Our plan sort of worked? We got the hobgoblin to pass out or at least the bard knocked him out via a lullaby spell And THEN Her attempt to sword him to death failed He woke up, and most of the party immediately rushed in to variously stab or arrow'd him in a panic That sort of worked until he chugged a potion of cure light wound and sprinted into the next room where a very tiny dragon lived This exceedingly smol, acid spitting dergon. We all aww'd because she was about the size of a cat? I mean she'd been eating goblins and was part of the reason the goblins had been attacking the village But sooooo small :000 a babby We managed to murderize the smolest dragon and knock out the hobgoblin boss, and then just kind of... put the dragon in his hands like he'd killed her and made the scene look like that's how he died? And uh kind of killed him while he was at 0 hitpoints just to make sure. Because the goblin wizard was crushing on him and would murderate us if she suspected we'd tried to hurt him And then we stopped while planning how to get the goblins and the village to work together now that they were free from the tyranny of Ambitious Hobgoblin and the tiniest dragon
Oh i almost forgot, the druid tried to use a fire spell on her but realized she'd have to do it by touch not by flinging a firebal (and almost certainly burning her pupper wolf familiar) Mission: Pet The Dragon With Fire didn not succeed. She ended up flailing like a small child who wants to play with kitty but kitty is on a high shelf to escape this small human menace She also tried to spot the dragon earlier before the fight started. The darg has like a +17 to Hide, and she rolled a 1 "You basically go [opens eyes, gasps, shuts eyes immediately]" "Or maybe [closes eyes] I DON'T SEE ANYTHING GUYS"
Just popping in to share my epic demon slaying banter from tonight. The scene, we're rescuing villagers and the duchesses son from Dr. Diabolist a batshit insane demon summoning wizard who is basically the campest comic book super villain. We just broke the villagers out and are now facing a demon they called the Jailor, who was a twelve foot tall Hezrou with villager thralls he could use as meat shields. So as the battle begins, it's my turn. I'm playing a Paladin, and so the first thing I do is walk up to him and the meat shields, hold out my sword to him, and say, "Alright, Big Boy, wanna dance?" and activate my Channel Divinity. My sword and shield light up with blazing light, and I start dashing around to get at him without putting the thralls in danger. Our Fighter, Penny, had the same idea. She managed to get behind the demon and made a trip attack. He rolls a four. So Penny basically hamstrings him and he's prone by the time I finally get there. I toss a thrall over my shoulder, nail my con save against the demon's stench, and attempt to strike. Now, I have both my Channel Divinity and Bless buffs on, so I get 1d20+1d4+10 to hit. And since he's prone I have advantage. I hit him square in the gut and burn a divine smite, which adds 3d8 radiant damage to my 1d8+3 strike. I roll 7, 7, 7, 6, for a total of thirty damage. He's not quite dead so I leap on his chest and use my second attack, burn another divine smite. How do you want to do this? The DM asks. "I stand on his chest, look down at him, and say, 'Shoulda taken those dance lessons.' and drop my sword through his skull." The demon is burned from the inside out by blinding light, pouring out of all the cuts and scrapes and wounds we inflicted on him.
did I tell you guys about the time when I was reading the 5e Monster Manual, saw the cutest little illustration of a bronze dragon wyrmling, discovered its CR was 2, and starting crying bc SO DELICATE, SO SMOL..... ? because that totally happened. I am easily overwhelmed also. just. "Are you an Orphan? —> Yes —> Urchin." AMAZING
Oooh, very nice. Though I think it misses the mark on the Hermit some, as that's really a mix between Wilderness and Church. Still, super handy. Makes me think of the Volo Races one, too.
Things that happened tonight: much fire and bedlam, a very happy vengeful Chaotic kittymage, fireballing a Nazgûl out of the sky, two successful assassinations, much brawling Things that also happened tonight: our fucking assassin crit-failing four times (two reflex, a fortitude, and stabbing his second target), accidental friendly fire during said fireballing of the Nazgûl, crashing a friendly airship onto our beleaguered assassin and killing most of its crew in the process We're good at life
I just rediscovered springhole.net, which is full of articles on character-design, roleplaying, writing, and generally being a person. (Seriously, look at some of these, handy life advice that I've gotten away from). Anyway, I went in looking for advice on making good characters, because I've got a blockage going with a couple of concepts. Happily ran again into coming up with core drives, the central reason to do stuff of a character, and ways of connecting that to their skills and background thus far. Reminded me of ashami.com's rpg personality/background guide, which got updated since the last time i printed out a copy (last time it was a set of 20 primary motivations)... Also came across a good set of guidelines for making a character for party-based tabletop rp... a list of things, emphasis on the importance of why... and a summary of things about cults relevant to writers/roleplayers, which is relevant to me for one of the characters in mind (Thunder, to-be-played over here)! Right now I'm attempting to join a D&D group that's all about frontier exploration, with a large player pool where ever-changing groups meet up different days of the week. It's voice and video ((Terrifying!!)) which means I need a character who I grok enough to roll with. One that isn't just a reactive murder hobo, despite the fact that I went with the roll-in-order ability scores instead of point buy, and I got a very physical character (14, 15, 16, 11, 11, 10). I've decided to go genasi barbarian, partly shoot my Con through the roof to enhance survivability and my unarmored AC so I never have to worry about getting or wearing armor, partly to get Int up to +1 for the sake of getting me that sweet positive modifier, and shuffling over to the City Watch: Investigator background from SCAG to give her a good sense of not-combat stuff. "Hotheaded rookie cop" is a hilarious punny thing for somebody who's part fire-genie, after all. I'm thinking about inductive reasoning, about investigating to look at all the clues, and hot temper rearing up with shit like overlooking thing she doesn't want to believe and getting too aggressive about pressuring confessions. And I like all that shit. Problem is.... why the hell is she out in the newly established frontier island town, risking life and limb exploring the 'new' land and fighting monsters, instead of working the city watch? There's a lot of possibilities, but picking one and having it part of her core motivation so I have something to base future decisions on........ tricky. Eta just found a 50 article series on running 'duets', games with one player and one dm.
So I'm planning on running a Harry Potter-ish game for my friends, based on a fairly simple partially cribbed from 5e partially homebrew d20 system. Does anybody have any ideas about how to run a school in tabletop? I was thinking of running things week by week, with zoom in on specific scenes, but I'm trying to figure out what kind of interesting classes I can give them and how to reflect what they've learned in their abilities. Thank you :)
somehow ran into a neat thing on reddit, a DM's way of offering personalized bits of knowledge about the world to each player one of the commenters noted: and like dang, yes, that's a cool way to start a game off with the character knowledge =/= player knowledge =/= party knowledge thing, to have them thinking and planning in ways that interact instead of just clustering together as a party against the world. not suited to all play styles, but very suited to some.
im hosting a campaign for me an my friends! and im not quite sure if my story is... good? like, i'm going to go through w/ it bc its end game, we're already making characters n shit, but i wanted to post it here for feedback? Spoiler: dont read this if ur in my game!!! spoilers!!!!!!! ok so Summary: Biri is trying to purge the world of humans and/or keep humans as servants to the more 'superior' race, dragonborn. She's destroying a shit ton of towns on her conquest, and your job is (presumably) to kill her or stop her somehow. In-Depth: So basically Biri, a dragonborn, was orphaned when a really racist group of humans offed her family. She took it personal, and decided (along with having racism @ her for years as well) that humans were all horrible. So she's doing a lot of damage running around killing people w/ her dragons. My players end up in a town 2 days before she attacks, and are going to set off to investigate the fuckery. The endgame thing isnt set because I want my game to be focused around choice. So you can kill her, or you can join her, or you can try to show her that she's wrong. It depends on the characters morals and personal thoughts. I'm thinking they'll either try to show her the error of her ways or stop her bc all but one of my players is some form of good alignment. I'm really proud of my like, plot bunnies i have stashed away for it, and i'm really excited because one of the players is a dragonborn too! So i'm planing (hoping) to have Biri try and sway him over to her ideals - which is possible, because he's the chaotic neutral outlyer of our group and has shown interest on changing for either good or worse throughout the gameplay. And like i said, choice is going to be a big thing - so, another choice thing, is if they dont choose to talk to certain people they wont learn important information to locate Biri. If they dont get to her by a certain point, ima have her start killing other villages and keep going on rampages until they do. (If they don't they have to live in her reality.) Biri also has a fucking army of half-dragon soldiers. She's going around turning other people/sympathizers into them via magic so she can get stronger. (Though she kills all humans she meets)
It's not particularly abnormal for a Mountain Goats song to inspire something in D&D. But wow, I did not ever think my characterization of Pazuzu would be informed by "The Ultimate Jedi Who Wastes All the Other Jedi and Eats Their Bones." All the paladins on all the planets In this putrid universe Get eaten by Pazuzu, now it's your turn
Having just watched Wonder Woman... Fighter archetype or feat or something for tricky whip fighting when? So far I figure Duelist fighting style for the +2 damage, Shield Master because deflecting dex saying throw stuff is relevant.... Maybe Battle Master fighter archetype for the Trip Attack maneuver, and somehow get Lightning Lure from SCAG for pulling enemies in... Eta whip IS finesse so maybe go high elf for the cantrip, dex fighter, letting the bonus shield shoves be a gamble. :|a Saves ability points, multi rogue for expertise in Athletics to make up for the STR loss and the small attack bonus that all this prone nonsense offers... Eta 2 I forgot about arrow deflection, monk sometime too?? I'm not as convinced by the paladin main class. eta 3 monk's unarmored doesn't extend to shields, boo. maybe for a shieldless variant. eta 4 but barbarian's unarmored does. and the rage resistance sorta works for that effect.
@lichGlitch If they're all playing wizards, a good way to represent the things they're learning would be adding new spells to their spellbooks -- maybe have them start off with just one or two + cantrips, instead of the usual six at first level. @dky I think it's great that you're building meaningful character choices that affect the world into the campaign -- that's something I've been trying to do more of, as I have a tendency to railroad a bit. The plotline is good too, but it could become simplistic if you're not careful. Spoiler: dky's players don't read -- specific feedback within If it's just played as "racism is bad, reverse racism is ALSO bad," then the players are probably not going to be swayed to Biri's side even for a second. Stories like this are more compelling if the heroes have nagging doubts and wonder if the villain might have some good points. Rather than just having Biri's tormentors be a specific group of humans whose racism is incidental, maybe background the campaign with a long history of conflict between humans and dragonborn/dragonblooded folk. That's a situation where extremists on both sides can use the other side's atrocities as a recruiting tool and a justification for more atrocities: "Only we are willing to do what is necessary to protect you from the decadent infidel oppressors / savage baby-mutilating hordes."
Story time with Prinz! This is the story of a player created race. This one is unique because this all happened "in game..." Come with me my friends through the pages of time to a living room in southern California in the year 1987. See 6 players and a Dungeon Master, that one is me. The time of day is about 4 am, this was an overnight game, that started around 8 pm, and would run until almost noon. We were all running on "silly power" by the time this incident started. One of my players was problematic. He claimed to enjoy the game but refused to even attempt any form of role-playing. This was not just frustrating for me, but for my players as well. He was playing a dwarf fighter with the unimaginative name of "Gimli." I know, right? Other than rolling dice in combat, the player was monosyllabic. My players in an attempt to get any kind of response out of him made Gimli the butt of their practical jokes. They did all kinds of things to this poor schmo. From polymorphs to sex and size changes. Finally, after several of these body changing pranks. I decided that the character's mind couldn't be handling this well and rolled a chance for temporary/permanent insanity. I rolled temporary, and dipsomania. Dipsomania simplified, is an uncontrollable craving for alcohol. Now one of my other players was a sneaky little sh.., and had been hoarding a substance called "whimsy wine." Whimsy wine is a magical drink that causes a temporary magical effect for each swallow taken. The sneaky player, nicknamed Scooter, had acquired about 5 gallons of the stuff in a wineskin of holding. He had been collecting it since the campaign started. When the character asked if anybody had a drink, Scooter, who was playing a female mage at the time, offered this wineskin to Gimli. My standard practice when I need a random magical effect is to roll on the "random magical item table" and adapt the effect of whatever item that I roll on the table to the situation at hand. I did so then and got "Bag of holding" Gimli was drinking the stuff so "stomach of holding" make sense. |I announced that and realized if that was the effect then, with nothing to stop him, Gimli would drink the skin dry. Rather than figure out a couple of hundred temporary magical effects I made a decision "I announced that I would roll a d20 and what ever number I rolled would be the number of permanent magical effects Gimli would suffer. As I recall, I rolled 13. So here is what I remember happened to poor Gimli. The Stomach of Holding, of course. He was reduced in size to about 10 inches, but he only lost half of the weight of a full grown dwarf, thus he was very dense and got a natural AC bonus. Smoke came out of his ears, it had the effects of "incense of meditation." He could move through dirt at walking speed and solid rock at half that. Lowered wisdom. Total immunity to poison and disease, magical or mundane. Regeneration at 2 HP per round. There were others but I don't remember all of them right now. They are the only race in my world that can not choose to be a magic-user. To power all this innate magic they must eat as much as an adult dwarf eats in a day, at every meal. Finally, they have a love of great quantities of strong drink. Scooter's mage was fascinated by all of this and took a generous tissue sample. After the game Scooter approached me and told me his plan, he wanted to create a race based on Gimli. His mage knew the "clone" spell, but it has problems inherent in its use. So here's what happened: I made him remove the character from active adventuring, except questing for materials, for 8 calendar months, The character had started a business, in the game, and was making money hand-over-fist. I had him spend almost all of it on research and materials. In that time he would prepare to cast a series of spells to create enough clones that were different in genetics, and of course in sex, to create a base population. I made him do all of this casting during a game, with a strong chance of failure. Then he took another 4 months out to find a way to accelerate time in a small area, and another small fortune in foodstuffs to keep the Gimlis going. Scooter had to eventually retire the character as I made sure the character heard all of the Gimlis prayers as she was a goddess to them now. Now among the races available for PCs in my world is the Gimli. The can be any class but magic-user, and priests are limited, mainly because their goddess can't grant spells over 3rd level. They can excel as shamen though. They also get some cool innate abilities.
Me, making my neutral good cleric of Ehlonna do objectively bad things: EHLONNA DON'T SAY SHIT ABOUT THIEVES. SHE DON'T SAY SHIT ABOUT TRAITORS. SHE DON'T SAY SHIT ABOUT DRUG RUNNING OR CONSTANT SEXUAL DEVIANCY. SHE HAS ONE DAMN RULE: DON'T FUCK UP THE FOREST. I READ THE PLAYER'S MANUAL SAME AS YOU DID (Protip always make sure to check out what your character's god considers 'good.')
DM: Here's an npc with a useful powerset! I love her! She has 15 pages of backstory! Please take advantage of this mentor figure! Us: nah DM: so I'm thinking since you're getting powerful enough to not need a babysitter I'm gonna phase out the lv5 bard dmpc-- Us: NO QAQ Sorry, dm, you made him our friend, we're keeping him
