|
Thanks for the feedback; we all had a one on one session 0 with the DM to talk about our characters so I guess the player and the DM skipped the motivation for the campaign for that character when they talked. Still, it was kind of annoying to be rushed by city guards while the bartender of the nearby pub was trying to convince the third player (unsuccessfully) to go and check the noise of the brawl outside.
|
#
?
May 6, 2022 21:14
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 31, 2024 15:35 |
|
|
Yeah, I think it's good practice as the DM to give the players a heads up on what the general, high-level premise of the campaign is going to be and telling players to work to that spec. So for my Descent into Avernus campaign, I told players in my pitch document that the fate of the cities of the River Chionthar would be hanging in the balance on this adventure, and players should make characters who would want to protect the safety of Elturel and Baldur's Gate for any reason. It could be keeping friends safe, protecting their own person power interests, a general commitment to doing good, or just plain because someone will pay reward money. I discussed each character with the player in question before we began, and made sure to integrate their motivation into the campaign start. The callous smuggler who doesn't care about anything gets a dying request from his best friend who went straight, the machiavellian civil servant trades his soul for his life, the cleric gets a vision from his god, the flaming fist mercenary gets orders from his commander. On the other hand, much lower effort is something like when we had our christmas break mini-campaign. I ran Lost Mine of Phandelver and told the players "You are a group of adventurers who have worked together in the past. You are a person who does adventuring jobs for treasure. Make a character that fits both of these parameters." But it's still a version of the same thing, I was telling my players that the adventure was "someone hires you to do a job", so they made characters who were for hire to do a job. The problem comes (as I've seen some DMs do) when the intent is to make the entire adventure even the basic premise a surprise, so players then have to make a character completely in the dark for the sake of realism or versimilitude or whatever, which I think is wrong headed. Sucks if you made a character who works for money and then discover this campaign is about saving the world cause it's the Right Thing To Do. Of course if they got a character creation pitch and just ignored it to make a character who doesn't give a poo poo, that's stupid and someone needs to have words with them.
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2022 21:18
|
|
|
DMs should be tossing out hooks tailored to the characters, and if 4 of the 5 players are good with the hook and the 5th acts like a teenager being told they have to go on a family outing, that's on the 5th. Either they need to lighten up and roll with it or alter their character concept enough to work with the group.
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2022 21:29
|
|
|
radlum posted:Thanks for the feedback; we all had a one on one session 0 with the DM to talk about our characters so I guess the player and the DM skipped the motivation for the campaign for that character when they talked. Still, it was kind of annoying to be rushed by city guards while the bartender of the nearby pub was trying to convince the third player (unsuccessfully) to go and check the noise of the brawl outside. this is why the secret to my dm advice is not to reward it if the player and rest of group are not in lockstep. if the party wants to deal with a brawl and one jag is eating a wheel of fantasy animal cheese, that player is holding the group back. if they want the story to focus on them, sorry, it doesnt. the narrative will find some way to have you triumphantly appear if you want but thats it. you dont get special scenes. we just move on without you until your character gets their moment and... what a moment. the scene where the anti hero everyone thought was gone shows up to do the right thing is a staple for a reason. its cool! the reluctant character showing up late is a fun moment... but im not subjecting the rest of my players to 30 minutes of one on one pointless minutiae for a foregone conclusion. if the party wants to roleplay this out, then they can feast all they want, but chances are only one person thinks this is cool.,;:?!.
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2022 21:40
|
|
|
Azathoth posted:DMs should be tossing out hooks tailored to the characters, and if 4 of the 5 players are good with the hook and the 5th acts like a teenager being told they have to go on a family outing, that's on the 5th. Either they need to lighten up and roll with it or alter their character concept enough to work with the group. There is one caveat to this I think, no matter what the hook is there must be adequite treasure. You can't expect everyone to be a selfless hero who does things for no reward. As long as there is treasure it's easy to motivate any kind of character.
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2022 22:01
|
|
|
Isaacs Alter Ego posted:I do think its important for a DM to offer some kind of motivation to do an adventure, though. I was in a game once where the DM had our characters all get letters with promises of work to attend a fancy party and mingle with the guests in order to obtain information for this organization... so we showed up and said, cool, alright, whats the reward? Nothing. Okay, is there a particularly noble reason to do this? Nope, this is a business thing, I guess, and they wouldn't tell us why they needed the info. Why would our characters do all that? It breaks my immersion and any attempt at haggling for some kind of reward was met with frustration by the DM so I just said I wasn't feeling it and skipped the session. It wasn't like this was the campaign premise either, just some weird side thing they shoved into Lost Mine of Phandelver, so I couldn't have worked in some motivation in my character backstory or anything for that. It just feels very lazy and kind of silly to me to provide no incentive whatsoever to do something then get frustrated when players... don't want to do it. Yeah this for sure is a rookie DM mistake, just skipping straight to the logic of "oh there's a thing and you all do it because it's the story of the game" instead of creating any kind of hook or incentive for the players to actually want to do this thing. I often had the alternate problem where I would try to provide a list of possible hooks and halfway through the first one the players would go "an ogre where you say? okay yeah we head out to kill it" because in their minds it was as simple as this being the next thing I was having them do (it took awhile for me to get to the point where I could be more organic so they started making up their own minds on how to do things). radlum posted:Thanks for the feedback; we all had a one on one session 0 with the DM to talk about our characters so I guess the player and the DM skipped the motivation for the campaign for that character when they talked. Still, it was kind of annoying to be rushed by city guards while the bartender of the nearby pub was trying to convince the third player (unsuccessfully) to go and check the noise of the brawl outside. Yeah see, this is where as a DM I would have the guards rush into the bar and attempt to lock it down to search for accomplices, or have one of the actual bad guys run in and try to take player 3 hostage at knife point. Why were they in a separate pub than the rest of the party anyway?
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2022 22:01
|
|
|
Rutibex posted:There is one caveat to this I think, no matter what the hook is there must be adequite treasure. You can't expect everyone to be a selfless hero who does things for no reward. As long as there is treasure it's easy to motivate any kind of character. Treasure is pretty much pointless in 5E.
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2022 22:03
|
|
|
I guess for beginners you might need to make it explicit that your job is to "yes, and" what the DM serves up, but I'm really surprised someone still wouldn't get that by their third campaign.
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2022 22:03
|
|
|
Absurd Alhazred posted:Treasure is pretty much pointless in 5E. The equipment section has a price for men at arms  But seriously we are talking about roleplay motivations not mechanics. Everyone doesn't want to play a hero. If you are not offering any treasure you are forcing a selfless of character concept on people. Everyone has bills to pay and family and whatever. There needs to be adequate treasure, for role-playing purposes!
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2022 22:06
|
|
|
Rutibex posted:The equipment section has a price for men at arms Counterpoint: XP turns you more and more superhuman in this game.
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2022 22:07
|
|
|
Everyone loves collecting treasure. Players love looting every room and body for the chance to scrounge up extra gold
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2022 22:08
|
|
|
change my name posted:Everyone loves collecting treasure. Players love looting every room and body for the chance to scrounge up extra gold Abstractly, maybe. Concretely it just doesn't matter. Nobody does anything with it, and they would probably throw most of it away if anybody cared about encumbrance rules, except for specific magic items, maybe.
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2022 22:09
|
|
|
Absurd Alhazred posted:Counterpoint: XP turns you more and more superhuman in this game. Yes, and XP should be awarded for treasure. As Gygax intended Absurd Alhazred posted:Abstractly, maybe. Concretely it just doesn't matter. Nobody does anything with it, and they would probably throw most of it away if anybody cared about encumbrance rules, except for specific magic items, maybe. When I play a character I like to do rich people stuff when I'm high level. It has nothing to do with how powerful I am in combat, but I like to be a bigger part of the world. Throwing around money opening a bar or making your own wizard school or whatever is pure roleplay. It's annoying that there is this idea in 5e that "treasure is pointless" because it robs that part of the game. I guess I'm just personally annoyed because of my experience playing a 5e game where I was as poor as pauper at level 14, and the only reason I even had any magic items was because I was an artificer. The DM never gave out any money because "everyone get super powerful from levels in 5e treasure is pointless!" 
Rutibex fucked around with this message at 22:23 on May 6, 2022 |
|
#
?
May 6, 2022 22:10
|
|
|
One of the old groups I DM'd for seemed to enjoy derailing everything to just get drunk and get in tavern brawls and such all the time instead of picking up the loosely assorted myriad plot breadcrumbs I'd leave laying around which was fine and I'd totally roll with it. Wrap up that campaign ask them to make new characters and, next campaign, I surprise them with a central quest to retrieve Arch-Duke Schlitz's stolen brewing still (it was a golem that had run away and just wanted to live a normal life but they didn't know that) that would have them romping through every tavern, brewery, monastery, and winery in the countryside I present the story hook ask them to go around and introduce their characters each one of them sheepishly introduces a character that is either stone-cold sober, a teetotaler, or a recovering alcoholic. I wanted to cry. It's on me for wanting to surprise them and not give them a heads up on what was coming.
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2022 22:19
|
|
|
let the players spend large quantities of gold on a really fancy house
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2022 22:26
|
|
|
IME players will find uses for gold, whether that's for buying magic items (e.g. using the XGTE downtime rules), hiring lawyers in far-off lands for poorly thought out schemes, donating to a university to get an auditorium named after them, hiring artists to paint murals of their heroic deeds, forming a foundation purportedly to help the victims of a series of scams (committed by another party member) seek justice (but actually just another scam), etc Now you could argue most of those are in fact pointless, but they and their characters would disagree
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2022 22:26
|
|
|
Reveilled posted:"You are a group of adventurers who have worked together in the past. You are a person who does adventuring jobs for treasure. Make a character that fits both of these parameters." This is all the setup you need for this game of ours. Backstories are good for possible quest hooks but the campaign should not get derailed before it’s even started because of them. Of course I’m pretty old school. All I really need to become an adventurer is an old guy who gives me a sword and says “It’s dangerous to go alone. Take this.”
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2022 22:30
|
|
|
Rutibex posted:When I play a character I like to do rich people stuff when I'm high level. It has nothing to do with how powerful I am in combat, but I like to be a bigger part of the world. Throwing around money opening a bar or making your own wizard school or whatever is pure roleplay. It's annoying that there is this idea in 5e that "treasure is pointless" because it robs that part of the game. I guess I'm just personally annoyed because of my experience playing a 5e game where I was as poor as pauper at level 14, and the only reason I even had any magic items was because I was an artificer. The DM never gave out any money because "everyone get super powerful from levels in 5e treasure is pointless!" Well, then, why didn't you go rob a liquor store or start a protection racket with your 14 level character?
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2022 22:30
|
|
|
Absurd Alhazred posted:Well, then, why didn't you go rob a liquor store or start a protection racket with your 14 level character? Because I didn't want to be evil! I made a character who explicitly wanted treasure and old artifacts for her magical research. And I just never got any. I mean obviously it was a problem of a bad DM and not 5e itself. Usually I had pretty good luck making characters who are motivated by greed in D&D, it's a pretty standard motivation that's still sort of vestigially baked into the rules 
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2022 22:44
|
|
|
Staltran posted:IME players will find uses for gold, whether that's for buying magic items (e.g. using the XGTE downtime rules), hiring lawyers in far-off lands for poorly thought out schemes, donating to a university to get an auditorium named after them, hiring artists to paint murals of their heroic deeds, forming a foundation purportedly to help the victims of a series of scams (committed by another party member) seek justice (but actually just another scam), etc I would argue that stuff is the entire point of treasure.
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2022 23:01
|
|
|
Rutibex posted:Because I didn't want to be evil! I made a character who explicitly wanted treasure and old artifacts for her magical research. And I just never got any. I mean obviously it was a problem of a bad DM and not 5e itself. Usually I had pretty good luck making characters who are motivated by greed in D&D, it's a pretty standard motivation that's still sort of vestigially baked into the rules You don't want to be evil but you want your character to be motivated by greed. 
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2022 23:03
|
|
|
Absurd Alhazred posted:You don't want to be evil but you want your character to be motivated by greed. Evil is motivated by power, primarily, and ego. Everybody is motivated by greed, except maybe Paladins.
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2022 23:05
|
|
|
Absurd Alhazred posted:You don't want to be evil but you want your character to be motivated by greed. In a world with forgotten ruins to plunder it'd possible to at once be acquisitive and have principles, I imagine
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2022 23:06
|
|
|
Deteriorata posted:Evil is motivated by power, primarily, and ego. not me, my character is motivated only by gains and exist to get the biggest muscles. and does so by fighting increasingly strong monsters(progressive overload)
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2022 23:07
|
|
|
pog boyfriend posted:not me, my character is motivated only by gains and exist to get the biggest muscles. and does so by fighting increasingly strong monsters(progressive overload) Mine does this by carrying hundreds of pounds of hoarded junk in his oversized, reinforced rucksack across hundreds of miles and also killing fools who dare to initiate Violence against our party
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2022 23:10
|
|
|
I feel that one of the problems with 5e is it has very intricate and detailed descriptions, tables, and even starting wealth in regards to treasure. Seriously, the variety of loot you can obtain in even a low-level treasure hoard is pretty impressive, particularly if you differentiate art objects from coinage. But once you get your full plate fighters, a years' worth of material components for mages, and beyond? A lot of the material beyond is either gatekept by the DM via DMG rules subject to their interpretation, or the DM is expected to ad hoc improvise things for when a PC decides to open up their own bar or sets about making an arcane tower with labs and apprentices. So the payoff for all the intricate bean-counting is vague, and a lot of gaming groups thus don't want to take the gamble. Unless there's some hard-baked benefit of spending 5k vs 50k on a small keep, just tossing all the treasure into a nebulous "money pit" can be unsatisfying unless the DM does the heavy lifting or makes good use of downtime rules between adventures. Honestly, I do prefer 5e's way over 3e/4e mandating a minimum standard of magic items and bonuses per tier in order to be effective. But I feel that the pendulum swung too far in the other direction. What WotC needs to do is some kind of official "Strongholds & Followers" making more intricate optional mini-games for gaming groups who want to see their four-figure keep/guild/network noticeably grow and give progressively better benefits when it hits five and even six figure gp sums. As popular as Matt Colville is, there's a lot of gaming tables who shirk away from anything that smells of self-publishing. Libertad! fucked around with this message at 23:42 on May 6, 2022 |
|
#
?
May 6, 2022 23:38
|
|
|
pog boyfriend posted:not me, my character is motivated only by gains and exist to get the biggest muscles. and does so by fighting increasingly strong monsters(progressive overload) Now I wanna play a character based on Flex Mentallo instead of what I have cooked up.
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2022 23:49
|
|
|
Libertad! posted:What WotC needs to do is bring back gold for xp 
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2022 23:54
|
|
|
If it's not rude to ask, what campaign goes to 14 level and never finds time to let you make bank? Is it all wild monsters that don't collect shinies and have no valuable bits to hack off? Evil temples where all the gold is fake and the bandit's real treasure was friendship? People who have numbers big enough to fight 14th level adventurers tend to lead extravagant lifestyles, in my mind.
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2022 00:12
|
|
|
Money is good for planning for your retirement. What does your character's happy ending look like? You've saved the world -- now what? Most races live less than a century, and we can assume most of them get all the aches and pains of middle age just like RL humans do, so you won't want to be a homeless bum and sleep in the woods every night punching wolves for the rest of your life. By the time you've started adventuring you probably have less than 20 years before being a hobo becomes really uncomfortable. Meeting goals is satisfying. So set up some extremely long term goals you can work toward. A house. A shop. A school. A keep. An inn. An orphanage for all those monster kids whose parents you murdered. An herb garden. A wilderness preserve. An elevator to the moon.
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2022 00:12
|
|
|
All my characters retirement plan is to be eaten by a dragon.
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2022 00:14
|
|
|
If nothing else, at level 14 you should be able to take down the biggest bounties a kingdom has to offer. Winning land titles for slaying dragons should be easy. And also, then you can chop up the dragon into sellable bits and make more mad money.
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2022 00:16
|
|
|
Azathoth posted:All my characters retirement plan is to be eaten by a dragon. Kinky.
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2022 00:17
|
|
|
Absurd Alhazred posted:lovely unhelpful nihilist shitpost
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2022 02:58
|
|
|
Mr. Lobe posted:In a world with forgotten ruins to plunder it'd possible to at once be acquisitive and have principles, I imagine "Fortune and glory, kid... Fortune and glory."
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2022 03:11
|
|
|
Mr. Lobe posted:If nothing else, at level 14 you should be able to take down the biggest bounties a kingdom has to offer. Winning land titles for slaying dragons should be easy. And also, then you can chop up the dragon into sellable bits and make more mad money. Well, sure. But the question is what do you do with treasure once you have all adventuring equipment you want. What good is it? In character most people won't be going "oh jeez another sack of gold what am I supposed to do with this poo poo?" Your character has things they would like to do with the power of money, the player just has to figure out what those things are so money remains an incentive.
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2022 07:37
|
|
|
We currently created a nation based off a deck of many things draw way back when. We now rule Vassa, Damara, Thar, and The Ride. Basically just stopping calamity after calamity over the last 6 years. We are level 13 now but continue to just help out those in need and rolling well. We've created a Communist utopia. It's great
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2022 07:53
|
|
|
Do any official books have a price for the Antimatter Rifle's ammunition?
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2022 12:24
|
|
|
Cassa posted:Do any official books have a price for the Antimatter Rifle's ammunition? As far as I'm aware, Energy Cells are named but not priced. https://www.dndbeyond.com/equipment/energy-cell
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2022 13:34
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 31, 2024 15:35 |
|
|
Cassa posted:Do any official books have a price for the Antimatter Rifle's ammunition? There are prices for antimatter ammo in the 2004 D20 Future book. You can also find prices for spaceships, time machines, battle mechs, and nuclear bombs  You will have to use the purchase DC to GP conversion chart Rutibex fucked around with this message at 13:43 on May 7, 2022 |
|
#
?
May 7, 2022 13:40
|
|