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Raenir Salazar posted:Not backseat modding or anything but also as a Professional D&D Original Character Art Commissioner(tm, Do Not Steal), is this a trapstar specific thing (i.e they cross the Horny Barrier?) or is it generally the case art/characters we wanna show off should in the proper thread for it? You can also feel free to post in the thread (https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=4052869) if you want to ask people some roleplay questions about the subjects of your commissions/artwork.
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Feb 22, 2024 01:01
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PeterWeller posted:So did he really break his oath by just wanting to run off with the wine? His is the Oath of Vengeance, which is about meting out punishment. If there weren't any wrongdoers in need of punishment there, I don't see an issue with him deciding grabbing the wine and getting the heck out is the best course of action. The exact situation is that they were sent out to get the wine for the festival and it turns out the family that owns the place were run out of the winery when druids took over. So he would have been breaking the promise he made to help them out specifically. BUT thanks to everybody that commented and showed me the RP flavor keeping an oath vs actually being an Oathbreaker so i think next session our Paladin friend is going to have a bit of internal crisis to firmly but politly put him back on the right track (in character, i mean. The player himself has done nothing wrong at all and was maybe just taken in by how big of a fight The Wizard of Wine encounter is compared to everything else in CoS so far  )
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Feb 22, 2024 01:40
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Anyone here done Dungeons of Drakkenheim? It looks really fun but I'm struggling to understand how to align the party behind a single faction. Is the idea that the players get to make individual choices which faction to support and which to piss off? That seems logical to me based on the variety of rewards you can get, and how the factions tend to be themed towards different classes (e.g. Hooded Lanterns for Fighters and Rangers) but at some point the factions are going to make you pick a side and the party needs to be aligned by then or you risk a PvP situation. Or is the idea that the party (or it's leader) makes a group decision which faction to support, and which ones to piss off, and everyone else sort of has to go along with it? That seems easiest to implement but then you get a situation where the Paladin has to be all gung-ho helping the Queen of Thieves, or similar situations with the other factions. The module seems to imply that you need to basically finish picking a side at some point between the inner city and the castle, but doesn't really seem to go into detail about how the players should do that.
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Feb 22, 2024 03:57
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I'm still waiting for the hard cover setting guide I backed to be shipped.
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Feb 22, 2024 04:14
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theironjef posted:It's worth noting that some DM fiats are absolutely justified because you are also a player and you also deserve to have fun and enjoy your time at the table. This can definitely include things like "I don't want you guys to plan your characters around how you'll be undercutting each other, because it just makes you mad at each other and also for some reason at me, so no PVP and no secret evil agendas" without having to have even the slightest twinge of guilt that you're being a big mean railroader. You can also point out that playing secrets is frankly pretty stupid and mean, because there's only really two reasons to do it. 1, Because you are only deriving enjoyment off the misery of other people at the table. No one else in the party is ever excited when you declare that you betray them. That has never happened and this hobby is 50+ years old. 2, Because you think the other players are SO bad at RP that they can't just act like they don't know your secret motivation, you have to actually keep it a secret. That's most assuredly an rear end in a top hat thing to assume about the other players, right? If you brought them in on the arc you wanted to run for your falling character, they could participate and make it more interesting. "DM is a player, too," is a really big lesson and vital to keep in mind if you're the "forever DM" of your group. My big breakthrough as a DM in 5E came when I realized that most 5E monsters weren't complex enough to give me interesting tactical choices in combat; the removal of the "spellcaster with a full spell list" shrunk the list down even more. So I started designing my own monsters, building in interesting trade-offs to their powers and abilities so that I'd have interesting choices and synergies to employ in encounters. Thinking of encounters not just as carefully balanced but as fun for everyone, including you, makes a big difference in how you go about designing things, and it discourages the "heavy attrition" approach that I think 5E already expects you're not making too much use of. Playing any kind of "secretly evil" character either requires agreement at the table in advance, or very careful handling, and frankly it's more fun to find a way to have the evil agenda without the character being evil. I played one 3E fighter in a Dragonlance campaign, and his backstory was that his parents were cultists and sold his soul to Dispater when he was born, then gaslit him about the agreement. He was convinced that he was bound by the agreement, so he was, and every so often Dispater would command him to do something. The other PCs found out, there were multiple fun conversations where Dispater actually took over my PC's body to speak to the rest of the party, and they were then dedicated to foiling Dispater's plans while freeing my PC of his influence. The character playing straight with them before and building up good credit with the party, and then clearly being in need of rescue, completely undercut the PvP aspect of the situation. My favorite scene with that was another PC who was especially pissed threatening my PC with a knife while Dispater was speaking through him. Dispater calmly invited him to murder his friend, sending his soul to Dis: it would be an inconvenience for Dispater's plans, but not that great of one, and my PC was strong enough the soul itself was of great value. If the other PC hadn't wanted to help mine, that whole situation would have been a disaster, and not the delicious RP it was. Several PCs worked away at that problem and basically broke Dispater's hold on my character right at the climax, right before Dispater could have accomplished his own objectives, in a giant middle finger to the guy. IIRC, they did it in a way where they got to taunt him and then cut him off in mid-sentence; very satisfying. In the campaign wrap-up, my fighter became a devil-hunter, who also went around freeing people from pacts with devils.
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Feb 23, 2024 03:11
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Honestly, wasting hours of my free time creating original monsters and magical items is my greatest fun as DM.
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Feb 23, 2024 14:09
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https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/1avnom2/one_of_my_players_got_mad_that_his_character_died/some guy on Reddit posted:So to give context: the party was on their very first dungeon, looking for the lost child of a man they found on the streets asking for help, pretty standard stuff, they get into the cave and pass some traps and enemies, until one of the traps go off, it's a giant hammer that falls from the ceiling, breaking the floor, leaving a hole that seemingly has no end. I tell them they can barely see inside it, it's pitch black, one of the characters, the wizard, drops a stone to see if there's a floor somewhere down there, after about 5 seconds of silence, they hear the stone cracking on the bottom. The fall is (roughly) 40 feet, I tell them this, expecting them to find a way down, but here's when our main character comes into play. His name is Ulkrard, he's an old man, a necromancer, edgy and silent. "I want to drop down the hole and use my dagger to stab the wall right before falling, that way I can go down quick", I asked him if he was sure about this stunt. "Just watch" he said as he rolled a 1 on his dexterity check, and took all of his HP down with the fall damage dice. The whole table was crying laughing as this hooded, tall, old man dropped down a pit and broke his neck in an instant, needless to say, the necromancer was not only embarrassed but pissed off. He started complaining that "this isn't how MY character is supposed to die, that makes no sense!" And every attempt at explaining that he literally committed suicide was futile, so he just stayed mad the whole night.
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Feb 23, 2024 14:10
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FreudianSlippers posted:https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/1avnom2/one_of_my_players_got_mad_that_his_character_died/ lol
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Feb 23, 2024 14:37
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Hah, talk about bouncing off a rules-based system. Sounds like everyone involved was pretty new to the game - 5e isn’t particularly deadly but a level 1 Wizard acting like they’re a Kung fu action hero will get it done.
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Feb 23, 2024 14:48
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[in a dramatic anime style, hair blowing in the wind as my twisted body lays on the floor of a pit trap, with only my mouth shown in a grimace as my eyes are artistically shadowed by my hood]: "this isn't how i'm supposed to die, this makes no sense!" hot cocoa on the couch fucked around with this message at 14:54 on Feb 23, 2024 |
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Feb 23, 2024 14:50
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Breaking your fall with stuff like that is explicitly a monk trick - specifically a 4th level monk trick. I hope the DM gave him plenty of warnings about how dumb it was to try and suggested a few alternatives, and didn't just go *rolls dice* nope you're dead, because it sounded like that was a newish player who didn't fully understand how dumb their suggestion was.
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Feb 23, 2024 14:53
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Those first few sessions can be tricky to navigate. The player didn’t realize the likelihood of dying, the DM couldn’t communicate the rules involved, and neither knew how to deal with a roleplaying fail.
Kaal fucked around with this message at 15:22 on Feb 23, 2024 |
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Feb 23, 2024 14:57
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That happened in a 3E game I was in. A lot of new players just don't fully grok tabletop RPGs and think of it like 99% of video games where your actions simply can't cause a permanent game over. DM: You can't see down the well, it's too dark. Fighter: OK I jump down the well. DM: Wait a minute. OK, so you CAN jump down the well if you want to, but if you do your character will literally die Fighter: OK I jump down the well. DM: OK, you die. Fighter: *surprised Pikachu face*
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Feb 23, 2024 15:25
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Kaal posted:Those first few sessions can be tricky to navigate. The player didn’t realize the likelihood of dying, the DM couldn’t communicate the rules involved, and neither knew how to deal with a roleplaying fail. 
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Feb 23, 2024 15:39
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How interested would people be in for a Foundry module which adds Diablo II-esque "Socket" slots or FF7/14-esque Materia slots? I've been looking around and haven't found anything. And feels like could be a cool project? The main idea is basically letting some Items be like Containers for a fixed number of other items that match the right item type (Gems, Runes, Materia, Stones, etc); so a system with less bookkeeping than editing the description, and tracks basically without duplication the socket items. Instead of hanging out in your inventory and having to mark it as "used", it would just be in the subinventory of the item its attached to. Ideally of course it would somehow be able to propagate its bonuses up to the parent item. I dunno how workable this is, but could be neat trying to put together? I haven't done JS or CSS in forever.
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Feb 23, 2024 17:02
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I'm sure there is an appetite for that kind of mod. It makes more sense to just replace/upgrade/enchant the party's current gear but there is no harm in an additional system. How would you prevent power gaming? Only one slot can be swapped over a long rest? Requires attunement to the gear or the slotted item?
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Feb 23, 2024 17:08
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So, it feels right because it's in the name, but radiation is considered radiant damage, right? Nothing else really seems right. I've got a boss battle coming up: a Black Dragon who's made a lair out of an ancient nuclear reactor from a higher-tech earlier Age. (Bleed-over from my latent desire to run Numenera, I guess.) I'm thinking that the years of soaking up latent radiation has altered its breath weapon a bit, so the acid damage also does a bit of radiation damage as well, which could be mitigated by finding and securing hazard suits pre-combat. Mostly, i want to: a. make sure the PCs are taking damage from the "correct" elemental source should they rip up their suit in combat, which is a classic trope, b. run this idea by much more competent DMs than myself and see what y'all think, and c. share the objectively hilarious while also mid-80s-metal-as-all-hell mental image of a party all in bulky hazmat gear rushing in to fight a godsdamned nuclear dragon.
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Feb 23, 2024 17:17
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pseudosavior posted:So, it feels right because it's in the name, but radiation is considered radiant damage, right? Nothing else really seems right. Yeah, I think we established like a month ago that beings from Outer Planes emit beta particles (positrons for good-aligned beings, electrons for fiends) and therefore radiant damage is probably based on radiation. Why did you think the Detect Evil and Good spell is blocked by a thin sheet of lead?
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Feb 23, 2024 17:22
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Huh. Yeah, I definitely missed that connection. Cool, thanks!
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Feb 23, 2024 17:30
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I'd just assumed the Sickening Radiance spell was just "irradiate an area" dressed up as magic.
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Feb 23, 2024 17:50
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Malpais Legate posted:I'd just assumed the Sickening Radiance spell was just "irradiate an area" dressed up as magic. This, plus Solar Dragons being radiant-based points to radiation = radiant damage
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Feb 23, 2024 18:13
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This sets the stage for a whole new—ahem—spectrum of dragons. Or maybe a broader range, all the dragons we currently know falling within the visible wavelengths. Radio dragons, micro dragons, IR dragons…be extremely cautious around UV dragons, and heaven forbid you run into X dragons or, even worse, gamma dragons.
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Feb 23, 2024 18:26
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Quantum dragons. They're already inside your subatomic structure, causing damage that can only be expressed with non-euclidean dice.
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Feb 23, 2024 18:28
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Zurreco posted:I'm sure there is an appetite for that kind of mod. It makes more sense to just replace/upgrade/enchant the party's current gear but there is no harm in an additional system. Currently to even slot them they need to actually find and then hire the one sole high level artificer/enchanter/master smith in the current region. So it's kinda meant to be like a "horizontal" progression system beyond just "make number go up" so I can avoid having to increment a +2 item to +3. But the basic idea is needing to return to town each time they wanna equip something new into a socket.
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Feb 23, 2024 18:29
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Bobby Deluxe posted:Quantum dragons. They're already inside your subatomic structure, causing damage that can only be expressed with non-euclidean dice. Imaginary dice should suffice.
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Feb 23, 2024 18:44
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Gamma Dragons from some sort of Gamma World?
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Feb 23, 2024 19:34
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Alpha Dragons have a breath weapon that's basically harmless unless you breathe it in, so I guess that's a CON save?
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Feb 23, 2024 19:54
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dwarf74 posted:Honestly - this is why 5e needs a funnel I love funnels, but 5e characters take too drat long to create to have them so casually tossed aside. Sure, digital tools speed that up (as it can for DCC or whatever) but beyond that 5e characters are such supermen/women based on high average stats to make it narratively sensical to have so many offed in the sometimes cheap ways that funnels do.
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Feb 23, 2024 20:00
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Asterite34 posted:Alpha Dragons have a breath weapon that's basically harmless unless you breathe it in, so I guess that's a CON save? Stink dragons
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Feb 23, 2024 20:46
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Antifreeze Head posted:I love funnels, but 5e characters take too drat long to create to have them so casually tossed aside.
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Feb 23, 2024 21:16
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I had the party fight a "medusa" which was actually a being from the far realm with a singularity where his head should have been, and gazing upon his visage would petrify you not into stone but into a form of exotic matter that did necrotic damage on touch. So I guess for me radiation = radiant, strange matter = necrotic.
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Feb 23, 2024 23:17
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If you want to piss everyone off: 'as you walk down the strange hallway you feel there is something wrong, take six points of damage damage' 'what kind of damage?' 'Damage damage, take another twelve damage damage'
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Feb 23, 2024 23:52
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Outrail posted:If you want to piss everyone off: What True Names are to Names Damage Damage is to Damage.
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Feb 23, 2024 23:53
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Raenir Salazar posted:What True Names are to Names Damage Damage is to Damage. Another twenty four points of damage damage
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Feb 24, 2024 00:04
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The player picks up his character sheet. "No Fred," says the DM, "not Wulfred your character. You. You take six damage."
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Feb 24, 2024 18:10
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PeterWeller posted:The player picks up his character sheet. "No Fred," says the DM, "not Wulfred your character. You. You take six damage." and the DM reaches across the table to smack Fred across the cheek
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Feb 24, 2024 18:23
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I had a bottomless pit in a scenario (this was a star wars game, but I mean let's face it, all the same poo poo). It was set dressing, but the players hyper fixated on it. They wanted to go down and explore. They eventually decide on a plan to jump in and when they get to the bottom use some tech to slow their fall. I explain repeatedly "this is a bottomless pit you have no concept of a bottom here". I even make EACH of them, say "I [character name] wishes to jump into the bottomless pit.", two of them balk and two jump and then are incredibly mad their characters are gone. My favorite part they're like "bottomless pits are not star wars!" lol tell that to the numerous death drops in the fuckin movies. It's a red flag when your DM is like "you need to repeat the following about what you are about to do"
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Feb 24, 2024 18:26
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What's wrong with, as a DM, saying outgame that there's no adventure down there and it's just set dressing and nobody is jumping down the bottomless pit period
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Feb 25, 2024 01:40
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BabyFur Denny posted:What's wrong with, as a DM, saying outgame that there's no adventure down there and it's just set dressing and nobody is jumping down the bottomless pit period Let them jump. From then on, when they ask what they're character is doing, just say, "falling." When they finally catch on, tell them it's time to roll up a new character. You weren't kidding about it being bottomless.
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Feb 25, 2024 01:44
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BabyFur Denny posted:What's wrong with, as a DM, saying outgame that there's no adventure down there and it's just set dressing and nobody is jumping down the bottomless pit period That sounds like the DM is bluffing and actually has an badass epic dungeon down there.
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Feb 25, 2024 01:46
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