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I'm about to start running Waterdeep: Dragon Heist for my group that just finished up Curse of Strahd. I'm having trouble deciding what Season to run, anyone who ran it / is running it have any suggestions?
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Jan 2, 2019 23:38
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mkultra419 posted:I'm about to start running Waterdeep: Dragon Heist for my group that just finished up Curse of Strahd. I'm having trouble deciding what Season to run, anyone who ran it / is running it have any suggestions? I just started it too, and went with Xanathar because the group is mostly kids, and that seemed like the most straightforward and easiest to understand path.
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Jan 2, 2019 23:43
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mkultra419 posted:I'm about to start running Waterdeep: Dragon Heist for my group that just finished up Curse of Strahd. I'm having trouble deciding what Season to run, anyone who ran it / is running it have any suggestions? I AM running it, but unfortunately I have only just gotten past the first dungeon crawl. One thing I will say though is make the Kenku fight a bit easier! One of my players almost lost their character due to a lucky backstab by one of the tiny sods. Also, I found Raener a great NPC to have help out, but if people don't want him in the fight maybe have the last boss be just the half orc mage apprentice and not ALSO the intellect devourer. Those things are cruel. I would like to know who you choose. I know that a fair amount of the game tends to go with the Winter or Autumn villains as the most threaded into the rest of the plot, but I found Summers ones to be towards my groups personal taste.
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Jan 2, 2019 23:44
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MonsterEnvy posted:I don't agree. But I am also of the type who is not anti control effect like everyone else seems to be, so I can get why you guys won't agree with me. The dump stat part was a joke. You're unhelpful and frankly, kind of lovely. Hurr durr pick a different dump stat. Tell me more about why the party needs to pump Intelligence. It's a CR7 monster, a few of them should not be able to lock out over half of a party from the entirety of combat, especially when that party is level 15. Let's take a look at the Mind Flayer's Mind Blast: a 60-foot cone originating from the mind flayer, forcing all targets to make a DC15 Intelligence Save or be stunned for up to a minute (other stuns simply end at the end of the creature's next turn). They repeat the save at the end of their turn (read: their turn is doing nothing), ending the stun early on a success. It also does a not insignificant amount of psychic damage and recharges 33% of the time, effectively meaning that multiple mind flayers compounds the lockout period to be basically forever. Combat seldom lasts the duration of the base mind blast, nevermind compounding blasts. Anyone that fails their first mind blast save is almost guaranteed to continue to fail it, because again, Intelligence is a worthless stat for anyone that isn't a Wizard (and some other niche subclasses). Additionally the only spell that explicitly ends stuns is a 9th level spell. On top of that, the Mind Flayer melee attack also enforces this stun effect so long as the creature remains grappled. Either I have to engage with this gentleman's agreement that the mind flayers are idiots who cannot plan (which is definitely against their characterization as schemers and their high intelligence) or lean into the fact that 4/6 of my players are physically incapable of fighting a monster whose CR is less than half of their player levels. So yeah, I conclude that mind flayers are a poo poo monster and their CR is not indicative of how incredibly gently caress You they are.
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Jan 2, 2019 23:51
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Josef bugman posted:I'm planning on having my Mind Flayer attack constitution to start with to try and get some of the burly fighters out of it, then go for dominating others before fleeing the field. mkultra419 posted:I'm about to start running Waterdeep: Dragon Heist for my group that just finished up Curse of Strahd. I'm having trouble deciding what Season to run, anyone who ran it / is running it have any suggestions? I let my players vote. I told them the chapter season names (Spring Madness, Hell of a Summer, Maestro's Fall, Winter Wizardry) and let them pick which one. Josef bugman posted:I AM running it, but unfortunately I have only just gotten past the first dungeon crawl. One thing I will say though is make the Kenku fight a bit easier! One of my players almost lost their character due to a lucky backstab by one of the tiny sods. Also, I found Raener a great NPC to have help out, but if people don't want him in the fight maybe have the last boss be just the half orc mage apprentice and not ALSO the intellect devourer. Those things are cruel. The Kenku were very easy. Remember that they retreat if wounded or if two of them go down. Raener is very helpful, he makes quick work of the ID and can easily bail out any PC that falls victim to it.
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Jan 2, 2019 23:56
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Malpais Legate posted:You're unhelpful and frankly, kind of lovely.
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Jan 3, 2019 00:05
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I also discovered stunlocking players for more than a turn is awful and a red flag to modify the encounter. It feels like a vestigial appendix from the more adversarial D&D, sometimes that's good but the players should know it's that kind of encounter. My players have explicit warning about aberrations and especially mind flayers, to be feared and carefully prepared for. eg: How far does it's cone go? Can it be hit at range? Can we buff Int? Where does one get this information? As a B plan you could use the Short Term Madness table in the DMG if you think the encounter is going to gently caress things up too much. Either use it when the save is failed and give the character a short term madness instead or let the characters be stunned at first for a turn or so and then roll them a madness for the balance of the effect duration. If you don't want to modify Illithid lore then you could decide that an item on the party creates psychic distortion, whaddaya know? That item should be studied...
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Jan 3, 2019 01:08
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If you keep it at all, "stuns for 1 turn" is still incredibly powerful. I'd maybe go "stunned for 1 turn, or take damage to do a thing as you fight through the haze". But yeah, group stuns on pcs is wacky, unless each class had multiple ways to handle this situation. Or at least most. Some?
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Jan 3, 2019 01:13
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My friend got me Curse of Strahd, and I like a lot of it I've read so far but drat the Vistani are super tone deaf and uncomfortable. If I ever run this (the group is one of those 'juggle like 3 or 4 different games at a time' sorts), I'm definitely thinking of heavily reflavoring them. One thing which I think might work towards that, counterbalance some of overall tone, and appeal to my friends specifically is to play up the multiplanar aspect of Barovia from the start, with the players being farflung wanderers from across the Planescape, all converged on a foggy path and had their fortune read, yadda, yadda, yadda. With that, the Vistani could be more mysteriously multiplanar wanderer sorts, and not just "the perfidious gypsy with a literal Evil Eye power"
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Jan 3, 2019 01:17
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The way to keep the existing lore and mechanics, while at the same time limiting the ability to infinitely stunlock the party would be to steal the 5e mechanic that once a character resists or shakes an effect, they are inoculated from further applications of that effect. If that feels too generous and takes away too much from the Mind Flayer’s danger, just increase resist DCs and lower the shake DC by 2 each subsequent application, making it easier for the players to recover. Furthermore, allow for player characters to provide cover for people behind them, such that if they’re in a linear tunnel, only the front line gets affected, and set the rooms up in such a way as to give players room to spread out while making the cone no wider than 3 spaces at the maximum range. Your players may get hit, but it’ll be one or two at a time and over time they’ll get better at shaking the effect. Barbarian rage should confer advantage against, or a +5 DC in the players’ favor against resisting the stuns for being enraged, allowing an otherwise obvious Int dump class a chance to shine against a hard-counter foe. Furthermore, mind flayers should retreat at the first sign of potentially losing a fight. If more than one gets under 50% HP, or one dies outright, the others should be booking it out of there. The next time the players encounter the mind flayers, they should be negotiating a resolution instead of beating itching for a fight. Failing negotiations, there should be a well-planned trap to spring and the flayers should again be retreating leaving their fodder slaves and the trap to dissuade the adventurers from pursuit. Play them as intelligent creatures with a very well developed sense of self preservation, not a psionic phalanx with machine gun stunlock drill.
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Jan 3, 2019 01:22
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Gharbad the Weak posted:If you keep it at all, "stuns for 1 turn" is still incredibly powerful. I'd maybe go "stunned for 1 turn, or take damage to do a thing as you fight through the haze". I used a ulitharid big bad once and part of the prep for that fight was getting several headbands of mind blank from some githzerai monks prior to the combat. It let part of the party flank the monster and get the drop while being immune to the blast. I also gave the ulitharid some psion/mystic attacks and lair actions (and legendary resistance) so it had more to do.
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Jan 3, 2019 01:27
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Kaysette posted:I used a ulitharid big bad once and part of the prep for that fight was getting several headbands of mind blank from some githzerai monks prior to the combat. It let part of the party flank the monster and get the drop while being immune to the blast. I also gave the ulitharid some psion/mystic attacks and lair actions (and legendary resistance) so it had more to do. I like this. "Let's gear up for this big deal fight. I've seen Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I know how this works." koreban posted:Furthermore Holy goodness this sounds like a bunch of things, though.
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Jan 3, 2019 01:54
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MonsterEnvy posted:I let my players vote. I told them the chapter season names (Spring Madness, Hell of a Summer, Maestro's Fall, Winter Wizardry) and let them pick which one. Excellent idea, thanks.
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Jan 3, 2019 02:17
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MonsterEnvy posted:They did do something wrong here. They apparently did not look at the monsters statblock to see what they could do before using them. Then were surprised when the dangerous monster turned out to be dangerous. I’ve never used or encountered mind flayers in my previous playing or DMing of D&D. I just read the stat block, and while I don’t like control loss, my assumption is that the people who have intensively studied this game while developing it assigned the CR appropriately. (Certainly by now there would be errata if something were way off.) To discover that a pair of mind flayers could slaughter a level 12 party, rather than being a way to warm up and flex like a pair of tyrannosaurs would be, would be both distressing and embarrassing as a DM. (I even cheated because I’ve read this thread and searched Sage Advice to see if there was even the slightest caution about using them in a campaign, or warning of some kind.) Even if the books are regularly excelled by experienced players, they should help inexperienced ones produce better results than those players would have without the book. The mind flayer is a straight gently caress-up, and they should amend and apologize — or just remove from future printings if it’s too hard to get right. This on its own condemns neither the texts (please let this one go by, Ar*v*a) nor the authors as useless, but it can’t really be taken as an example of competence either. It’s a disservice to the buyers and players, and it’s hard to come up with a charitable interpretation of why such an attractive nuisance has been left to stand unaddressed.
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Jan 3, 2019 03:27
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Kaysette posted:I used a ulitharid big bad once and part of the prep for that fight was getting several headbands of mind blank from some githzerai monks prior to the combat. It let part of the party flank the monster and get the drop while being immune to the blast. I also gave the ulitharid some psion/mystic attacks and lair actions (and legendary resistance) so it had more to do. That's all good. There's a big difference between using mind flayers against a prepared and fore warned party and dropping them in as a wandering monster. The difference is don't drop them in as a wandering monster.
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Jan 3, 2019 03:29
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Gharbad the Weak posted:Holy goodness this sounds like a bunch of things, though. Is it though? Without the expository and reasoning: • Narrow the blast and intervening characters give cover to those behind them. • Resisting/shaking effect inoculates against future mind blast attacks. • Barbarian Rage negates the stun. • Flayers flee at low HP and/or death of one of their number. Set a trap and attempt to negotiate out of further combat. Well-developed sense of self-preservation.
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Jan 3, 2019 03:53
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Subjunctive posted:Even if the books are regularly excelled by experienced players, they should help inexperienced ones produce better results than those players would have without the book. The single biggest complaint about my entire 5e expereince. The books and so much of the player culture have the attitude of "a good GM could fix it" and then prefers to poo poo all over you rather than explain how to be a good GM.
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Jan 3, 2019 04:42
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If there is one thing that I have learned regarding monsters in D&D 5e, and honestly in a couple of other systems: CR means jack poo poo. I've both seen/been in parties that just absolutely stomped all over what should have been a deadly encounter and also had really rough encounters with what should have been simple threats. And a single creature of even deadly threat could quite likely still get its butt kicked with ease if it isn't buffed up with legendary actions/resistances. Worst yet, and this problem does lean into some thread favorites like SotDL, is that the recommended challenge rules from the rulebooks aren't even followed in a lot of adventures.
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Jan 3, 2019 05:12
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I had a party of level 7stomp a hydra in one encounter, then get wrecked by a roper later. 5e’s CR is hosed.
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Jan 3, 2019 05:50
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There's too much variance in what "a level X PC" actually means in this game for any kind of "this encounter is this hard" system to work without completely lifting the veil on which player-facing choices suck, which would cause a shitstorm even (especially) if they somehow got it right, which they wouldn't. E: the variation in character effectiveness also affects things in ways that might not be immediately obvious. For example: the same stun from the same monster has a vastly different effect on the combat depending on whether it takes out the cha-primary fighter or the aggressively optimised sorlock. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 07:23 on Jan 3, 2019 |
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Jan 3, 2019 07:09
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Subjunctive posted:I’ve never used or encountered mind flayers in my previous playing or DMing of D&D. I just read the stat block, and while I don’t like control loss, my assumption is that the people who have intensively studied this game while developing it assigned the CR appropriately. (Certainly by now there would be errata if something were way off.) To discover that a pair of mind flayers could slaughter a level 12 party, rather than being a way to warm up and flex like a pair of tyrannosaurs would be, would be both distressing and embarrassing as a DM. Thing is just a couple of week ago my party of four level 13's fought three Mind Flayers. It was kind of one sided in our favor. One Mind Flayer was killed before it could act, one mind flayer then blasted the bard and fighter, with the fighter passing. The other mind flayer repositioned to try and get the warlock and ranger in the cone next round and used dominate monster in the meantime on the fighter. (Which he passed again) Then the party killed both mind flayers before they could act again. The DC is not super high for the mind blast, so I don't get why people keep saying anyone debilitated by it is not going to pass to act again. Assuming a 0 modifier it's a 25% chance to pass. MonsterEnvy fucked around with this message at 07:23 on Jan 3, 2019 |
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Jan 3, 2019 07:20
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I heard from a guy at one of my LGS that they were coming out with a Magic Item Compendium for 5e, but every time I try to look it up online, I only ever see about the 3.5 version. Was hoping someone here could confirm. Also, +1 to the goon who mentioned the kenku fight in Dragon Heist. I started running it for my friends (they chose Spring based on when I told them what the seasons were like in Waterdeep), and one of the Kenku turned out to be Legolas with a beak. Managed to crit the wizard and would have outright killed her with the massive damage rule, but she's smart and asked if using her Shield spell could make it a regular hit instead of a crit, which made perfect sense to me. In the future, I'm probably just going to decide that only certain enemies can crit - nameless mooks need not apply, for example.
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Jan 3, 2019 07:25
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MonsterEnvy posted:Thing is just a couple of week ago my party of four level 13's fought three Mind Flayers. It was kind of one sided in our favor. One Mind Flayer was killed before it could act, one mind flayer then blasted the bard and fighter, with the fighter passing. The other mind flayer repositioned to try and get the warlock and ranger in the cone next round and used dominate monster in the meantime on the fighter. (Which he passed again) Then the party killed both mind flayers before they could act again. So you’re saying this is a representative experience? It certainly doesn’t sound like it from what I keep reading here and elsewhere. Why do you think those accounts might differ? How do you think the challenge of that encounter compares to one where you were facing 3 giant apes instead, to randomly choose another CR7 creature?
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Jan 3, 2019 07:29
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Subjunctive posted:So you’re saying this is a representative experience? It certainly doesn’t sound like it from what I keep reading here and elsewhere. Why do you think those accounts might differ? It would probably be easier, but longer. The apes have more hp so it likely would last an extra round or two of them being ineffective cause none of them have the attack bonus to reliably hit my parties high ac's. Mind Flayers are glass cannons, they have powerful offensive powers, but low hp and ac. The party had just come out of against the giants where they were fighting 5 fire giants at once at one point. So they are pretty well equipped to deal with most threats. MonsterEnvy fucked around with this message at 07:40 on Jan 3, 2019 |
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Jan 3, 2019 07:38
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the_steve posted:I heard from a guy at one of my LGS that they were coming out with a Magic Item Compendium for 5e, but every time I try to look it up online, I only ever see about the 3.5 version. Was hoping someone here could confirm. It's a possibility. The next 5e book should be announced at some point this month.
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Jan 3, 2019 07:44
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Soylent Pudding posted:The single biggest complaint about my entire 5e expereince. The books and so much of the player culture have the attitude of "a good GM could fix it" and then prefers to poo poo all over you rather than explain how to be a good GM. :files: the 4e DMG and read that. It’s beautifully written exposition on how to DM and adjudicate at the table. Just familiarize yourself with the standard 5e stuff like (dis)advantage, cover, conditions, surprise, and the like. Read up on edge cases for them and then abstract them out into basic tools to resolve anything weirder than “I’m swinging a sword at X” or “I cast fire bolt at Y”. Reward creative and/or in-character play by the players and use the least negative rule you can against your players. I.e. instead of the monsters getting a surprise round, they have advantage on the first attack against the unaware party. Your bard resists the wyvern’s poison? He’s immune to the condition (but not the additional damage) for the rest of the battle. Rogue wants to acrobatically parkour up a wall and flip over 3 guys to come down on a dude with a dagger to the dome? “Make an attack roll at advantage, good, you hit, roll damage, don’t forget sneak attack because no one saw that coming.”
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Jan 3, 2019 07:51
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Lol at "75% chance to not be allowed to participate" not being that bad. Chance you're still out at the end of turn 1: 75% 2: 56% 3: 42% 4: 31% 5: 23% 6: 17% (roughly 1/6)
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Jan 3, 2019 07:53
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AlphaDog posted:Lol at "75% chance to not be allowed to participate" not being that bad. Yeah I don't find it that bad. Me and my group are fairly quick and well engaged so control effects have never bothered us. This is literally the big thing while it's not a popular opinion here, I don't at all mind control effects and neither does my group.
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Jan 3, 2019 08:00
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1 in 4 chance you'll entirely sit out a fight.
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Jan 3, 2019 08:01
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Sage Genesis posted:Kender and Gully Dwarves, though. People who want to play kender need to be fired into the sun. That is all.
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Jan 3, 2019 08:11
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stuns and disables are just one of those things that you should avoid in tabletop roleplaying despite their presence and preponderance in other similar media because A. a person is only controlling the one character, so a stun takes them away from the table entirely, and B. even a single round stun comes out to something like 5 to 30 minutes of real-time, as opposed to a Dota Storm Bolt "only" lasting a few seconds. and that's on top of the fact that D&D combat usually involves so few rounds that even a single round of stun can already mean being away from anywhere between half to a quarter of the battle
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Jan 3, 2019 08:45
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MonsterEnvy posted:Yeah I don't find it that bad. Me and my group are fairly quick and well engaged so control effects have never bothered us. This is literally the big thing while it's not a popular opinion here, I don't at all mind control effects and neither does my group. Are you seriously telling me that if you told any member of your group, before they got a turn, "yeah it hits you, roll a d4 and on a 1 you sit this fight out", that they'd go "rolled a 1, this is cool and good and I'm having a great time". How long are your rounds? How many players? Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 09:35 on Jan 3, 2019 |
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Jan 3, 2019 09:30
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AlphaDog posted:Lol at "75% chance to not be allowed to participate" not being that bad. Assuming you're not murdered while helpless.
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Jan 3, 2019 09:56
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MonsterEnvy, save vs cone of dogpile again. At disadvantage from Alphadogs third degree maneuver. Anyway, now looking at the tables again, the long term madness table might be a better alternative to stunlock as very few long term madness's incapacitate, while about 60% of the short term results continue to knock out the character. Kaysette had it right though, it's a battle you need to prep for. I'm still wondering if the OP initially complaining about mind flayers was surprising the party with them or had given them a chance to prepare.
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Jan 3, 2019 10:11
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What flavor of helmet would be the best to block psionic attacks? Magneto, Juggernaut, or tin foil.
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Jan 3, 2019 10:22
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Therapeutic Crystal Helmet of Neutral Vibration https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aaJoLV7xko
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Jan 3, 2019 10:30
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GloriousDemon posted:What flavor of helmet would be the best to block psionic attacks? Magneto, Juggernaut, or tin foil. A pickehaub, and after it absorbs 1d4 psionic attacks the spike briefly glows green before rocketing off and hitting the most recent attacker for 4d6 psychic damage (cha save for half) and 1d4+2 piercing damage (no save). The spike can't be re-attached until you take a long rest. It counts as a dagger +2 for 8 hours or until re-attached.
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Jan 3, 2019 10:43
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Subjunctive posted:I’ve never used or encountered mind flayers in my previous playing or DMing of D&D. I just read the stat block, and while I don’t like control loss, my assumption is that the people who have intensively studied this game while developing it assigned the CR appropriately. (Certainly by now there would be errata if something were way off.) To discover that a pair of mind flayers could slaughter a level 12 party, rather than being a way to warm up and flex like a pair of tyrannosaurs would be, would be both distressing and embarrassing as a DM. That is never a good assumption. The general takeaway is that mind flayers are a 'gently caress you' monster from back in the day that is drastically under-cr if encountered cold, on the asumption that players should have the metagame knowledge of how they work to trivialize them.
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Jan 3, 2019 10:48
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AlphaDog posted:Are you seriously telling me that if you told any member of your group, before they got a turn, "yeah it hits you, roll a d4 and on a 1 you sit this fight out", that they'd go "rolled a 1, this is cool and good and I'm having a great time". 5 players on average sometimes 4. Rounds are variable depending on monster number, wager about 10 to 15 minutes average. We use quite a bit of atomization. The thing is my players enjoy danger and suspense. If one of them got incapacitated in some way, there will generally be suspense resulting in the players discussing and planning around it. When death does happen (a fairly rare occurrence.) it's normally laughs about how one of us got unlucky and talking about the good times with that character. Given that dying has never really bothered anyone, getting taken out for a round or two has never either. Generally because they are still invested about what's going on even when it's not their turn. My party was quite happy to unlock Rary's telepathic bond. The idea of being able to freely communicate no matter their state, so guys that were stunned or paralyzed could contribute ideas without it being considered metagaming was popular as they are not huge metagaming fans.
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Jan 3, 2019 11:29
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MonsterEnvy posted:5 players on average sometimes 4. Rounds are variable depending on monster number, wager about 10 to 15 minutes average. We use quite a bit of atomization. Sitting for an hour watching everyone else play is so great that literally nobody in your group would have a single problem with it? They wouldn't get on their phone, go to smoke, order pizzas, etc, they'd sit there engrossed in the game just the same as if they were playing it? For real? Like, fair enough. I've never ever encountered a single player who would do something like that, but fair enough, if that's your experience. Maybe try to be aware that your incredibly focused, highly invested group is an outlier. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 12:00 on Jan 3, 2019 |
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Jan 3, 2019 11:55
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