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Raenir Salazar posted:Some variant rules I am considering: 1. Definitely run skill challenges. They are really fun for players and DMs. 2.If your players enjoy tracking things then try it. But be ready to quickly throw it out if it turns out to be not fun. In my experience it slows down play if you have too much additional systems at work. Re: better/deadlier combat. Consider letting martial characters do a "heavy attack". They sacrifice hit chance up to their proficiency-bonus and get twice that value as a damage Bonus.
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Nov 10, 2021 13:21
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 04:28 |
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I have dm'ed on and off for the last 4 years and I have never had a PC die on me. Maybe I'm just too nice with my encounter designs but it just does not feel right do make it too lethal. But if you have your players drain all of their spell slots, abilities and hit dice over a few fights and encounters and they beat the boss or whatever of the dungeon, that's the best thing i could hope for. I usually try to avoid too much combat and then have it pretty much back to back for the adventuring day. I introduce the enemy types of the dungeon and then drive up the difficulty. If a 5th lvl party disposes of a group of goblins with 2 fireballs, that is still 2 spell slots gone, mission accomplished. The party will miss them dearly when the harder enemies come around. We are currently in our fifth week of Out of the Abyss and I had to tone down a lot poo poo at the start of the campaign because it is not really thought out very well. I like the ideas of the campaign, but man is it rough around the edges.
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Nov 15, 2021 16:56
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pog boyfriend posted:i had a relatively open world where the party was assisting a deposed and disgraced prince reclaim his land after a powerful wizard manipulated the memories of key court members to create a false event of the king committing atrocities. the party had to work as an elite unit to fight the enemy generals and commanders as the wizard sought to use the ancient relics hidden beneath the country to achieve never before seen levels of power. throughout the campaign their reputation of their fighting force was essential and they were sent on the most dangerous missions to be a symbol of hope for the resistance. Holy poo poo, that sounds like a great campaign.
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Nov 15, 2021 18:29
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BabyFur Denny posted:My warforged hexblade just died in our Frostmaiden campaign - downed by a Yeti in one round at lvl3. A goliath girl whose performance entails feats of strength sounds like a good time. Pick college of eloquence or glamour for extra fun.
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Nov 18, 2021 13:07
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If you take a level in warlock and get the eldritch iniate feat you can add your spellcasting modifier(cha probably) to your eldritch blast. The hexblade or djinn subclasses are neat options for a multiclass dip, but only really make sense if you rolled a charisma character. Also you get an additional spell slot from your pact magic. I don't know if it would be really good on a druid, but go for it if you don't care about character build optimization too much. Edit: I just read that your DM lets you keep wis as your modifier, so maybe just go for it. Have fun.
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Nov 19, 2021 11:02
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Theotus posted:I really appreciate this feed back actually. The intent is absolutely not to poo poo up the game with too much exposition and railroad the players or anything. It's also definitely not something intended to be an actual red herring. That is to say, false or misleading information that would draw them away from whatever it is they're trying to accomplish. Talespire looks neat but it also looks a bit clunky to use for actual play. I use foundry and usually put usually show them flavour images during roleplay/travel and drop them on a battlemap for combat. I have gotten Feedback from my players that they don't want dnd to become too 'videogamey' and I think stuff like takespire and other programmes currently in delevopment are way beyond that threshold. I would suggest some test Sessions and to not just drop your decision to use such a programme on the players during a running campaign. My wife actually quit my campaign because playing via discord/foundry wasn't her thing. So maybe test out some ideas how virtual tabletops can work in your game and discuss it with your player. And I agree, theatre of mind is hard to do and playing on battlemaps really improved my enjoyment of Combat as a DM.
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Nov 21, 2021 12:49
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Theotus posted:Reason I brought it up is that I took over DMing from another friend who ran combat using maps on Roll20 or some similar site and after talking to the rest of the group it felt like combat was boiling down too much into "I move two squares left and attack" and a bunch of time spent with the DM moving pieces around instead of time being spent on "I do this and DM describes cool poo poo." I don't know. Maybe soon we'll get back to playing in person and that part of the game won't be so hard. I have a feeling that the cool poo poo isn't usually quelled by playing on roll20 or such. Without knowing too much about your previous campaign I would assume that it comes from the encounter not being engaging enough to motivate actions other than hitting/casting at things. I like foundry because it allows me to quickly set up initiative and other stuff and focus more on describing things that and keep track of where everyone is at the same time. In the end it really comes down to preference and what motivates players the most to engage with the stage you set for them.
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Nov 21, 2021 14:23
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Theotus posted:Does anyone have some cool suggestions for introducing a Warlock Patron into a game? By virtue of the fact that we started at level 3, the deal was already established, but no kind of relationship has developed or has been made up prior. I guess the only piece of information that I have aside from the fact that he's a Hex Blade is that his patron is actually himself, or a version of himself stuck out of time, because of the nature of magic and reality in the setting. My idea for this would be some kind of deal where that being has already trapped multiple other versions of himself to increase his own power. The being guides and protects this version of himelf (the PC) because he either wants a worthy successor because he feels his own lifeforce waning or wants the most powerful version of the PC to ulimately capture and feed off of, like a strange cosmical perpetual motion machine powered by other versions of himself. The being of course appears benelovent to the player but over the course of the campaign they can catch glimpses of the underlying madness and lust for power of their patron.
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Nov 23, 2021 11:10
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Theotus posted:That's extremely rad. I am definitely going to use that. Any suggestions on how to actually formally introduce them or how you'd see that scenario playing out from the Patron's point of view? Obviously you don't want to just throw all that on the table immediately. From the top of my head I see him visiting as maybe an incorporeal apparition. Sometimes maybe quite literally guiding the PC and their group. You could maybe use it as a tool to convey information the players might have missed or other things they have overlooked. Maybe the patron also some kind of boon when the player uses their inspiration. But then you would need to be careful to also give the other players some cool poo poo through other means. Those are just ideas and i have no idea how they would work in actual play. But I lean heavily towards giving the players cool stuff that are not just power increases and incorporates their backstory.
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Nov 23, 2021 11:40
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Theotus posted:I had mentioned earlier about writing occasional dreams to give the players during long rests. This will be the second time in a row that I've done this so I plan to taper that off going forward, but a common theme so far in the Warlock's dreams is that he's running, or fleeing. The first dream he was ultimately presented with his patron, shrouded in a reflection in a mirror. The second dream, encountering the patron directly who talks to him, but he is unable to respond. My plan was, because I have no filler between the next big fight and narrative moment for the party, to have the patron show up on his watch and try to chat with him for a few minutes. How that conversation ultimately goes I have no idea, but I am absolutely going to take what you said and make all effort for him to appear benign and maybe almost playful or amused. I have this problem with my coworker who also plays in my campaign. I can't really brainstorm story ideas with him. At least my wife dropped out of the group so I can ramble to her again. Edit: Idea shamelessly stolen from the loki show. Show your player glimples of other versions of the character. Different gender, crocodile, old man, non-euclidian. The patron sometimes warps into different shapes for a split second when he is agitated or something, suggesting he loses his grip on his great power sometimes. Rubberduke fucked around with this message at 15:26 on Nov 23, 2021 |
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Nov 23, 2021 15:20
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LiterallyATomato posted:Hey D&D thread. From my experience Lost Mines lets you jump in without much prep a the start. I do recommend sorting through the possible sitequests and integrating them into the main story a bit, so your players have a reason to actually visit thoses optional places. Also: Start at lvl 2 or 3
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Dec 6, 2021 11:27
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OPAONI posted:Honestly? It was more the kool-aid-man through walls image in my head than anything else. Trunk fighting was just a neat bonus. But if you were also a monk, you could be trunk-fu fighting.
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Dec 11, 2021 18:13
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I run Out of the Abyss currently and decided to throw in the optional Tomb of Khaem Dungeon which would reward the players with the Dawnbringer, a +2 sword that deals radiant damage, bonus damage to the undead and some other stuff. The group is currently lvl 4 and I feel the sword might be a bit too powerful. On the other hand I kind of want to just throw the sword at them and have them eviscerate some scary underdark poo poo.
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Dec 14, 2021 15:32
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Nemo posted:The sword also refuses to stop shedding sunlight everywhere, so it will have plenty of opportunity to challenge the players as they sneak through the Underdark. Well the characters who would get the most out of it are a gloomstalker and a shadow monk which could make for some fun interactions with the sword. I thought about having it as a +1 weaon that deals radiant damage and have it "level up" to its true form once it sees the sunlight again.
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Dec 14, 2021 16:46
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Infinite Karma posted:Unless you want your party to get gritty and extra-cynical at best, or become murderhobos at worst, you don't make the players regret leaving enemies alive and unconscious by having it bite them in the rear end. If you do, they'll just be justified in murdering them "in self-defense" instead of taking prisoners. Yeah, we just got to the (heavily modified) boss fight in wave LMoP and faced 3 mooks that we left alive on various occasions + the boss and underlings. That felt kinda eh.
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Dec 16, 2021 10:03
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TL posted:Looking for a bit of advice for my current character. I play as a Tiefling bard, currently at level 5. Most of my combat utility comes from using things like searing smite or branding smite. That said, they sort of require me to get in close proximity to the enemies, and my low AC and HP frequently put me on my back. I’d like to do something to be a little bit more helpful in combat situations. Any advice for what I might look into trying? I'd say stop focussing on the damage side of things and be as disruptive for your foes and helpful for your allies as you can be. Use your concentration for something other than smite spells, spend your inspiration dice and subclass features and spit out some cantrips the rest of the time. You're a bard, you don't need to outdamage anyone.
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Dec 22, 2021 11:53
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Monk talk got me thinking about the shadow monk in my game. Player seems to be happy to play something suboptimal but i want to give him a bit more tools to have fun with. So I was thinking of a combo meter, as others have suggested, that build up by punching things and can be used up ( for like 4 combo points) to use any feature that uses ki for free or give some sort of mini smite on a hit (like 2d6). I hope that would incentivise the use of his ki points. Other thoughts: hitting with flurry of blows gives the ability to use your reaction for a free grapple ir shove(without the need for an adittional check). Grappled enemies can be thrown for 2 ki points as a substitute for 1 attack of the attack action and take 2 martial arts die damage on a failed dex save.
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Jan 11, 2022 14:05
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I talked to my player about maybe testing out some ideas and maybe iterate on it. I really just want him to have fun punching stuff and live vicariously through him because all my plans to play a monk fell flat so far.
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Jan 11, 2022 14:29
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Raenir Salazar posted:That's shockingly clever. I only use dungeondraft and it works great. Consider backing Forgotten Adventures or Crosshead on Patreon to get custom assets.
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Jan 17, 2022 07:34
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Raenir Salazar posted:I've went and got Wondercraft and managed to import my roll20 assets, the organization could be a bit better; because its a really massive dropdown list of the default assets and adding my own will make it longer. For "Symbols" (stamps in Inkarnate); my categories are "Symbols", "Mountains" and "Trees" which is a little limiting. I got stuff like "Tundra" that don't really fit in either mountains or trees and don't wanna overly crowd "symbols" and make one list or another overly long. Unless there's some QoL organization features I haven't found yet that would improve this other than "carefully pick only the asset packs I need". Dungeondraft has some automated features for creating buildings, dungeons and caves but works well for virtually encounter maps. World maps or towns are not really the scope of dungeondraft. It's incredibly easy to whip up some quick maps in it or do huge detailed dungeons if you take your time.
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Jan 17, 2022 10:04
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Re: VTT and importing stuff in Foundry there are  options that let you basically import all the official stuff and also homebrew resources easily. If you feel iffy about it you could theoretically only use it for stuff you actually own elsewhere.I won't go into more detail than that but for me it is a real timesaver when preparing sessions in foundry. Edit: also giffyglyphs monstermaker is a great module to create your own stuff quickly. Rubberduke fucked around with this message at 13:12 on Jan 18, 2022 |
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Jan 18, 2022 13:10
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I really want to give more cool poo poo to my players. Maybe I should just bury them in magic items and let them attune on a short rest or like 10 minutes. Then just make the encounters a bit more deadly and have fun with it.
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Jan 19, 2022 18:06
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Devorum posted:The patron is just Mr. Torgue from Borderlands. CAN I TALK TO YOU ABOUT OUR LORD AND SAVIOR EXPLOSIONS?
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Jan 21, 2022 09:00
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I have thought about melee players standing around only because of attacks of opportunity. A away to mitigate this might be to make disengage a reaction. If you want to move away, fine, but counterspelling and other neat poo poo is off the table until your next turn. Rogues and monks don't provoke aaos.
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Jan 24, 2022 15:25
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A house rule I have seen regarding LR/SR is to have long rest be a full day of downtime and short rest is a good night's sleep. I have yet to try it out but I can see how it would make travelling and exploration a bit more interesting.
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Feb 28, 2022 08:09
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Gort posted:I'm gonna be running Zeitgeist: Death of the Author in the system it's written for, Advanced 5E. Give them an extra feat or start them with some magic items.
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Sep 6, 2022 13:01
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Melee ranger with a spear and dueling fighting style/polearm mastery feat. Cast hunters' mark on enemies and abuse your many attacks. A hunter should work well for that. Or a swarmkeeper.
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Sep 7, 2022 15:20
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What I did as a DM was have everyone pick something other than variant human or custom lineage and start them off with a free feat. Also switching around attribute bonuses was fair game as per the optional rules. That lead to people actually playing interesting race/class combinations and cool character builds. Maybe talk to your DM about this. If he doesn't want it, custom lineage is a good option.
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Sep 7, 2022 16:58
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Regarding fleeing: I currently run out of the Abyss and my players were exploring the pudding court in the city of Blingdenstone. They happen upon the mad king of the slimes, The Pudding King, who is under the influence of the demon lord Jubilex. They do so in the worst kind of way while being on the run from other slimes and the whole exploration becomes a big continuous battle of 3 sessions. They realized quickly that they were overextended and running low on resources and tried to flee. Most of the enemies were oozes, so running was not really off the table. They only really managed to escape by the skin of their teeths with some clutch saving throws. It was great and I had some of my best DM moments so far. There is no real lesson here, just that sometimes these situations can happen organically if you let them. I was fully prepared to let the players pay for their stupid decisions. Regarding travel: I hate it as a DM. I tried it and I absolutely loathe the tedium of having the players roll for foraging, of rolling for random encounters and other things to keep track of. I resigned myself to only having one pre-designed encounter, or series of encounter per stretch of travel, usually set up like a small dungeon. Example: The group had a travel-time of aprrox. 7 days from the Darklake to Blingdenstone. There was a drow outpost along the way adjacent to a colony of intelligent spiders along the way. This kept the the group busy for about 2 1/2 sessions (3 hours per session) and I just kinda glossed over the rest of the journey. To me this is the best way to introduce some flavor to travel and not have it be such a dull affair. In a previous campaign I floated the idea of skipping the foraging rolls with the players and one of them insisted on rolling for every travelling day. It was pretty miserable. I was kinda new as a DM and had not even prepared anything meaningful for that stretch of travel. Definitely don't do that.
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Sep 23, 2022 15:07
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Mr. Lobe posted:I feel like I've had a wildly divergent experience of travel from you guys. In games I've both played and DMed, wilderness travel wasn't just hostile encounters, it was also finding other travellers (and generally interesting people do travelling) or nonhostile wondrous beasts (guys should we try to tame that unicorn?) or hidden villages of gnomes or something. Yes, but you can just write those things in and skip the rest of the travelling tedium. The only thing that it is really good for is athmospheric campsite roleplay, characters getting to know each other, etc. or fun interactions that convey information about the game world. Skipping roadside encounters entirely is no fun either. But for me they just work better if they have some thought put into them.
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Sep 23, 2022 18:37
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sebmojo posted:You see a single, perfectly fresh, round red apple on the floor in front of you. My favorite so far was normal cat in a strange place. Drove them crazy.
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Sep 23, 2022 23:23
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I own a lot official stuff and still use the tools that are for 5e because it is great and have neat integration for foundry that just isn't done elsewhere. So my advice is to buy some used copies and then access that content via much more comfortable unofficial tools.
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Sep 26, 2022 09:47
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Regalingualius posted:Well, after thinking on it a bit, I think I’ve settled on going with a Paladin after all, and probably going to be going the full 20 in it for simplicity’s sake, and going with a Far Traveler background. I’ve also been referencing from http://dnd5e.wikidot.com Vengeance Paladin is really good to start out with. It is easy to deal enough damage with it and feel strong, even as your classic sword fighter dude. Start out as whatever race sounds cool and don't worry too much. Ask DM if you can switch the racial stat bonuses around to fit your character. Variant human is the optimized choice but a tad boring. Do what you find interesting.
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Oct 11, 2022 18:32
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I just handed out feats on character creation and banned var-human and custom lineage in my current game. Players could also freely pick their +1 and +2 as per Tasha's. I also handed out a feat at the last lvl up to 7. It lead to some mechanics cheese with our resident power-gamer but also some interesting class/race combinations and cool rp. Feats always feel like a dangling carrot to me that is very hard to ignore, especially on martials/half-casters. I say remove the dangling, have everyone be on the same page and maybe whip up some other bonuses for people who really want to play human. Like something with charisma checks akin to the imperials in TES.
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Oct 13, 2022 13:08
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So, my players have succesfully navigated the unterdark and emerged unharmed in Out of the Abyss. The adventure so far has taught me that I do not care for any sort of resource managment that goes beyond spell slots/abilities/one time conusmables. You eat. You shoot arrows. I don't care where they came from. Also, official adventure suck to prep. You have to do half the work anyway. The only good thing is I don't have to come up with plot hooks and character names and the like. And some flavour art. BTW: If anyone wants to run OotA, I have some battlemaps I created from the official maps in DungeonDraft for some locations in the first half of the adventure. And for other poo poo like random encounters.
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Oct 18, 2022 14:32
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Azathoth posted:All elves being emo or goth is totally happening in my next campaign. My Alchemical Romance
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Oct 21, 2022 18:07
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megane posted:When I was
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Oct 21, 2022 20:03
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The Bee posted:The Am I The Chaotic Evil posters have to go somewhere! Lmao
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Oct 25, 2022 17:09
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Friendly grung maybe?
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Oct 31, 2022 15:11
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 04:28 |
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pog boyfriend posted:salvatore based guenhwyvar off his own real life magic panther who tragically died of ligma in 1986, 2 years prior to the beginning of the equally beloved and hated-by-old-boomers drizzt saga What's a magic panther?
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Nov 2, 2022 16:41
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