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Phrosphor posted:<stuff> If you want to have an antagonist on the island, you can have had her cursed a previous time she was in the area, or when she handled a cursed object in port. If I were running this scenario, I would state that the object (Probably a coin or something obtained as change or payment) was keyed to only activate when an acceptable target (Bloodline, potential, accomplishments, etc) handled them, and basically bound them to be drawn to the antagonist so they could do something horrible (Marry, Enslave, Devour the potential of, cook a particularly delicious stew using, etc). In this kind of scenario, the character would be debilitated due to proximity, and the curse would have ensured that the ship end up on that island somehow. The best explanation for that would be it nudging fate along, kind of like a misfortune curse. If you want a simple unwillingly bound story there are a bunch of other options. You can have it be a standard policy for the company to bind their captains to their ships to ensure that the captains don't take risks with their cargo, since people are self manufacturing and boats are expensive. The ship could be alive and lonely, binding tight to the Captain who keeps her company. This would work especially well if the captain had rebuilt the ship after finding it damaged and abandoned. If the Captain has a record of escaping from certain death in the past, then it could be a roundabout curse to make it easier to kill her by pirates by binding her life to the ship. After all, a ship is a lot harder to sneak away and guard at all times than a single person. This plays into the Pirates aspect you mentioned above, allowing the attack to have been an attempted assassination. Ship could be haunted, but at normal times the ghosts are "sated" and don't intervene. When their hallow is damaged, however, they start draining the life from the crew and surroundings to try and heal it. Exorcise the ghosts, repair the ship, or maybe even strike an accord with these undead sailors. There are also willingly bound situations gone horribly wrong, such as where where the captain has traded being unwell for a while in exchange for enabling the ship to heal when it suffers damage and also allowing it to run better in the water, but this has gone too far. Can add examples in records of where this has gone horribly wrong and resulted in monster mutant ships where the captain has been forcibly merged with the hull into an amalgam of flesh, iron, bone, and wood and turned into a marauding carnivorous death-ship. Have the heroes intervene to stop this process from happening to their captain and her ship! Basically, the sky is the limit.
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Jun 1, 2021 16:42
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Character death is an interesting subject, and I can understand why people are of the opinion that it just isn't kosher to simply wipe people out, or use it as a penalty. It always depends on context. If you are going to have characters run the risk of death in standard combat (Ala the scorpion on a stick model), then it is best to have this discussion with your players ahead of time and inform them that this particular adventure they are looking at embarking on carries these kinds of stakes so it doesn't come out of nowhere, and so they know they have to react more urgently to threats than they would otherwise consider prudent, or even back out of the adventure in question and do something else. You do need a reason, in my opinion, for the gloves coming off however. Perhaps the Scorpion-on-a-Stick Tribe of Kobolds have engaged in a Holy Crusade against the adventuring menace after their young were slain by an overzealous party? Perhaps the party, by undertaking the task in question, have drawn the wrath of some powerful spirit or lesser deity which has brought a curse down on them that eliminates those little strokes of luck that allow the party to get away from what would otherwise have killed them? An increase in the rewards to offset this would be appropriate, be that treasure, experience, or both. There are also situations where a player having his character act up in a stupid manner is indicative of a more serious personal problem, so I'd suggest talking to them before resorting to killing them off for their behavior. That being said, there are situations where killing characters or even potentially deliberately pulling the trigger on a potential total party kill are appropriate. Generally these are the realm where the actions of the players have been so monumentally stupid and/or unwise that to do anything less is simply no longer feasible. An example is a case where a DM I was chatting with was dealing with a party that had obtained some macguffin evil eye artifact (Not Vecna's) and had been making the party member assigned to hold it roll saves against it continually for several weeks, almost all of which this person knew he had failed. The party had, as far as I recall, had this obviously evil thing investigated or even acted to pass it around the party so as to spread out the failures on the saves. The party as a whole had additionally engaged in some very sketchy behavior regarding traps (Specifically, failing to avoid even the most blatantly obvious ones). The players had, basically, convinced themselves that they were invincible. So the DM and I wrote up an encounter together. It was designed to be winnable, but it needed to the players to act intelligently, and was absolutely designed to kill them all if they failed. At the start of the next session, the DM told the player holding the artifact to make a save, as he had repeatedly. As usual, the player failed the save. The DM then announced that as a result of the massive number of failed saves the player character cackled with mad laughter, tore out his own eye and inserted the evil artifact, and a blast of darkness consumed the whole party and when it faded they were in a place that felt like a pocket realm steeped in evil, the fallen player in the middle ranting and raving about them being fools. Then he handed the player of the fallen PC a new character sheet for his character listing all their new abilities and told him "You're a bad guy now. Kill the party". I believe only one PC managed to escape the encounter alive. It was designed to be continually escalating every five-ten rounds with additional minions entering from the outside walls, becoming progressively more powerful as time passed. The solution was to kill the possessed party member as quickly as they could, or at least disable him and remove the eye (though the character would be dead). They decided to try and fight it out, and only chose to try the sensible option after several members were dead. By all reports, they enjoyed this encounter and ending immensely, and had a new antagonist to deal with with their new characters.
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Jun 2, 2021 11:01
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I'm sorry, but as others have noted that sounds very much like the player was trying to get their character killed. You warned them, you gave them an out, and they absolutely refused to take it and got hoofed. As DM you did your job. It very much depends on the players and the type of campaign you are running with them as to how real the stakes of death are. It's something that should be discussed in advance of the start of the game, so everyone knows the stakes. Death is a tool in the box of a DM. Use it as sparingly as you choose, but there will always be a place for it, and it serves to keep players assured of their invincibility from "riding the bomb" outside of the more comedic games such as Toon. For myself, outside of climactic battles, death is delivered with warnings and as a consequence of utterly stupid behavior should the dice decree it. Please note that stupid is not the same as silly. That gets rewarded, especially when it makes me laugh. That being said, there are plenty of things I can do to kill a character off and still let them continue to play even in the case of stupid behavior, or even consequential death (Understand the following gloss over and/or summarise actual game disasters being played out): "Well, your plan to infiltrate the Vampires by dressing up in a long cape and powdering your face with flour were seen through, and they killed you. You are now a Vampire yourself and are sent to infiltrate your former party members by your new master, here are the orders and rules you are operating under". "Well, your wandering off alone revealed to you that this place is full of shapeshifters, but it also got you killed/captured. You are now playing this doppelganger who took your place for now." "Your decision to enter the Input port of the giant machine proved to be unwise. Your companions hear your screaming and the sound of sawing from within followed by the sound of arcing electricity before your altered form is violently ejected from the other end in a haze of ozone. It looks like you have found out how <villain name> is making his loyal undead-half golem army. Unfortunately for you, your current orders are to defend the machine at all costs." That being said, letting the players play out what happened to their characters after their unfortunate demise/replacement is something I enjoy doing, and something I state in advance of any campaign, and is not for everyone. I prefer to run things where actions have consequences, and when those actions are especially egregious those consequences can be quite severe. When GMing, my players are aware that this is how I run things well in advance because I like to talk to them and keep them informed of the tone of the campaign and keep getting feedback so that what comes next will be a better experience. I will not be removing death from my toolbox because I feel it is interesting and opens the door to a lot of interesting events. I do, however, only deploy it sparingly. Others can disagree, and that is their right.
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Jun 3, 2021 17:54
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Mycroft Holmes posted:I'm looking for encounter tables for a post-apocalyptic game. Does anyone have any reccomendations? If it is a magical setting, then maybe you should just have them encounter hostile Table Golems in fantasy IKEA.
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Aug 31, 2021 09:45
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In any other case I would suggest flat out killing the character off, either by talking to the player beforehand and making it clear that the character is not meshing with the game, and having the char killed offscreen when the player leaves, or by setting up a situation in game where the character bites off far more than it can chew and letting them have it. However, you have stated this guy is an excellent roleplayer, so what is perhaps needed is instead an event for character growth. Let him have his fight. Next time he is in a tavern, have some guy as big as an ogre come up behind him, rumble "I heard you wuz lookin' fer a fight" and then bash him over the head with a stool. Now, if his character draws his sword and kills people in the ensuing barfight, you can have him arrested by the city guard. I imagine they take a very dim view of former royal guards murdering people. If he doesn't, have him beaten unconscious, tied up, and set up to be shipped off to some far off land. Then talk to the player about what he wants to do with his character. In either of the cases above you have a way to neatly dispose of them, but he finally has something he can maybe roleplay his way out of being a dangerous idiot with.
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Sep 2, 2021 13:03
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If you do not have an area on the zoo map marked "Here be Dragons" I will be very disappointed in you.
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Sep 5, 2021 20:34
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Add in a bunch of pox victims refusing the cure because they believe it is tainted by the Alchemist Cabal and wanting the players to go harvest deadly giant venomous spiders nearby since they heard at the tavern that the venom was a proper cure when mixed with oats.
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Sep 9, 2021 00:37
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Quarterroys posted:So, I’m running Keep at the Borderlands, and my party found their way to the Cathedral of Evil before I expected they would. They ended last night’s session by opening up the cell that contains a Medusa. Another option would be to have them get stoned then wake up in a rich nobles garden with a kid holding a crumbling scroll and a surprised look on their face, the implication being that she petrified them then sold them as ornaments and a few years have passed. The players could then hunt her down and find out she used the money she made from selling them to start a bakery or something.
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Sep 9, 2021 20:36
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Consequences for actions would probably be best here. I am not more than vaguely familiar with the setting and characters, so this is just a swing in the dark characterwise, but since I am a very dickish person I would have their gear confiscated entirely except for any holdout item they would reasonably have been willing and able to conceal in advance of their capture. I would then have then brought to Strahd, where he thanks them for their assistance in granting him his new bride (Who is now also a vampire) but also chastise them for abusing his hospitality with a speech somewhat along the lines of: "Ordinarily I would have killed you, however the scales stand in balance, and so you will be given a chance to earn your lives. I have sent your belongings down the road to <roadside inn>. You will be released outside the gates of the castle an hour before sundown. Once the sun sets, the hunt begins. Reach the inn and the hunt will end, your lives spared." I would then have the players hunted until they reach that specific Inn. If there are other closer inns and homes, have the occupants all killed and raised as zombies that do the whole pod person point and shriek thing at them. Give each bride a small retinue of hunting monsters and set them out hunting while having Strahd appear in the distance grinning and overseeing the hunt, ready to intervene if a fight with one of his brides looks to be going badly for them.
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Sep 9, 2021 23:13
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A less good idea but with more room for player fuckery of your world: The surrounding islands have facilities created to accomplish three things, all of which are leftovers from that horrid god time where weapons of unimaginable scale were created for smiting each other. The first passively steals the power of the trapped god. The second uses most of that power to contain the god. The nature of the field should have a flaw that the trapped god is not capable of using to explain why it is unbreachable other ways. An example would be that "One cannot knowingly pass the big bright glowing barrier of trapping" and the volleyball god left by getting blackout drunk and waking up outside after entering to steal the awful gods portfolio. The third part of the trap uses the rest to make the beings trapped inside forget that there even is a world beyond. Also bypassed by the volleyball god being blackout drunk. Have these facilities surrounded by resort-communes that guard them and explain why loving with the devices is a bad idea.
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Nov 29, 2021 17:39
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A good way to subvert the puzzle expectation is to have explicitly stated that the facility that the players are raiding was not built by idiots with the unstated subtext of "What kind of idiot puts something, that is supposed to be secure, behind a puzzle?" Then when the players run into the puzzle room, they trip a silent alarm and the complex puzzle that they find is nothing more than a distraction intended to waste their time while security arrives. Alternative: The puzzle, even if solved, has nothing to do with anything (Or insults them), and there is a simple passphrase that is entirely unrelated to anything else in the puzzle room and obtained elsewhere (eg on the desiccated corpse of someone authorised to be there). Alternative on the Alternative: The passphrase is also theatre, and the person accessing it has to think a different thought while their hand is pressed against a panel to open it.
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Dec 1, 2021 18:44
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echopapa posted:All good theaters have a ghost that must be appeased. If the ghost is not appeased or entertained by the play, roll to dodge incoming peanuts. The ghost is, however, tolerated by the owners instead of exorcised because it haunts the poo poo out of anyone who attempts to disrupt a performance (And absolutely not because the only people in town qualified to perform an exorcism were laid out for a week with peanut related injuries).
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Dec 4, 2021 21:32
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Typical Pubbie posted:Looking for suggestions on how to handle ship combat in a sci fi game. Anything will do, but in particular I'm looking for something that will give every player incentive to participate in the action. I want to discourage passenger syndrome and leader-bullying. Have the enemy launch a few missiles at them that turn out, once they hit, to be robotic enemies that seek to enter engineering and blow up the ship, or head to the bridge and seize control of the vessel. You can even have them abduct members of the crew and jettison them through the ships escape pods for a kidnapping arc. This provides on the "ground" combat during the space battle for those who play the normal ground assault/security officer roles. Who knows? Maybe the players will take this to heart and begin boarding enemy ships this way themselves.
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Dec 12, 2021 09:07
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ninjoatse.cx posted:This also can possibly speed up play, since if the players were going to attack the orcs, they no longer have time to do lots of prep or ask a dozen questions. They're in an action sequence now.
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Dec 19, 2021 07:13
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The place brings to mind the old magnifying glass on ants thing: A villain working to tweak the mirrors to turn them into a death ray to scour the entire place clean of Dwarves and steal their wealth. Honestly though, maybe have it and bunch of the other suggested mirror-related plots going at once, crashing into each other in ways that give the players hooks to dig into and discover that things are going to go bad. Eg, finding the scene of a clash where a noble houses scheme to move the mirrors to their advantage clashed with a slum scheme to increase lighting for them as both required the same mirror array, resulting in one party laying in wait for the other and ambushing them, then the third party seeking to kill all the dwarves stepped in and wiped them both out and planted evidence to frame both the noble and slumdweller parties as a decoy to let them get away with their more subtle crap elsewhere. This way, even if they players don't foil the big bad, the chaos from the multiple conspiracies can be used to ensure the villain doesn't accomplish a clean sweep to start with, and gives the players the opportunity to rally the factions against the ones seeking everyone's death as they finally send in their overt soldier minions to repair/realign arrays to wipe out sections of the city. Pickled Tink fucked around with this message at 08:56 on Jan 3, 2022 |
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Jan 3, 2022 08:53
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zedar posted:So one of the characters in my Call of Cthulhu campaign has gone and done some very poorly advised things, and I'm at a loss as to how to provide interesting repercussions. After all, the only thing more horrifying than raising children is raising children who happen to be eldritch entities and also your arms.
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Jan 4, 2022 13:13
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Go with the old horror all miners have: Digging into an underground river/lake. Large parts flood, dwarves die, and you fill it with monsters from the underground river. Bonus points if they have dug into the side of a plateau, and the river is above the entrance they carved, so it ends up diverting it through their settlement and the whole dwarves got wiped out thing was self defense by the fishmen living in said river and the underground lake it supplied. You can work in your existing elements as some "villain" warning the dwarves and getting rebuffed because they "know better than anyone what to expect underground" despite the regions odd geography. Sending in doppelgangers to lead them away from disaster, but instead the dwarves discovered them and believed that they were being led away from valuable ore and killing them. The true monster the whole way was greed. Oh, and have a big monster in there that the fishmen basically took advantage of the mess to flush out of their place and seal off when they managed to plug the hole with earth magic. I suggest some sort of hydra.
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Jan 9, 2022 02:07
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The Slack Lagoon posted:How do y'all feel about having gm rolls in the open vs hidden? I ran a thing once where I was having a massive string of absolutely atrocious rolls, and it meant that the entire encounter was being utterly trivialised and not carrying any weight whatsoever. Because I was rolling secretly I was able to fudge some of the rolls. Not many, but enough, to return that element of danger to an encounter that was beginning to seem like an utter farce. They were 5th level characters escaping a town in the process of being overrun with wights, ogres, and orcs with a dragon overhead, and I think I only managed one roll higher than 10 in the entire sequence, and that was a 13.
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Jan 11, 2022 11:07
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DrSunshine posted:I'm running a Call of Cthulhu campaign, and we're six adventures into it - mostly premade modules with a couple of homebrewed scenarios. This deep into the campaign, the overall complexity and danger level has increased. However, my players have gotten used to just going to a location, usually the 'spookiest' one and investigating and looking for clues right off the bat. But I want to encourage them to do more research and investigation before jumping right in. How do I do that without just explicitly saying "Are you sure you want to go in without doing some research first?" As I recall, Character Death is an expected probable outcome in Call of Cthulhu games, and their behavior suggests that you have shied away from pulling the trigger previously, since the stuff they are engaging in is the kind of stuff that can and should have gotten one or more of them killed already. If they don't experience consequences from gung-ho behavior around eldritch abominations and evil cults then they are going to be jaded as to the threat. If, for some reason, you decide that killing someone for being an idiot is not what you want to do, maim them instead. A person grabs something they shouldn't and is clearly evil? Have the flesh on his hand rot off, and slowly start progressing up his arm as the exposed bones become hostile and tries to kill him (So initially just the hand itself, but once it reaches the elbow joint it gets a lot more freedom to gently caress them up). A person opens a dark tome of eldritch lore without checking it to see if the cultists have boobytrapped it? Have it brand the poor idiots eyes with runes of eldritch truth that force them to see dark powers when their eyes are open, and inflict progressive SAN loss until removed. Throw open the door to the spooky barn without taking care to investigate first? Well, guess where the Cult leader keeps his Shoggoth and who just broke the wards making sure it stayed there. Or, more amusing and less eldritch, have the building they break into be a safehouse (Or locally known office) for the FBI or something and have them arrested. Remember: If stupid behavior doesn't have consequences that ramp up the threat, then there will continue to be stupid behavior, and it will get progressively dumber. Consequences doesn't necessarily mean permanent fuckery, but in Call of Cthulhu you should *definitely* lean that way, especially when the stakes have been raised to this extent.
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Feb 3, 2022 12:45
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Okua posted:What could be a good way to handle the players escaping from an evil science facility about to blow up? They would be starting in the basement where the villain has a self-destruct switch. I was thinking about playing it straight with alarms blaring, flashing lights, and a voice counting down from 10 while the players have to find a way out, but I'm not sure how it's best done mechanically. Should there be a series of smaller challengers for individual parts of the facility they pass through, should I involve Blades in the Dark style clocks or something entirely different? The system is Lancer and the players are out of their mechs at this point, so the game is in narrative/theater of the mind mode. Has someone here done something similar? I would only do an explicit countdown if it was a late stage of the campaign where the threat level has ramped up and I was fully willing to follow through with absolutely murdering the players if they hosed up. By that stage they would be settled in their characters and be much more competent and prepared, and able to meet the serious challenge that a time limit poses. If it is early game, or the games threat and seriousness hasn't ramped up, don't give them a fixed time limit. Instead build the tension by having progressively more serious effects from the self destruct mechanism reveal themselves, while allowing them and yourself time to do what is needed. Have Labs explode, pipes rupture, ceilings collapse, a mook run by on fire, hazardous chemicals escape from vats and spill, and have the automated announcement system declare sections destroyed while encouraging people to evacuate and have a nice day. All things that emphasize danger without locking you into a TPK if they gently caress up.
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Feb 11, 2022 15:57
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Have many of the nobles and rulers of several kingdoms involved in a book cult, where they share reading materials like a modern book club and do it up with sinister imagery to be cool and edgy and feel alive.
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Feb 16, 2022 19:34
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Just have the Hag Mask be a simple Hag Face Mask that, unless preserved properly by a craftsman, rots. Because magic items don't work that way. There's almost always something else involved in their creation, and that something else is usually a wizard going "I wonder what would happen if...". If you let them get away with this there is a chance that they'll start lopping off bits of all their enemies hoping they will be magic items inherently. At least make them work for it. As for the other items, if they were in any way combat useful then the King should have used them in the fight. Thus you should restrict them to abilities the King had, or non-combat gimmicks, such as the cloak allowing the wearer to walk on water and the orb being a generalised scrying device ("Reply soggy, ask again later". Do not underestimate how much you and your players can do with such a magic orb). I'd honestly suggest using the coronet as a quest item. Something they should return to it's rightful owner/location. I don't know enough about your River King to be able to come up with example lore for it, sadly.
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Mar 1, 2022 04:24
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Rutibex posted:Having run a game over Discord for the last two years, I don't think voice chat would solve your problem As a joke: For every time they try to talk over each other anyway, deal one point of conversation damage which makes the NPC more and more annoyed with them until they send them off on a wild goose chase, give them bad info, or tell them to gently caress off.
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Mar 7, 2022 18:08
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Have the dragon usher the people out of the town, then level it entirely, and tell them what their "heroes" did and said. How when the going got tough, the "tough" got going. Have the townsfolk, enraged by this, confront the players. If the players survive this encounter, have word of what they did spread like wildfire, including any killings in the town if the confrontation gets violent. In any future games, have bards singing about heroes who's bladders fill their shoes at the sight of danger referring to this event, even if they subsequently go back and kill the dragon.
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Mar 12, 2022 12:18
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Rutibex posted:I honestly wish my players got scared of things. They have figured out im a paper tiger and just attack everything with reckless abandon Have them wander into a Lich's hidden retreat and get killed, then let them continue to play, but update their characters so they are now skeletons instead of humans/elves/dwarves/etc and have to do tasks for the unimpressed lich. Include a *lot* of bone puns. Edit: As it is a somewhat wacky Lich, feel free to insert said sanctum anywhere. Behind an "Employees Only" door in a shop is one option. Clearly labelled on the street, like some sort of shop, would be another ("Ye Olde Lich's Den - Abandon Flesh All Ye Who Enter Here!") or just a random closet somewhere that was bought at auction or a second hand shop that was once in the possession of the Lich. Pickled Tink fucked around with this message at 18:09 on Mar 12, 2022 |
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Mar 12, 2022 18:04
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Whybird posted:It's always difficult to signal to players that a fight is one that they can't reasonably win, because many high-level enemies look like low-level enemies. A mummy is CR3 and a mummy lord is CR15 but both fundamentally look like a bandaged up person coming to gently caress you up. Sure, you can go "you can feel the power coming off of this thing in waves" and such, but it's hard to distinguish that from you wanting to big up a level-appropriate enemy to make it sound exciting. A Mummy: "The simple carved stone sarcophagus swings open and a bandage swathed creature stiffly climbs to its feet and begins to shamble towards you" A Mummy Lord: "You hear a resonating bang as the gilded sarcophagus flies open, the lid clattering to the floor several feet away. A mummy emerges, though this one appears to be wrapped in fine linens that have easily fended off times advance and bears a simple but elegant golden crown. It smoothly rises to its feet and fixes your group with a baleful glare." A Banana Peel: "The yellow fruit husk lays silently on the floor, splayed and immobile, radiating malicious intent"
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Mar 12, 2022 21:29
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An idea would just be to have him be a mortal human, but one who knows things and is owed lots and lots of favours and uses his access as mayors aide to obtain the valuable information and broker favourable deals with the different supernatural communities and has thus made himself indispensable to those communities. An example scheme would be buying a favour from both Fae and Vampire factions by eliminating a mutual threat to them. Perhaps some Monster Hunters who hate Fae and Vampires holed up in a warehouse. Mister Aide uses his connections to obtain the local area sewer details, building blueprints, and arranges to have workmen disable power to the block under guise of routine maintenance, and calls in a favour from some werewolves to launch an attack in that window using the detailed knowledge his position affords him, while ensuring there is no police interference. Feel free to give him a few magical tools, and maybe a supernatural bodyguard/assistant. After all, these are things he could have bargained for.
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Mar 28, 2022 03:49
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Have it be fixing some form of monster racing and have them be hired by a bookie. I suggest some form of Ooze or maybe Dire Goats.
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Apr 10, 2022 21:33
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Phrosphor posted:So about 7 sessions ago, the party had a run in with the BBEG. It was just supposed to be a discussion, but the rogue decided to try and backstab them during the chat and things went badly very quickly. If the BBEG doesn't know it is the players base, but recognises a bunch of wanted fugitives there, have them arrested and taken away with them as they leave. If the BBEG realises that this is the players base but is not yet openly antagonistic towards them, have them leave a note saying that further illegal actions will have... consequences. Also, the whole "Go to jail you escaped criminal scum" thing. If you are at the stage where the BBEG is genuinely displeased with them, and knows that this is where they live, then things get... nasty. Every object in the area is distorted, as though they were made of putty, grabbed, stretched, and twisted. All the NPC's that the players know that were in town at the time lay there, appearing unharmed, but bereft of their souls, tended by the people who were out of town at the time. Now the players need to find the gem/gems containing the souls of their friends before the BBEG does something truly nefarious with them, like sell them to a demon or a traveler, or make a truly awful necklace out of them. No need for a serious time limit in this scenario because it would be a more spur of the moment thing. Hells, the villain could use them as bait to draw your players into traps.
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Jun 7, 2022 00:29
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Well, if you are going to introduce a traveling merchant like those above, a good way would be for you to come across them some place they shouldn't be, standing outside their store with their hands on their hips and grumbling about how they should never have trusted that demon/angel/fae (delete inapplicable) contractor who low-balled on the estimate, then have them enlist the players in fixing their shops relocation drive. Perhaps they have an apprentice they are showing the ropes that they'd be able to summon in future as a reward.
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Jun 21, 2022 12:26
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You could simply reduce the give a bonus to the subsequent roll if they show some knowledge of what they are doing as opposed to just calling it out. "I roll lock picking for the door" as opposed to "I pull out my flexible thin metal sheet and use it to try and slip the latch". "I grab the door handle and attempt to pull it open with brute force" as opposed to "Strength check against door". "I pull out my herbalist supplies and carefully measure out my Magic Awesomeroot™ to create some healing poultices" as opposed to "I use my gear to make healing poultices". Maybe also do a secret roll on that one to see if they have enough for an extra due to specifying being careful if their roll was good? "I make a search the room" as opposed to "I search the room carefully, taking care to knock on walls, floors, and observe the ceiling". Hell, if you are feeling mean, you can simply assume that unless they specify otherwise, they don't examine the ceiling. Few people ever look up, and you can hide a camouflaged monster or two up there if you are feeling mean.
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Jul 20, 2022 06:43
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trapstar posted:A lot of my friends have been asking me to run a game (Many of who are DM's themselves who run games I play in) and I was just wondering what you guys would recommend being a good starting point for a seasoned player thinking of trying his hand at DMing? Any tips or advice? I will most likely be DMing for experienced players who I have preexisting personal friendships with. Something simple like being hired by the town to deal with some dire rats messing up a brewery. Some skill checks and talking with witnesses on site to determine that their nest is in the basement of a nearby building, then dealing with the recalcitrant owner who doesn't believe that they could be coming from his basement before moving onto the cleansing of the basement of rats.
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Jul 27, 2022 09:38
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The biggest dick move you can probably do in a completely underwater room is to stick a water elemental in there.
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Aug 3, 2022 16:32
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When the players come back the next day, have them find the monsters have moved out and a Beholder hanging up a "For Rent" sign.
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Aug 16, 2022 03:31
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The Slack Lagoon posted:Any suggestion on how to do mass combat between NPCs during a battle when the PCs are in a combat with a lot of enemies and allies? Player characters, frankly, do not belong in such a mess. They should be applied manning catapults or engaging in attacks on enemy mage groups or commanders. Maybe assaulting fortifications through a secret passage. Give them updates when they ask for them and you can justify them having that knowledge (Eg, a soldier in the mass is not going to know poo poo). Just simply decide what their actions will have accomplished in the larger picture. Did they take out the mage cabal on the north flank? Great, your army is making gains there as the player team mages are now operating unopposed for the moment. Did you take out a commander? Excellent, the other side is not getting coherent orders and is being driven backwards/taking more losses. Roll the dice occasionally to make it look like you are doing something meaningful, or to simply determine how good/bad the effects are.
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Oct 1, 2022 04:18
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Oldsrocket_27 posted:Dogs are unaffected. There's no need for the Goddess of Death to punish puppers, just top sentient beings.
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Oct 20, 2022 06:27
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Oldsrocket_27 posted:Isn't there an item, like a wax or grease, that you can smear on an item to temporarily have it be lighter or levitate? I can't remember the name and googling and looking on d&d beyond has been unhelpful. Bonus points if it is legitimately snake oil and only works when tested at the traveling merchants store because the effect is generated by a thing in his cart. Now the players have to hunt down the scam artist to get their money back, and who also happens to be a master of disguise!
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Oct 24, 2022 03:06
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Defenestrategy posted:Im running a cyberpunk campaign and I'm cribbing an idea from a old source book.
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Oct 30, 2022 06:07
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Have it run by very confused people who think that a Black Market is where everyone dresses in black and only sells black objects. Good deals on piles of coal and freshly painted merchandise.
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Nov 12, 2022 16:35
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Oldsrocket_27 posted:The party has chosen to ignore numerous hints at mounting threats to civilization to chase down a debt owed. They were working protection for a merchant delivering an expensive magical device built specially for a buyer. It's claimed to be for helping to ensoul folks even long after birth (it is a soul-ripping-out device to make more hollow warriors). The buyer wasn't there, so the merchant can't pay the rest of the protection fee. The plot lead the party chose to follow was to find they buyer...who happens to be the mad wizard from earlier in my posts. With this in mind, feel free to add reports from bards singing songs of how the great evils have been stymied in some respects by other heroes in the world. It is a nice easy way to add flavour and suggest a living world they are interacting with and not something that revolves entirely around them.
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Nov 14, 2022 05:59
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