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So one of my players is being guest DM for a sidequest, and since he doesn't know the rules very well, I'm in charge of preparing and running the fights. He wants to do a fight on a boat, and I suggest that a kraken attack the boat while they're fighting off pirates. How do you actually do naval combat? I know the rules for boats in 5e are garbage, so I'm hoping for some homebrew stuff that will make the players feel like they're trying to fight on a boat while a titanic squid is trying to eat them.
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Dec 22, 2018 14:50
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 17:52 |
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So I'm starting a new campaign with my group, and the basic premise is that the PCs are students at a lousy adventuring school and they're trying to avoid getting expelled or killed. One idea I'm playing with (but haven't fully formulated or pitched yet) is poaching the Ravnica guilds as school houses and using that as PC backgrounds. That said, what are some high school tropes that fit Dimir, Golgari, and Orzhov? So far I've got student government (Azorius, Boros), science nerds (Selesnya, Izzet, Simic), and athletes (Gruul, Rakdos).
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Feb 14, 2019 19:54
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My reasoning for organizing Rakdos under student athletes was because the guild is pretty much built on violence as entertainment, so I figured they'd be the students who join a contact sport solely so they can hurt people while getting cheered for it
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Feb 14, 2019 22:08
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Remora posted:Rakdoller Derby makes way too much sense, also I am stealing that idea for a future character. holy poo poo we got a loving winner right here
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Feb 14, 2019 22:32
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Kaysette posted:Need the whole prep-goth vs jock-nerd plot. 
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Feb 14, 2019 23:26
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Listen, all I remembered about Orzhov was Extort, and ain't no goths running an extortion racket.
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Feb 15, 2019 00:02
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Speaking of "not all thieves are rogues", what are some characters who have "rogue" written on their character sheet but aren't criminals of any kind? In the past I've done an Indiana Jones type of professor and a military scout who got really angry if you called him a thief. What other character types fit the rogue abilities without actually being a thief?
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Feb 18, 2019 15:05
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Core D&D design principles: A level 20 fighter is actually no better at avoiding a stab than a level 1 fighter.
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Feb 21, 2019 22:45
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My group has expressed that they want to play a pre-written module. I'd like to avoid a mega dungeon crawl, but it seems like all the remaining modules have some really heavy criticisms across the board. Is anyone kind enough to give me brief pitches, pros, and cons for Rise of Tiamat, Storm King's Thunder, Out of the Abyss, and Dragon Heist?
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Mar 1, 2019 18:01
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Why is it that Arcane Trickster is the best rogue archetype while EK is the worst for fighter?
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Mar 1, 2019 21:36
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:Anyway I'm sure this is rambly and I dunno how helpful it is but there are much better modules out there if you don't need WotC on the cover. My next campaign is going to be a sandbox for sure - no more self-important save the world wankery for me for a good long while. What are some 3rd party modules to look into?
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Mar 2, 2019 00:35
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I read through the introduction of Storm King's Thunder, and I'm realizing that the premise of this campaign is staggeringly similar to the homebrew campaign I just finished, i.e. northwest Faerun under attack by a loose coalition of evil races (formorians, drow, mind flayers, and dragons), each one with their own agenda. My campaign was more of a total war scenario, but I know if I were to run this with my group, they'd start thinking that we just did this exact same thing.
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Mar 2, 2019 08:51
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So an actual play podcast I listen to started doing something I think is pretty interesting: If the party is split up and gets into combat, the players who aren't in the fight control the monsters. As an incentive to the players controlling the monsters to not pussyfoot around, they get inspiration for playing the monsters intelligently. Does that seem like something that would work?
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Mar 3, 2019 16:00
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eke out posted:that sounds cool, what podcast is it? D&D is for Nerds. Be warned that the DM has some serious rose-tinted glasses for 3.5e (on another podcast he runs, he goes through all the 3.5 classes and tries to argue that poo poo like Hexblade and Healer aren't worthless), but he's a very good storyteller and the players are a delight. The most recent arc, Into the Jungle Island of Dendar, is where he adopts this policy and it's quite hilarious for the player to go gently caress YES I WANT TO BEAT UP MY TEAMMATES
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Mar 3, 2019 17:33
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SKT recommends reading the entire book before attempting to run it I shouldn't actually do that, should I?
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Mar 5, 2019 19:13
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I've only read the introduction and summary so I haven't really dug into the meat of the book yet, but I've heard both from this thread and reviews elsewhere that the first chapter of the book seriously lacks direction. Most likely, I'm just going to have the players make characters at 5th level and drop them straight into chapter 2.
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Mar 5, 2019 20:04
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ProfessorCirno posted:The vast majority of the time, multiclassing by level is a hideous trap. Most players aren't GiantitP regulars pouring over builds, they're going "that adventure had a lot of magic in it and I liked that, maybe I should take a level in wizard?" It's not bad becuase it leads to a select few overpowered builds - it's bad because it leads to disgustingly more unplayable ones. Yeah, the problem with multiclassing isn't that it's always used to powergame; it's that if you use it as almost anything other than powergaming, your character inevitably turns into a non-functional heap of poo poo.
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Mar 7, 2019 23:36
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I've started reading through STK, and just what the hell is the point of Zephros? This NPC seems shoehorned into the book just to circumvent long travel times but that's something very easily handwaved by the DM, especially when the book states that this is not an adventure where anything is time-sensitive.
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Mar 8, 2019 04:38
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Session 0 is important. I'm trying to corral my players into doing a session 0 before we kick off Storm King's Thunder, and god drat trying to get people on a call for an hour is like pulling teeth.
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Mar 10, 2019 16:25
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Campaign idea: Barovia is infested with dozens of vampires, each one a different interpretation of vampires from popular culture, each one claiming to be the real Strahd. The adventures have to choose which one to install on the throne. Really, I just want an excuse for a D&D campaign where Edward Cullen fights The Count from Sesame Street
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Mar 11, 2019 17:14
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One of my players has decided to play a cleric/druid multiclass (no I don't know why either), and I'm not entirely clear on how preparing spells works. Since the character is going to start at cleric 1/druid 2, does the character have the ability to prepare level 2 spells, or are they stuck boosting level 1 spells? The rules text is incredibly murky on this.
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Mar 14, 2019 13:01
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Toshimo posted:Heavy armor and martial weapons for a druid is gonna be situational and up to GM fiat. Normally I'd enforce the no-metal restriction for druids, but SKT already looks pretty hard and this party composition isn't stellar (moon druid, assassin rogue, fiend/tome warlock, order cleric/shepherd druid), so I'm going to be quite a bit more lenient than usual
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Mar 14, 2019 16:46
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It's a parenthetical on the armor proficiency line that days "druids will not wear armor or use shields made of metal" Of course, thanks to natural language, this statement is meaningless on top of being very easy to miss
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Mar 14, 2019 18:44
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Stuff like druids having equipment made from obsidian and bone and wood is cool for just a little bit of spice, as long as the DM isn't using it to play arbitrary scarcity games and making it significantly more difficult for one character to obtain basic equipment
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Mar 15, 2019 15:17
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I think about that weapon type vs armor type chart all the drat time, because to this day I cannot make heads or tails of it
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Mar 15, 2019 19:23
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Kaal posted:It reminds me of the DMG's optional variable initiative system, where every potential action is associated with an initiative penalty and must be called before each round - ensuring that combat takes approximately 4000% longer. I had a DM who really disliked combat and wanted to use that system (along with creating a special medium rest system so mages could reset their spells without letting the fighters use their hit dice). A great roleplayer but the guy just has the oddest sense of mechanical balance. I was about to say "No, this is a completely standard rule in 2e" and then I realized you were talking about 5e and said to myself "no way, they would never bring back speed factor" Then I checked the DMG, a book I have only ever opened to snoop around for magic items they loving brought back speed factor in 5e
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Mar 15, 2019 23:40
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One of my players made their character as a descendant of one of my PCs from a few campaigns ago. While I think it's awesome to have continuity like this, my character also never had a family (to the point where he was actually kind of known for it). Any creative ways to resolve this one?
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Mar 16, 2019 14:34
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Splicer posted:Tom Riker it. I do not know what this means
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Mar 16, 2019 15:33
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I just want to say that reading through chapter 3 of SKT is a loving chore and wotc should have at least had the foresight to list these locations by geographical proximity, so DMs have at least a rough idea of which locations are going to come up in consecutive sessions, rather than listing them alphabetically and going "go memorize the map, fucko"
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Mar 20, 2019 16:54
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Remora posted:uhhhhhhhhh o_o The drow aren't acting out of aggression, but out of desperation. Below ground, they're losing a war and raiding for supplies and slaves topside is what they've resorted to.
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Mar 20, 2019 17:40
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The premade characters all use the most boring archetypes (seriously, two champions?) so you're doing everyone a favor
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Mar 20, 2019 21:27
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I got fed up with slogging through chapter 3 of SKT, and decided to skip ahead to chapter 4 just so I had an idea of where the hell the book was going. Turns out the connection point between chapters 3 and 4 isn't even mentioned until the last page or so of chapter 3. It really bothers me that nobody involved in this book had the foresight to say "Hey, maybe we should put the goal or bridging point of this chapter up front so the DM knows what's going to happen" at the front of this god drat chapter that is roughly 25% of the book by itself. This chapter should have been a loving appendix.
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Mar 21, 2019 03:02
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Kaal posted:Yeah that's an odd trend with the WoTC campaigns: They give DMs loads of information that they frequently will never have any opportunity to deliver to the players - who also would never be interested. I understand wanting to give depth to the NPCs, but frequently it seems like the important elements get skimped while the writer spends five paragraphs talking about character histories that have no relation to the plot and no clear way to even be communicated. Hoard of the Dragon Queen was filled with that sort of thing. I liked how Dragon Heist had the enchiridion to give to the players, so at least a lot of that stuff was consolidated and spoiler-free. Another bizarre thing I've noticed is that some completely optional fights have an incredible amount of detail on enemy tactics (thinking about the drow who steal the fire elemental), while there are mandatory encounters in chapter 2 that say "here's a list of monsters, figure out the rest yourself, fucko". And there's definitely a bunch of interesting hooks in this book, but they all feel like they should be their own campaigns, or at least major sidequests. Did the writers of this book serious expect a level 5 party to be able to tackle a fight against three frost giants?
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Mar 21, 2019 05:28
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As I continue to prep for SKT, I want to start my PCs off with a unique item given to them by their families. I have items in mind for two of them (the moon druid is getting a flask of infinite booze that makes wild shape more rage-y, the assassin rogue is getting a poison dispenser that lets her apply poison without using an action), but I could use some help on the other two. - One PC is a clerc/shepherd druid who is the grand-nephew of one of the most famous generals in the world. I want the item to be a tactical manual written by said general, but I'm not sure what it should actually do. I'd like to avoid extant mechanics like "get advantage on X" and probably scavenge something from the warlord. Does "1/short rest give everyone a move action" sound like it would be interesting enough? - The other PC is an infernal/tome warlock and his family history is that they've been sworn to a demon for generations. The PC is a bit of a screw up, though, and every time he tries to hex or curse somebody, the target ends up winning the lottery or something. It's a cute concept, but I'm not sure which direction to take in terms of a family boon.
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Mar 22, 2019 12:30
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Numlock posted:So am I totally out of line here for wanting to name a thief character “Django Speedwagon” or a paladin “Gaston Martel-rambeau”?? How are these any different than a random mouth noise elf name? Name your character Baston and see what happens
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Mar 24, 2019 02:48
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Nash posted:Setting talk. What campaign setting do most people play in? Are the forgotten realms/ sword coast the standard because of the books? Or do many people play in homebrew settings? Our group started with LMoP, so we're in that same area of Faerun everyone else is. But it's fun to build off of things that have happened, so I keep running the game in the Savage Frontier, though I sneak in my own worldbuilding when I can.
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Mar 24, 2019 14:06
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Telefragging typically doesn't work RAW. While the polymorph spells doesn't specifically bar this, the Enlarge spell does specifically state that the target stops growing if it can't fit anymore (hence, no sticking somebody in a small cage and then turning them into play-doh). It wouldn't be much of a stretch for the DM to say that it also doesn't work for polymorph..
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Mar 27, 2019 23:07
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One of my players suggested buying the STK module on Roll20. My one reservation is that I know I'm going to alter nearly 100% of the combat encounters, so I'm wondering how easy or difficult it is to change the pre-made monster tokens.
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Mar 29, 2019 22:46
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Malpais Legate posted:It's not difficult, just a matter of uploading your own tokens and replacing them on the pregenerated maps. This was exactly the situation I was hoping to avoid. Creating custom tokens and entering all the stats is far and away my least favorite part of using R20, and if the SKT module can't save me that issue, then it's probably not worth the money. I imagine it can't be hard to find scans of the maps, which I have no moral issue pirating when I've already bought the book.
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Mar 29, 2019 23:20
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 17:52 |
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I'm starting to think I should just cut the entirety of Chapter 3 of SKT and instead run the party through all five giant lairs.
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Mar 31, 2019 08:47
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