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My goal is to have a ghost town of 50% mannequins and 50% mannequin mimics, plus one NPC hermit who is oblivious and cannot discern nor trigger mimics. I put the over/under on then killing the NPC at 85.5
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Mar 30, 2023 04:04
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Raenir Salazar posted:I borrow the general idea of some regions and basically convert the adventure modules to my setting via filing off the serial numbers basically and adjusting things to fit my setting's lore if need be. What's ironic is that despite the original Dragonlance modules having gained a reputation for being rail-roady there's actually a TON of stuff to mine ideas from in them. If nothing else I think they have some really cool set pieces and dungeons to repurpose into one's setting of choice. I actually ended up slotting the ruins of Xak Tsaroth into a recent game I was running with some light reskinning and it worked really well as a spectacle-filled adventure location.
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Mar 30, 2023 04:14
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Azathoth posted:I'm gonna do a room where everything is a mimic but they each only reveal themselves when interacted with. Mimic table, mimic rug, mimic writing quill that bites their hand, mimic inkwell that shoots ink like a squid, etc. I'm curious how many combats it'll take before they slowly back out of the room carefully not touching anything (the door is also a mimic it was playing possum until they tried to leave). I want to do a town that is all just one big mimic trying to learn about human interactions. It's gotten pretty good at it but the longer they hang out the weirder and more clingy it (they) become(s).
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Mar 30, 2023 04:15
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I made a dungeon based on part of the Psychotronics Lab in Prey. There's a room where there is a large number of mimics including sticky notes saying "not a mimic" on things that had been tested by the now-dead scientists. (One of the sticky notes is in itself a mimic.) It was the long-lost secret lab of a famous alchemist who had certain knowledge someone wanted but disappeared decades ago. There were a large number of mimics of different sizes based on the size of the object where a large number of things were, based on the size of the object they normal mimics, more powerful large mimics, young baby mimics that were harmless, and the characters were stalked by a "hunter mimic" that was very powerful and very good at sneaking and hiding as they explored, and did some hit and run attacks on them. I pulled the "non a mimic" sticky note thing in his main workshop, where he had placed them on most of his tools and jars of ingredients. The players found his remains next to his diary that he was writing in at the time of his death. The second "not a mimic" note on his diary turned into a tiny mimic and skittered off. According to the diary, he was researching the mimicry magic of the mimics and had procured a few of them from an exotic animals dealer. But one escaped and got into his magical items vault, and some interaction between the mimic and the items caused it to rapidly reproduce, creating many offspring. However, mimics are not very strong and he has an ingenious method to tell objects apart from mimics and it's only a matter of time before all of them are BattleMaster fucked around with this message at 04:32 on Mar 30, 2023 |
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Mar 30, 2023 04:27
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I honestly really like digging into the lore to add to the world. Forgotten Realms has a ton of neat junk hiding in old 2e books that can be a really fun jumping off point or can be used to flesh out basic ideas that you don't wanna have to think too hard about. In Descent into Avernus, I wanted something that called back to Limbo as described by Dante, so I wanted an itinerant philosopher who would wander Avernus and give players an avenue, through philosophy, to work to undo the planar effect of Hell that can turn you lawful evil. Through the FR wiki, I found an old Chessentan mage-turned-philosopher named Heptios and ran with that to help get a quick idea of who the character would be. It fell a little flat, but chiefly because I shouldn't have used the planar effect in the first place because it sucks, and also because I had incorrectly guessed that some of the players would be interested in moral philosophy (or in the mechanical path I created toward redemption), but that's not the lore's fault. If anything, I'd have been more disappointed if I'd wasted lots of time and creative energy developing the character on my own only for it to go mostly ignored.
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Mar 30, 2023 05:17
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The rolls for constant exhaustion and alignment change were way too brutal, and they don't really inspire fun at all
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Mar 30, 2023 06:22
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Azathoth posted:I'm gonna do a room where everything is a mimic but they each only reveal themselves when interacted with. Mimic table, mimic rug, mimic writing quill that bites their hand, mimic inkwell that shoots ink like a squid, etc. I'm curious how many combats it'll take before they slowly back out of the room carefully not touching anything (the door is also a mimic it was playing possum until they tried to leave). I had a room where basically everything had a tiny note tied to it that said 'NOT A MIMIC.' They carefully used Mage Hand to check each item in the room without a note. Then the notes attacked as mimic swarms.
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Mar 30, 2023 14:01
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Dienes posted:I had a room where basically everything had a tiny note tied to it that said 'NOT A MIMIC.' They carefully used Mage Hand to check each item in the room without a note. Then the notes attacked as mimic swarms. My players are gonna hate you for telling me this.
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Mar 30, 2023 14:49
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The Taxman posted:The rolls for constant exhaustion and alignment change were way too brutal, and they don't really inspire fun at all What the heck. I was watching XP to level 3s scathing review video on the module and this wasn't mentioned at all. 
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Mar 30, 2023 15:15
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KingKalamari posted:Honestly I've never found FR to be particularly good for mining content from. I think it's mostly because the sort of stuff I typically want to steal from published settings are mapped out adventure locations/dungeons which seem to be the thing most of the major FR products I've come across are weirdly stingy on? Which is weird because one of its big, trademark things is the Undermountain mega dungeon but even if you look at the original box set for that a decent percentage of the map isn't actually keyed out, with the expectation that DMs will fill out the empty rooms themselves. I like FR because I don't want to make up towns, NPCs, and histories, I just want to make up adventures involving those ready made towns, NPCs, and histories. I also steal dungeon maps liberally and just recode them for my own uses.
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Mar 30, 2023 15:31
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i wanna do some candlekeep mystery stuff but there's not a ton of detail in the book on the actual location itself. if my players want to explore candlekeep, i'd like to at least be familiar at a high level with the layout ands stuff. are there any good sources for this? also tangentially, if you were to pick any one source of information on the sword coast, what would that be?
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Mar 30, 2023 15:34
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Raenir Salazar posted:What the heck. I was watching XP to level 3s scathing review video on the module and this wasn't mentioned at all. I don't remember any exhaustion effects other than a possible single-use spell. Not saying they weren't there, just I don't remember that. The alignment shift is a planar effect that I think the module includes as an optional rule. It reproduces the one listed in the DMG for visits to the hells. (There's one other alignment shift effect that can happen exactly once.) Descent into Avernus is definitely a hot mess and requires a lot of work from the DM to make it work. I found it worthwhile because I really like planar junk and big cosmological conflict and metaplot, but absolutely do not pick it up just because you want a new adventure to run. It's a big ugly commitment.
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Mar 30, 2023 16:17
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hot cocoa on the couch posted:i wanna do some candlekeep mystery stuff but there's not a ton of detail in the book on the actual location itself. if my players want to explore candlekeep, i'd like to at least be familiar at a high level with the layout ands stuff. are there any good sources for this? also tangentially, if you were to pick any one source of information on the sword coast, what would that be? This is the only book with real details on Candlekeep https://www.dmsguild.com/product/311436/Elminsters-Candlekeep-Companion I’d get a copy of the North for 2e for more details on the Sword Coast.
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Mar 30, 2023 16:21
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hot cocoa on the couch posted:i wanna do some candlekeep mystery stuff but there's not a ton of detail in the book on the actual location itself. if my players want to explore candlekeep, i'd like to at least be familiar at a high level with the layout ands stuff. are there any good sources for this? also tangentially, if you were to pick any one source of information on the sword coast, what would that be? Candlekeep is purposefully vague. I think the only parts of the layout that stick are the main access bridge (nothing of interest), the generic courtyard after the bridge, and the entrance door where you have to donate a book to enter. Beyond that, I've played a few one shots where they have a hotel/pub just inside the main door and everything beyond that is just library stacks and research rooms. The undercroft is laid out in Shemshine's Rhyme but you would only be going there if you're running that chapter. The Sword Coast is too large of a locale to have only one dependable source book. That being said, Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide is a good starting point.
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Mar 30, 2023 16:23
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2 good answers, thank you both!
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Mar 30, 2023 16:29
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They showed WOTC's new VTT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8NoG-w1RbI
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Mar 30, 2023 16:36
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Have they mentioned anything about whether everyone is gonna be required to pay to use it? One thing I like about Fantasy Grounds is that I paid for the big license and I can run a campaign now for my buddies without them having to pay. Curious if they've said anything about that.
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Mar 30, 2023 16:43
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If your primary interest is the area of the Sword Coast around Candlekeep and Baldur's Gate, Heroes of Baldur's Gate is an excellent source. Volo's Guide to the Sword Coast is also a good source of details for the region.
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Mar 30, 2023 16:47
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Azathoth posted:Have they mentioned anything about whether everyone is gonna be required to pay to use it? One thing I like about Fantasy Grounds is that I paid for the big license and I can run a campaign now for my buddies without them having to pay. Curious if they've said anything about that. Not yet, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s attached to a Beyond Sub however. We should get further information on Monday.
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Mar 30, 2023 16:51
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Yusin posted:Not yet, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s attached to a Beyond Sub however. We should get further information on Monday. Cool, thanks! I'm hoping they have some way where a host or DM can pay more. Being able to do that has been instrumental on getting friends to try it out, since not everyone is gonna be willing to plunk down for a subscription (I'm assuming they're doing a subscription) to try a one shot to see if they like TTRPGs.
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Mar 30, 2023 17:16
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Am I too optimistic thinking that would just be built into the current DDB subscription which only one person really needs to pay for?
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Mar 30, 2023 17:23
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My guess is the platform is going to be free for anyone to download and use. And connect to other games. What will cost money is the modules and the minis. My guess is the GM will also be able to share their materials with players at some subscription level. My hunch is they raise the sub price some tho. Or add another tier.
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Mar 30, 2023 17:25
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Dexo posted:My guess is the platform is going to be free for anyone to download and use. And connect to other games. That’s what I suspect too. Character models will be associated with the player, rather than with the game set by the DM. Then, you can charge players money to alter their model, offering a smattering of customization options to start, but perhaps offering purchasable packs or a subscription service to access more options. In this way, both the DM and the players are spending money on customization.
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Mar 30, 2023 17:31
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Here are the optional rules for Avernus I mentioned earlier Exhaustion Avernus's combination of oppressive heat and supernatural malevolence weighs on the bodies and souls of those who are not evil. A non-evil creature treats normal travel through Avernus as a forced march and must make a Constitution saving throw at the end of each hour of travel. The DC is 10 + 1 for each hour of travel. On a failed saving throw, a creature suffers one level of exhaustion. Pervasive Evil Evil pervades the Nine Hells, and visitors to this plane feel its influence. At the end of each long rest taken on this plane, a visitor that isn't evil must make a DC 10 Wisdom saving throw. On a failed save, the creature's alignment changes to lawful evil. The change becomes permanent if the creature doesn't leave the plane within 1d4 days. Otherwise, the creature's alignment reverts to normal after one day spent on a plane other than the Nine Hells. Casting the dispel evil and good spell on the creature also restores its original alignment. For reference, I didn't wind up implementing the second and the first only when the party traveled by foot
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Mar 31, 2023 16:26
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That second one is just dumb.
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Mar 31, 2023 16:29
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Yeah, it should be immediate and permanent after the failed save. As is written it's just a way to make clerics waste some 5th level spell slots every day.
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Mar 31, 2023 16:35
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Too bad I had to drop from our Avernus campaign, traipsing around the hells with my already evil artificer would have been fun "Don't know what you guys are complaining about, everything feels fine to me"
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Mar 31, 2023 17:28
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The Taxman posted:Here are the optional rules for Avernus I mentioned earlier Okay, that's why I didn't remember the exhaustion rules. We traveled by vehicle basically everywhere.
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Mar 31, 2023 17:56
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YggdrasilTM posted:Yeah, it should be immediate and permanent after the failed save. As is written it's just a way to make clerics waste some 5th level spell slots every day. Main problem with this is the adventure would absolutely fall apart if the entire party is evil aligned
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Mar 31, 2023 22:00
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hot cocoa on the couch posted:i wanna do some candlekeep mystery stuff but there's not a ton of detail in the book on the actual location itself. if my players want to explore candlekeep, i'd like to at least be familiar at a high level with the layout ands stuff. are there any good sources for this? also tangentially, if you were to pick any one source of information on the sword coast, what would that be? Baldur's Gate. https://store.steampowered.com/app/228280/Baldurs_Gate_Enhanced_Edition/  Chapter 1 starts in Candle Keep, but you only get to see the village. Chapter 6 lets you go into the library. It's still pretty shallow lore wise.  Like other keeps, Candlekeep could use a village. They have guards, where do the guards live? Where do they go for fun in their off hours? Where does the food come from? Do they have gardens? Farms? Cows? Where do they do the cooking? Where do they store flammable poo poo? Is anyone taking advantage of that rule about needing a book they don't already have to get in? What happens if you spend a week travelling there, and then nope they already have two copies of the book you brought? Real opportunity for a canny NPC to set up a shop of extremely rare (but not very valuable) books sold at a huge markup right outside the front gate. Guy sells you the fantasy equivalent of the 1988 Alberta Farmer's Almanac for $200 -- CK doesn't already have a copy and it is a document of minor historical interest.
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Apr 1, 2023 03:33
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Facebook Aunt posted:Is anyone taking advantage of that rule about needing a book they don't already have to get in? What happens if you spend a week travelling there, and then nope they already have two copies of the book you brought? Real opportunity for a canny NPC to set up a shop of extremely rare (but not very valuable) books sold at a huge markup right outside the front gate. Guy sells you the fantasy equivalent of the 1988 Alberta Farmer's Almanac for $200 -- CK doesn't already have a copy and it is a document of minor historical interest. The keeper has a pretty low bar for what is considered a valuable book. If you sit outside on the steps and write 30 pages of bad poetry or short stories, that should suffice.
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Apr 1, 2023 04:18
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Facebook Aunt posted:Like other keeps, Candlekeep could use a village. They have guards, where do the guards live? Where do they go for fun in their off hours? Where does the food come from? Do they have gardens? Farms? Cows? Where do they do the cooking? Where do they store flammable poo poo? This is D&D, so you need to remember the forever mantra that explains everything always in all editions of D&D past present and future. A wizard did it. Where do the guards live? A wizard did it, they probably just poof in and out of existence, or they have pocket barracks. Where do they go for fun? Wizard did it, some kind of portal to the theme park dimension. Where does food come from? Wizardry. They cook their food with wizards. Wizards store flammable poo poo everywhere, probably they've lined the entire keep's foundations with that stuff because wizards don't know right from wrong. The world isn't a turtle on top of another turtle, turtles all the way down: it's wizards, on top of older wizards on top of even older wizards, each layer having slightly longer beards, slightly more dangerous magic, and slightly more broken moral compasses, layer upon layer, forever.
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Apr 1, 2023 04:47
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Movie owns, go see it 5e still kind of sucks though
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Apr 1, 2023 05:00
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Facebook Aunt posted:Baldur's Gate. https://store.steampowered.com/app/228280/Baldurs_Gate_Enhanced_Edition/ the guards live in the bunkhouse, it's literally on the map in your post. you can drink and dice at the inn. the food comes from goldenfields and other small merchants. there are plenty of gardens on the map. people cook fine, there's fire protection inside the libraries proper but there's way more to candlekeep than that. this is what's frustrating sometimes. someone asks an actual question about realmslore and someone else kramers in and goes "WELL DID YOU EVER THINK ABOUT THIS" as if it's some great revelation while other people have already linked sources going over this stuff. it's the D&D setting discussion equivalent of idk cinemasins or something.
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Apr 1, 2023 06:18
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Arivia posted:the guards live in the bunkhouse, it's literally on the map in your post. you can drink and dice at the inn. the food comes from goldenfields and other small merchants. there are plenty of gardens on the map. people cook fine, there's fire protection inside the libraries proper but there's way more to candlekeep than that. The referral to Balder's gate and the picture were the answer. Here is actual lore that exists. Including a link to the game where it is currently on sale. The rest was just discussion because that's what a discussion forum is for. Looking at the picture reminded me that the bunkhouse in that game is surely not big enough for the number of guards needed to defend a keep. Geez. You don't need to kramer into a thread and be a wet blanket.
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Apr 1, 2023 07:34
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Zurreco posted:The keeper has a pretty low bar for what is considered a valuable book. If you sit outside on the steps and write 30 pages of bad poetry or short stories, that should suffice.
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Apr 1, 2023 15:18
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Arivia posted:the guards live in the bunkhouse, it's literally on the map in your post. you can drink and dice at the inn. the food comes from goldenfields and other small merchants. there are plenty of gardens on the map. people cook fine, there's fire protection inside the libraries proper but there's way more to candlekeep than that. The more interesting question is to take the reverse of that and ask why a place with a shitload of powerful wizards would bother to grow its own food or make their own barracks when they just need someone (or a couple people depending on population) to cast Magnificent Mansion once a day, or if that's too high level, some apprentices to cast Create Food and Water a few times for at least the guards. The thing that's always irked me about the Forgotten Realms is how there seems to be magic loving everywhere but it isn't exploited as a resource. Even if we don't take it to the modern standard of how we exploit fossil fuels, within the setting itself they exploit natural resources like minerals but magic gets treated as something walled off, rather than something around which society would reorient itself.
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Apr 1, 2023 16:47
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Largely because while there is magic, like the number of high level mages capable of casting spells is not actually that high. Candlekeep mostly has a bunch of monks, librarians, and other non-spellcasters who live there as well. And the High level casters are all essentially tenure track professors doing their own weird poo poo and aren't going to burn the energy(spell slots) to do so. And more generally those trained in magic wouldn't want to use their limited resources on stuff like food or water unless they absolutely have to. If like a famine happened sure they could do it to survive, but why waste energy on that when you could be doing other fuckery with the weave. Players interact with Magic far more often than your average NPC, like your average citizen of Baldur's Gate probably knows magic exists, but it's in expensive items, or the cleric down the street who can patch wounds. Or the show offy rear end in a top hat in the bar doing fire cantrips all night.
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Apr 1, 2023 16:57
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Yeah, a generally good answer to the question "why aren't wizards solving this" is that they either have better things to do, or feel they have better things to do. Besides, what else are all those mundane peasants going to do with their time besides farm or clean the streets or whatever drudgery isn't being solved by magic?
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Apr 1, 2023 17:40
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Mr. Lobe posted:Yeah, a generally good answer to the question "why aren't wizards solving this" is that they either have better things to do, or feel they have better things to do. Besides, what else are all those mundane peasants going to do with their time besides farm or clean the streets or whatever drudgery isn't being solved by magic? A BBEG who wants to use magic to automate away all of the crappy menial jobs
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Apr 1, 2023 17:42
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