make the ticket go away. In an overtly evil society the corruption and abuse would presumably be more overt than a normal society. Everyone says the quiet part out loud. Everyone knows not to leave their children or pets unattended. Maybe the police force is "oops, all bad apples!" and everyone understands that and accepts that is the way it ought to function -- so it does function. The peace is kept. The crops are harvested. The taxes are paid. Civilization exists.
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Dec 20, 2021 02:29
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You're describing modern day America whereas D&D alignment describes evil as more "tolkien orcs"
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Dec 20, 2021 02:37
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Azathoth posted:Now I want a fictional true crime podcast set in a fantasy world. Eleint 17, 1358. A farmer is on a walk near the banks of the Winding Water when he finds a body. Pale skinned and drained of blood, the farmer doesn't know what to make of it. In the days to come, the corpse would be identified as none other than Bhall, the god of Murder. Though history would ultimately determine the killer to be a thief known as Cyric, not everyone is convinced by the official narrative. Was Cyric really on the bridge the night before? Did the God of Death stage his own murder? I'm Volothamp Geddarm, and you're listening...to Murderous Intent.
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Dec 20, 2021 02:38
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Reveilled posted:Eleint 17, 1358. A farmer is on a walk near the banks of the Winding Water when he finds a body. Pale skinned and drained of blood, the farmer doesn't know what to make of it. In the days to come, the corpse would be identified as none other than Bhall, the god of Murder. Though history would ultimately determine the killer to be a thief known as Cyric, not everyone is convinced by the official narrative. Was Cyric really on the bridge the night before? Did the God of Death stage his own murder? I'm Volothamp Geddarm, and you're listening...to Murderous Intent.
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Dec 20, 2021 02:40
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Siivola posted:If you want to get your players to not kill all the enemies, start by asking them to maybe not kill all the enemies. There's a great third party supplement called Beowulf: Age of Heroes which introduces ways of overcoming enemies without having to kill them via the Defeated condition. For instance, a cowardly tyrant who likes to have his minions fight for him can gain the Defeated condition if they have no allies within line of sight at the start of their next turn. The condition can take many forms from surrender to fleeing and dying of their wounds offscreen, but generally speaking Defeated means defeated.
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Dec 20, 2021 02:54
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Bottom Liner posted:You're describing modern day America whereas D&D alignment describes evil as more "tolkien orcs" Right, and even tolkien orcs are often able to get through the day with murdering each other. They maintain a society because everyone outside of Mordor wants them dead for being orcs. They maintain bonds with other orcs not out of altruism, but out of mutual self-interest. Every mammalian species involves a mother giving birth to near helpless young and then caring for them and lactating for them for some amount of time. Babies are hella annoying. Having enough self control to not murder your babies forms the basis for society, but it doesn't make you a capital G Good person. A Good person would be kind to their servants, employees, serfs or slaves and try to provide them with a good quality of life. An Evil person would be cruel to their servants, employees, serfs or slaves, but again evil doesn't mean stupid, so most will refrain from spoiling their own fun by destroying toys they can't easily replace. For an evil person murdering an occasional slave helps keep the rest of them afraid of you, but murdering all your slaves means there is no one to cook dinner. Capital E Evil doesn't have to mean continuous mindless rampages.
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Dec 20, 2021 03:02
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BabyFur Denny posted:Surviving enemies has some heavy moral consequences, like the possibility of having to torture someone for more information, Hexmage-SA posted:Usually what happens is the player characters attempt to chase down or snipe runners, and those that beg for their lives are either ignored or get tortured for information before getting killed.
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Dec 20, 2021 03:44
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PeterWeller posted:It's Dragonlance. Star Wars grade names are just fine. It's a setting that has featured the knight Sturm Brightblade, the dwarf Flint Fireforge, and the elf princess named after one author's wife Laurana. I'll grant you that its no more absurd than any other Dragonlance names, I suppose I'm just looking at it through the eyes of a world-weary adult now.
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Dec 20, 2021 07:54
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Reveilled posted:Eleint 17, 1358. A farmer is on a walk near the banks of the Winding Water when he finds a body. Pale skinned and drained of blood, the farmer doesn't know what to make of it. In the days to come, the corpse would be identified as none other than Bhall, the god of Murder. Though history would ultimately determine the killer to be a thief known as Cyric, not everyone is convinced by the official narrative. Was Cyric really on the bridge the night before? Did the God of Death stage his own murder? I'm Volothamp Geddarm, and you're listening...to Murderous Intent. Why can't I click on the Subscribe button?
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Dec 20, 2021 14:32
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Jokers Gamble posted:That's weird because the PH specifically says when you reduce a character to 0 HP with a melee attack you can choose to knock them unconscious. That just seems like it would make it harder to give you players plot clues. I cited that rule to the DM in a short-lived Waterdeep: Dragon Heist run I played in a couple years ago as a Paladin with the City Watch background, when he complained that there's no way I could incapacitate someone with a glaive and not kill them during the first fight in the Yawning Portal. I was like "uh...I'm a cop, my instinct and training is to arrest/capture people, not kill them, and this is just a bar brawl bro. Also this thing is just a blunt pole at one end, you know." but he just didn't want to deal with it and the rest of the party was eagerly going murder-hobo. I wasn't terribly disappointed when that particular table sort of lost steam and fizzled after 2 or 3 sessions as online pick-up groups are wont to do, although I never did get a chance to finish playing that adventure  Bottom Liner posted:You're describing modern day America whereas D&D alignment describes evil as more "tolkien orcs" Didn't we just get through establishing, 2 pages ago, that "tolkein orcs" are just "The Mongols and Turks" with a charismatic leader? St0rmD fucked around with this message at 17:22 on Dec 20, 2021 |
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Dec 20, 2021 17:12
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Bottom Liner posted:You're describing modern day America whereas D&D alignment describes evil as more "tolkien orcs" Honestly modern day global capitalism seems like something Lawful Evil devils would be fans of in that just living day to day normal life screws someone over due to systems of oppression. Siivola posted:What the gently caress guys. I was just describing my experiences DMing. I've slowly learned not to assume that the PCs will necessarily do heroic things. I will say that the Domains of Delight PDF presents a reason to avoid violence with the concept that debts someone owes to a fey are inherited by their killers and that other fey are hesitant to fight someone who is notoriously violent for fear of inheriting the debts they've surely taken on from their victims. Playing murder hobo in the Feywild therefore has greater consequences. Hexmage-SA fucked around with this message at 18:54 on Dec 20, 2021 |
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Dec 20, 2021 18:47
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well who amongst us hasn't tried to
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Dec 20, 2021 18:54
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PeterWeller posted:It's Dragonlance. Star Wars grade names are just fine. It's a setting that has featured the knight Sturm Brightblade, the dwarf Flint Fireforge, and the elf princess named after one author's wife Laurana. Don't forget the unfortunately-named bad guy sub-race - the Bozak Draconians! St0rmD posted:I cited that rule to the DM in a short-lived Waterdeep: Dragon Heist run I played in a couple years ago as a Paladin with the City Watch background, when he complained that there's no way I could incapacitate someone with a glaive and not kill them during the first fight in the Yawning Portal. I was like "uh...I'm a cop, my instinct and training is to arrest/capture people, not kill them, and this is just a bar brawl bro. Also this thing is just a blunt pole at one end, you know." but he just didn't want to deal with it and the rest of the party was eagerly going murder-hobo. I wasn't terribly disappointed when that particular table sort of lost steam and fizzled after 2 or 3 sessions as online pick-up groups are wont to do, although I never did get a chance to finish playing that adventure I think another thing that contributes to that a lot of players and GMs only think of losing hit points in terms of taking physical damage. While the idea of "HP = Meat" isn't as pervasive a belief as it once was, I think a lot of people still treat the idea of "taking damage" in a very literal sense. Ergo, in a large segment of players minds, reducing an opponent to 0 HP with a sword means stabbing them is a sword so much that they can't fight anymore, rather than just abstractly defeating the opponent in more abstract terms ie doing that thing in swashbuckler movies where you have your sword right up against their throat and they realize their only options are keep fighting and get killed or give up.
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Dec 20, 2021 19:01
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The last ~10 pages of discussion mirror a bit my experience, as in, managing to rope in some non-invested-in-fantasy-or-gaming friends/SOs, when the orcs raided my friend's farm, despite having a level in DRUID, they locked in their house and hid, waiting for the raid to go away. The idea of going out and FIGHT and KILL THE ORCS? "are you a psycho or what" "well they're killing your cow now" " "Seems like 5e's success is bringing in people who don't understand violence solves everything!   and other novel concepts like "there's no inherently evil race".Char fucked around with this message at 19:07 on Dec 20, 2021 |
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Dec 20, 2021 19:03
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What’s the problem with the name Bozak for draconians?
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Dec 20, 2021 19:10
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If I had to guess, I'd say it's just that it really opens up debate az to whether the name sounds more like 'bozo' or 'ballsack'. Hmm, urban dictionary defines it as genitals,but that could be said about most words that exist.
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Dec 20, 2021 19:16
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