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If the characters would know, the players should know. Games are about choices, so your duty is to inform, not protect.
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Mar 26, 2024 00:28
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Arglebargle III posted:The question is, how do I make sure the players understand these stakes and not walk into the conflict with a fully powered-up boss battle and get TPKed? So it's a good thing you're thinking about this early. We players can be dense, especially if we've been on a roll lately. In-game mechanics may not be enough to handle it (e.g., seeing servitors being shredded, forcing fear checks for PCs [if such a thing exists], etc.). You might have to say, as the players form their plan and ready themselves to storm the blast door, "This enemy is beyond anything you have ever fought, and death is on the line like it's never been before. What is your exit strategy? Who will call for a retreat and at what point will they do that? Who's second in command if the leader goes down?" You'll have to insert yourself into their planning, I think, and make these points explicit. Or if your players are really cool with a sadistic sense of humor, replace above advice with "Do you have an exit strategy besides creating new characters?" while dangling blank character sheets.
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Mar 26, 2024 01:06
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Yeah that's actually a good way to phrase it, if they wipe after choosing to fight anyway that makes it epic, if they succeed, ditto.
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Mar 26, 2024 01:56
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HellCopter posted:For real. An element of one of the 5e campaigns was the discovery of a cursed ore that makes you go crazy. There are several enemies that went crazy because of the cursed ore, a king who went crazy because of his obsession with the cursed ore, and a lady who tells the PCs specifically how LAME and UNATTRACTIVE it is to be obsessed with the obviously cursed ore that makes you go crazy. Look man last year we literally had something people called "the panera lemonade that kills you", and let me tell you, people were still buying it.
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Mar 26, 2024 15:21
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Morpheus posted:Look man last year we literally had something people called "the panera lemonade that kills you", and let me tell you, people were still buying it. People wanted to buy it more once they knew it was, "the panera lemonade that kills you".
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Mar 26, 2024 17:54
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To be fair, the lemonade that killed you was delicious.
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Mar 26, 2024 23:27
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Ilor posted:To be fair, the lemonade that killed you was delicious. Agreed. The death was just a bonus. A little something extra to get you through the rest of the day.
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Mar 26, 2024 23:44
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Bad Munki posted:Agreed. The death was just a bonus. A little something extra to get you through the rest of the day.
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Mar 27, 2024 00:40
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I’m starting my new “Church of the Seven Ravens” 5e campaign next week, and my players have settled on a party of a monk, fighter and ranger, starting at level four. I’m a little concerned over the party composition as they’ve not got a proper healer or magic user. I’ve also never actually DMd for a ranger or monk before either, and got no real idea of how the Monk class plays. Any advice on things I might want to watch out for? I am talking about basic advice like “these guys will one-shot a boss but get swamped by a dozen mooks”, that kind of thing. Or house rules I might want to pull in for any of those classes. Despite having half a dozen completed campaigns under my belt I’m still pretty inexperienced wrt various rules interactions. I prefer to just do stuff and see how they deal with it, but I don’t want to set any traps for them or myself. The house rules we already have are: House Rules 1. Big hits, big crits. A nat 20 gives you max dice + rolled dice + modifier. This extends to ALL dice rolled as part of the attack and also applies to spells with an attack roll. 2. Healing potions should normally heal a fixed amount of HP. Say “no dice” to me if I give you one with a variable. 3. Flanking – if there are two or more attackers, anyone coming from the rear (in a 180° arc) gets +2 to hit on all melee attacks. 4. Bloodied. At 50% HP any character/monster is considered Bloodied. You should be made aware of this (by me) for monsters and NPCs, and make everyone else aware when it happens to you. Bloodied may have certain effects for abilities/items but really it’s to avoid me asking “how’s everybody doing” and you asking “how’s he looking” every five minutes. 5. To answer a point we didn't really clear up last time – using a healing item yourself takes a bonus action. Using one on someone else takes an action. Finding an item they carry, and then using it on them, takes your action AND bonus action.
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Mar 27, 2024 12:51
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Those look good tbh, i presume your players are fine with dying? The crit rules are fairly brutal. Tbc i think high character mortality is generally a good thing, but it's something you'd want buy in on
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Mar 27, 2024 14:44
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The main big change from our previous campaign is it not being a story specifically about these characters. They are fully prepared to die and the whole premise of the campaign is “I was travelling on the road and now I’m stuck in this town” so there’s plenty of opportunity for introducing replacements. Mind you, we played over five years with that crit rule and never once hit a player death. Maybe I’m too soft on them.
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Mar 27, 2024 15:03
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Seems like a perfect excuse to run a low magic campaign.
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Mar 27, 2024 16:03
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I agree with the above that the main issue is lack of immediately available healing magic. You might want to space out combats as possible to allow for short rests between. The other concern I would have would be crowd control without debuffs or area of effect spells. But between the 3 martial classes they’ll probably be okay, there’s no squishy rogue for example. Outside of combat, they might be a little limited in their approaches. There’s no dedicated face/CHA character. The ranger might be a decent sneaker, but there’s also no one there to lockpick or disarm traps. On the upside, the party composition would be well suited to wilderness exploration or traveling from town to town getting into scraps.
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Mar 27, 2024 16:36
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Yeah, the trick is balancing the campaign around what the party is good at. You don't want to throw a bunch of charisma or social challenges at them. You also want to keep an eye on their endurance: without a healer they can't bounce back immediately, but monk and fighter (depending on subclass) reset a lot of abilities on a short rest. You can maybe augment them by having some non-combat healer around to patch them up after a fight. Monks in particular have two weaknesses in combat: large numbers of enemies (crowd control) and ranged (can't throw a fist). Their main approach is a large number of low damage attacks combined with maneuverability. They're often a little squishier than a fighter in pure hitpoints/AC but are better rounded with dexterity and wisdom saves. A monk with stunning strike can absolutely shut down a single opponent though and ensure they never get to take a turn. The lack of crowd control extends a little to the fighter and ranger, though the ranger may pick up some spells for that. You shouldn't avoid giving them a big group of enemies, just be aware they won't have an I win fireball button. Between the monk's stunning strike and the fighter's capacity for action surge you're going to want them to fight multiple opponents. Morrow fucked around with this message at 17:02 on Mar 27, 2024 |
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Mar 27, 2024 16:52
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If that’s the party, just give everyone an extra social proficiency, as long as they pick a different skill. The idea that fighters can’t be charismatic is a D&D ism. Give them a weird rolling golem/scarecrow that acts as a healing cleric. It refuses to make attacks and is made of glass. Getting it around and through dungeons will be plenty of fun.
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Mar 27, 2024 19:19
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Working on how to get my BBEG some mooks. Did you know that Conjure Animal lets you summon eight CR 1/4 animals. Did you know giant poisonous snakes are CR 1/4. Did you know that casting Conjure Animal at 5th level doubles the number of animals summoned? Sixteen snakes in a 20'x70' room is a pile of attacks of opportunity if they try to run past the summoned animals. Especially if they get summoned across the available space and not neatly stacked in a corner. (I've also heard of conjuring cows above the target and calculating damage from eight or more plummeting bovines.) Being a DM is dumb and funny.
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Mar 27, 2024 22:17
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Indolent Bastard posted:Working on how to get my BBEG some mooks. Did you know that Conjure Animal lets you summon eight CR 1/4 animals. Did you know giant poisonous snakes are CR 1/4. Did you know that casting Conjure Animal at 5th level doubles the number of animals summoned? You're just giving your caster players ideas.
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Mar 27, 2024 22:30
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Dameius posted:You're just giving your caster players ideas. For current errata Conjure Animals has the GM decide what animals are summoned, so it's a negotiation about what kind of shenanigans players can get up to with it. It would be really lovely if an NPC was allowed to do something really abusive with it but then tell a player that tried the same thing "you get 8 rabbits," however. Maybe not the optimal play, but the idea in my head for it was just slamming an enemy with a herd of elk. Dimension 20 had an episode where it was used to summon a flock of geese, but they were actually re-skinned velociraptors, that are also cr 1/4. They couldn't fly, they were just like a bunch of geese from Untitled Goose Game.
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Mar 28, 2024 04:27
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What should a boss fight look like? The rakshasa warform has ten arms and four legs so it has multiple attacks, it has a sword and a spear, and a missile launcher and tesla gun, and I decided to give it throwing stars so it can neutralize the party's seeker missiles. It has about the same armor as the most heavily armored PC and triple the party's health. It has two reactions, but I was thinking maybe of giving it more which would get reduced by knocking off limbs. The location of the fight is the cruiser's frozen bridge, where the techpriest mummies who first imprisoned the rakshasa watch silently. It's a large room with columns. That's about all I got. I can also introduce mooks and allies if necessary. How do I do boss fights? Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 05:10 on Mar 28, 2024 |
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Mar 28, 2024 05:08
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This does depend on the system somewhat but in general you want to have at minimum the same or slightly more number of actions possible as the party through some combination or attacks, underlings, reactions, lair actions, etc... You'll want some kind of set piece gimmick that keeps the fight from being a sack of HP they have to burn, and you'll want enough HP for the fight to go through X number of rounds at minimum, I usually try to target 8-10 rounds of maximum output which nets 10-15 rounds of real rounds. Enough to be both draining and potentially deadly but not so much that you make it feel like a slog. Gimmicks can be things like a power effect that can be removed by attacking or using a mcguffin. Environmental hazards or buffs or debuffs. That kind of stuff.
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Mar 28, 2024 05:19
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It's activating the mummies, which are easy to kill but dangerous en masse. It's electrifying parts of the floor. It's talking to the party. It's corrupting their cogitator arrays.
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Mar 28, 2024 05:31
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sebmojo posted:It's activating the mummies, which are easy to kill but dangerous en masse. It's electrifying parts of the floor. It's talking to the party. It's corrupting their cogitator arrays. Reversing the polarity of the room.
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Mar 28, 2024 05:49
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Lieutenants, Environmental hazards and Time pressure. Having a single big megaboss sounds fun, but often gets boring if it has a fuckton of HP. In my experience the players will end up encircling it and just rolling the same attacks until it dies. Splitting that HP up amongst separate creatures lets the player see concrete progress towards victory, and lets you vary the kinds of threats they're facing. Maybe there's a semi-mobile central body, with thick cabling running to a pair of iron puppets. Or the central body has a gaping remora-style maw full of whirling blades, and some horrible little wolf things that try to drag players inside. Even a handful of slow-moving turrets can spice things up by creating targets of opportunity. Servitor shoggoths are fun! I always love equal opportunity environmental hazards, so that the players can feel super jazzed when they wield the setting against the bosses. Maybe the room has sparking electrical cables that players can be thrown into, or that they can wrap an enemy up in. Turrets that can be hacked are fun, and throwable explosive barrels are timeless. Bottomless pits rule; there is a savage joy in Sparta-kicking a monster into the abyss. Maybe those pillars you mentioned can be attacked to bring the ceiling down, or the bridge windows can be punched through to suck an enemy out into space. If you have a hacker in the party, they could remotely raise or lower floor segments to provide/strip cover. Throw in a big glass dance floor, and then casually mention that directed heat would melt it into glass quicksand. Time pressure can be just flavour and doesn't need to be mechanical, but it helps to create a sense of urgency. Maybe the boss is summoning reinforcements, starting up the ships engines, supercharging the artificial gravity, hacking the player's ship, or about to complete some v. bad ritual.
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Mar 28, 2024 06:26
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Attacking the players ship is an excellent idea, that will really focus attention
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Mar 28, 2024 06:33
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So i'm running Curse of Stradh and something interesting happened last session! The players were at the Festival of the Blazing Sun having not really committed too hard to either side of the conflict so when the time came for the mob to break out they decided "the mayor has to know something lets grab him and get out of here, surely the angry mob will take care of the lady" so they grab the mayor and his wife and book it out of town the mage tower. So now i've decided that since they did nothing themselves to take out Lady Fiona she is now in charge of the town like she always wanted and the mayor and his wife are now begrudging allies being essentially held captive at the tower (with the help of Van Richten since i don't want too many NPC's following them around so he's happy to mostly be an advice and plot dispenser for the moment  )They seem to want to go back Kresk at the moment but they are also close by Berez and the whole Baba Lasayga encounter which i'm a little afraid of running with only a 3 man party (4 with Ireena who's been with them essentially since the start) so perhaps next session they run into Ezmeralda and she either helps them with Baba or she gets introduced in Kresk where they will finally get the Sunsword. For any DM's that have run Stradh recently, where have yall been putting the artifacts? I tried to do the card reading thing blind before the campaign started and 3/4ths of them all landed inside Castle Ravenloft in one way or another so i ended up going with what i have now where the holy symbol was at the windmill, the book is with Baba (which in hindsight maybe i should have put in Vallaki somewhere since it's so central and the PC's will be there a while) and the sunsword in the Abbey so they will most assuredly run into Mr Abbot and his Frankensten bride thing.
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Mar 28, 2024 06:50
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Best part of this post was when I'm reading it and thinkingquote:The rakshasa warform has ten arms and four legs so it has multiple attacks okay cool . quote:it has a sword and a spear fine. a skirmishing melee where BBEG keeps party at a distance. quote:and a missile launcher and tesla gun dafuq? quote:throwing stars so it can neutralize the party's seeker missiles what the hell am I even reading? quote:It has about the same armor as the most heavily armored PC and triple the party's health with seeker missiles you are worried about balance?!? quote:It has two reactions, but I was thinking maybe of giving it more which would get reduced by knocking off limbs. * gives up * Yeah sure. Why not? Wait. *checks OP post history * Oh. Right. Arglebargle is playing Rogue Trader, not D&D. Carry on then. 
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Mar 28, 2024 15:54
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Preparing for literal rocket tag. Cables, razor maws, animating the tech-priest mummies and try to subvert the players' machines are all great ideas. Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 17:06 on Mar 28, 2024 |
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Mar 28, 2024 16:38
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Several pages back I had solicited feedback for the DnD level 20 final adventure. Big thanks to everyone that provided ideas. I wanted to share the results, and see if y'all spot any major flaws with these house rules. This is modeled after the Mass Effect 2 suicide mission. The party is stopping the evil god in a graveyard of its pantheon in the Astral Plane. I want to convey that there maybe no coming back from this, so I'm presenting several huge challenges across three phases. They can overcome these with a mix of spells and skill checks. Some of the challenges will allow the party to prepare. For example, coordinating the fleet or escorting a fey-powered spore bomb into the undead ranks. A few of the hazards will require them to react quickly once they're in the fray. These include kinetic bombardment from colossal god corpses, and necrotic bile being geysered from one of the divine bodies. In the event of failure, the players can beckon one of their five reinforcements to intervene. There's a chance it might sacrifice some of their favorite NPCs, but it puts the odds a bit more in their favor. Each character will have three chances to deal with these problems: - In the approach phase, characters will work in pairs. - In the breach, they'll split into a stealth group and a distraction group. - Within the interior, every character has an individual predicament. Defeat in these challenges results in a permanently attached failed death saving throw. Which is to say, towards the end of this adventure, mounting failures might result in an immediate cinematic death for one of the player characters. I talked it over with the group, and they're totally into it. Everyone has two characters to their name, and plenty of rez spells, so a few losses won't hurt. The party has become an unstoppable force in the higher levels of 5th edition, so hopefully this will be a nice change of pace.
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Apr 4, 2024 05:21
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ooh yeah that sounds great, i love the permanent death save. I'd balance it around deaths being likely, i'd be a little disappointed if none at all happened.
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Apr 4, 2024 12:27
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Golden Bee posted:If the characters would know, the players should know. Games are about choices, so your duty is to inform, not protect. IMO one thing to watch out for in this giving clues that make sense to you but not the players. I ran a pickup RIFTS game back in the 90s (when I was also much newer to DMing) and I had the players spot a Coalition armored company (Coalition are Nazis in the setting, so an obvious enemy for the PCs) out following a slow-moving robot homing beacon that was moving in a straight line and had been for some time. The idea for the adventure was that they'd see this huge force moving in a predictable pattern and try something like 'get ahead of them to investigate whatever they were headed to first', 'find out what people think is there' or 'talk to nearby settlements and get them to band together to stop them'. What I didn't expect was for them to directly talk to the soldiers (which was not a bad idea) and then decide that since the soldiers gave little information that they should just attack (very bad idea). I ended up ruling that the Company needed to preserve ammo so they fired a warning shot that took 5/6 of the health of the toughest PC and tried to drive the party off, and mentally marked that down as 'man, players will attack anything'. But in hindsight, it was my fault. The mistake I made was that I just named that they saw a 'Coalition Armored Company', assuming they'd realize how large a 'company' is either from the fact that it was described in the game books or from the size of a 'company' in modern militaries. I didn't actually say the number of people and vehicles involved though or give any description of them that would indicate they're massively out of the PC's league. If I was running that encounter again (as unlikely as it is I'd go back to RIFTS, lol) I'd make sure to make the size of the opposition clear in the description, like pointing out how they had to change formation to deal with small obstacles. And if the players did say they were going to attack, I'd pause and directly say something like "Well, one of these big mechs would be a risky fight for you, they have 8. A few of the flight suit guys would be a reasonable encounter, they have three dozen. One squad of infantry with their transport would be a reasonable fight for your party, they have a dozen squads and extra vehicles roaming around," as think the most likely cause of the players wanting to attack is that they just didn't get from my description how completely overmatched they are. Pantaloon Pontiff fucked around with this message at 16:45 on Apr 10, 2024 |
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Apr 10, 2024 16:34
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Obezag
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Apr 10, 2024 16:40
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Pantaloon Pontiff posted:IMO one thing to watch out for in this giving clues that make sense to you but not the players. I ran a pickup RIFTS game back in the 90s (when I was also much newer to DMing) and I had the players spot a Coalition armored company (Coalition are Nazis in the setting, so an obvious enemy for the PCs) out following a slow-moving robot homing beacon that was moving in a straight line and had been for some time. The idea for the adventure was that they'd see this huge force moving in a predictable pattern and try something like 'get ahead of them to investigate whatever they were headed to first', 'find out what people think is there' or 'talk to nearby settlements and get them to band together to stop them'. What I didn't expect was for them to directly talk to the soldiers (which was not a bad idea) and then decide that since the soldiers gave little information that they should just attack (very bad idea). I ended up ruling that the Company needed to preserve ammo so they fired a warning shot that took 5/6 of the health of the toughest PC and tried to drive the party off, and mentally marked that down as 'man, players will attack anything'. Rifts was my very first ttrpg that I played in elementary school and somehow I still wanted to play more ttrpgs. I don't have anything constructive to add, it's just so rare to see it mentioned and it holds a soft spot in my heart despite the many, many, many warts.
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Apr 11, 2024 03:45
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What are some good low-crunch systems that would support a Conan-esque low-magic world? Our long-running Black Hack game is starting to run into mechanical problems with high-level PCs. Two of our party members have such high Str and Dex that they can block 90% of attacks, and combat has lost all tension.
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Apr 13, 2024 02:14
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There was a 3.5 variant called Iron Kingdoms(?), or Conan 2d20.
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Apr 13, 2024 02:21
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My players continue to throw me for a loop. They now have their light cruiser pacified, and I was planning to have them tow it back and launch into a siege episode where they would have to rush through its repairs in order to fend off an invasion. Or maybe they could go do a mystery adventure if they're not ready to go home. But now they want to stash it in deep space and go home! So there's not really any narrative hook, they just want to regroup and now if I fire the siege plot their new ship won't be threatened. They keep foiling all my plans...
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Apr 13, 2024 05:11
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Arglebargle III posted:My players continue to throw me for a loop. They now have their light cruiser pacified, and I was planning to have them tow it back and launch into a siege episode where they would have to rush through its repairs in order to fend off an invasion. Or maybe they could go do a mystery adventure if they're not ready to go home. But now they want to stash it in deep space and go home! So there's not really any narrative hook, they just want to regroup and now if I fire the siege plot their new ship won't be threatened. They keep foiling all my plans... The eternal curse of the DM. One Of Us, One Of Us
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Apr 13, 2024 08:30
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Arglebargle III posted:My players continue to throw me for a loop. They now have their light cruiser pacified, and I was planning to have them tow it back and launch into a siege episode where they would have to rush through its repairs in order to fend off an invasion. Or maybe they could go do a mystery adventure if they're not ready to go home. But now they want to stash it in deep space and go home! So there's not really any narrative hook, they just want to regroup and now if I fire the siege plot their new ship won't be threatened. They keep foiling all my plans... name the frigate they catch a ride on the nostromo
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Apr 13, 2024 09:39
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Arglebargle III posted:My players continue to throw me for a loop. They now have their light cruiser pacified, and I was planning to have them tow it back and launch into a siege episode where they would have to rush through its repairs in order to fend off an invasion. Or maybe they could go do a mystery adventure if they're not ready to go home. But now they want to stash it in deep space and go home! So there's not really any narrative hook, they just want to regroup and now if I fire the siege plot their new ship won't be threatened. They keep foiling all my plans... If they’re stashing it in deep space, maybe someone steals it in the meanwhile, and it becomes either a mystery to track it down or a desperate chase. Or maybe they learn that their rivals have found the cruiser, and it’s a race to get back to the cruiser before their rivals take it.
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Apr 13, 2024 14:50
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Arglebargle III posted:My players continue to throw me for a loop. They now have their light cruiser pacified, and I was planning to have them tow it back and launch into a siege episode where they would have to rush through its repairs in order to fend off an invasion. Or maybe they could go do a mystery adventure if they're not ready to go home. But now they want to stash it in deep space and go home! So there's not really any narrative hook, they just want to regroup and now if I fire the siege plot their new ship won't be threatened. They keep foiling all my plans... Nothing gets players going like "Our loot is running away!!!"
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Apr 13, 2024 15:25
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Squidster posted:What are some good low-crunch systems that would support a Conan-esque low-magic world? Our long-running Black Hack game is starting to run into mechanical problems with high-level PCs. Two of our party members have such high Str and Dex that they can block 90% of attacks, and combat has lost all tension. It might be time to change the game, not the system. Even Conan evolved: quote:Until at last, he found his own kingdom, and wore his crown upon a troubled brow. Your players have worked hard to get their characters powerful enough to dodge 90% of attacks and that’s okay. At this point combat shouldn’t be a source of dramatic tension but tension release. At this point your characters should have (or will soon develop) a solid reputation as people not to be hosed with and combat should drop way down until only the foolish engage them: “wait, you want to fight me? Ooooookaay…” followed by a quick battle where the PCs laughingly trounce the mooks. At this point in their careers the PCs should be engaging in challenges worthy of their mettle: slaying dragons, restoring kingdoms, liberating imprisoned gods, fighting Chaos Incursions, etc. The important thing is to set up foes that don’t use frontal attacks in your low magic world. Maybe assassins strike, maybe reputations are besmirched, maybe friends fall ill and a cure must be found. Your players are winning your campaign and that’s the point.
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Apr 13, 2024 17:52
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