that sounds like a really cool party composition! (i love bards though, haha.) i've always wanted to play a catfolk/tabaxi/cat person of some description who is a barbarian or brawler or something. STONK CAT.
Sounds like a hecka cool party!! (I'm....loving Strong!Cat as a concept, that's beautiful.) The more bards the better. :P
Makolm helped kill a bear by yelling insults at it....and then he stabbed a frog person, and then got mcfreaking brought to 0 hp in one round by that frog That frog also knocked our warforged cleric (named 37) to 0 hp and it took an attack from the cat and a sneak attack by Altosk the assassin to kill it The cat is not a berzerker like i thought, he's now named Pretty Kitty and he's a barbarian The other bard got remade into a warlock who made Makolm a sandwich using the ingredients a woman was trying to make into soup Edit: as i was typing, Rav'aashta the warlock got mcfuckin knocked out by a frog. Frogs are a menace
So last night my kobold alchemist may have just gambled with a Deck of Many Things??? He did not want to. Because he is small, and has a strong self-preservation instinct, and his only prior exposure to this particular game was earlier that evening, and it was seeing what happened to some guy who pulled a bad card. Tiskkin does not like the idea of a game where if you lose, a giant demon chases you down the street and whips you to death. Tiskkin does not like that there is no technique to the game. Tiskkin thinks a game of pure chance with no rules, where you can die horribly if you lose, is a very bad game. However. One of our bards, Dorran the dragonborn, got locked up by the owner of the fancy-ass magic casino. (The people there are powerful, and frankly do what they want. Dorran, who loves to boast of his -ahem- prowess, failed to live up to the expectations of a particularly spiteful member of management. I expect she wanted to teach him a lesson about being a braggart.) In exchange for playing, Dorran would be released immediately. This game is the casino's star attraction and brings in a large portion of their money from the bets placed on the result, but thanks to a spate of bad pulls, they've gone for some time without anyone willing to be the player. Tiskkin is basically Dorran's very own fanboy, more or less worships the ground he walks on, and had been worried sick that Dorran had been absent for several days. Debauchery, the other bard, is a fast friend of Dorran's...and sees Tiskkin as entirely disposable. She is also a very smooth talker, as bards tend to be, and led my poor sweet kobold boy into the idea that no matter what happened in the game, wouldn't Dorran just be so proud of Tiskkin's selfless act of heroism? The owner of the casino (a gorgeous and very fashion-forward elf called Jerebeth) is secretly a dragon. She revealed this only to Tiskkin, as she coaxed him to sign the contract that locked him into playing the game and waived the casino's liability for any potential injury, fatality, or other unfortunate events that might result. Tiskkin is a kobold and a dragon just told him what to do. The good news: My tiny lizard boy is alive, and not only that, he now has a golden dragonborn knight sworn to serve him loyally until death. :D He's gonna get such a swelled head over this. The bad news: He chose to pull two cards. There was some black smoke and magic effects, but it seems yet to kick in. Oh dear. GUESS WE'LL SEE :DDDDD
We completed a sidequest to get rid of some bullywugs (sp?) yesterday. First tho we had to make it to their camp, and we were attacked by mosquitos the size of cats D: Makolm tried insulting them for psychic damage ("you dont even have blood! you got too many legs!!!) But they were too wise to succumb to bullying. He got a bit beat up because he only has 9 max HP lmao, but we figured out how healing works in 5e so he was fine Altosk the assassin's player was here this time altho Rav's couldnt make it. We almost lit an old charcoal making hut on fire because 37 the cleric has mainly fire based attacks, fortunately it was in a swamp so it was too wet to catch on fire Makolm spent that fight yelling insults at the bullywugs inside the hut, but hiding behind 37 who was blocking the door because he didnt want to get owned by frogs again When we made it to their camp, Altosk saw the bullywugs had giant frog mounts and was like, i need one Unfortunately he failed the roll to try to ride one :( I zoned out a bit because i realized that id only picked one cantrip (vicious mockery) but i was allowed to have 2, along with 4 spells at level 1. So now Makolm should be able to use Sleep, Tasha's Hideous Laughter and Mage Hand, with Dissonant Whispers as his second cantrip So when I started paying attention again we were pretty much fighting the bullywug queen, fortunately she was hurt by then and her son the prince backstabbed her and surrendered, promising to leave the area and leave the town alone Yaaaay
my party turned on the town that was hosting them and that they were working for, helping fae enemies who swore to bring a blight on their crops and raid their city dm was surprised by this turn of events and made us each explain how our character was okay with this amusing because we had just chosen the diplomacy path to deal with a kobold colony. but an entire town? fuck off
Its been a bit but we: Spoiler Watched a thief get ritually sacrificed to Odin, after which Rav ate the guy's eye (this was a bad choice and he was immediately tripped by the roots of a tree) We went to an island to find out about bandits buuuuut we were greeted by a cool giant rock/metal creature He asked for tasty metal snacks, which we gave him He took us to the sort of owner of the island, who was like "we have no bandits here lol" This new guy is actually an amethyst dragon, we found out later that we were sent there on a suicide mission because the head guy in the town thought the dragon ate people. He just flies them away to get them to leave his island We were flown to where the bandits actually were. After Rav tried to negotiate or fool them and nearly got stabbed by like 5 dudes at once, we defeated the bandits, rescued the people we came to rescue. But gasp! We found letters saying the head of the town was in league with the bandits! And arranged for the ship we were on at the start of the adventure to be sunk. Gaaaaaaasp Soo today we went to sleep on the way back to town on the boat to go confront him. While we slept, Odin summoned us to valhalla or w/e for a second where he was like "YOU STOLE AN EYE THAT WAS OWED TO ME YOU JERK" At Rav. And he wasnt happy with the rest of us for being part of Rav's party and thus guilty by association Odin hurt him and replaced his left eye with a dark blue one, corresponding to the one he took from the body, as a lesson i guess And THEN we had to fight our doppelgangers to amuse Odin Except we got to control both versions? We were told not to throw the fight tho. We each fought our doubles on a giant branch of the World Tree, and we had no way to know which was the "real"version or if that was a meaningful distinction. My fight was pretty silly. Mal 1 immediately used a spell to make Mal 2 fall over laughing, where he was basically helpless for 2 rounds. 2 eventually got up after losing 9 of his 16 HP, insulting 1 for psychic damage. 1 angrily played the saxophone to try to shove him off the ledge,which didn't work. 2 then pulled the same trick on him, and 1 fell to his death off the world tree because of angry dooting 2 was offered 3 acorns: one with a raven carved into it, one with an eye carving,and one with a spear carving. He took and ate the raven acorn Now we are fighting the head of the town and his men. Edit: 2 DM character and one plot relevant NPC nearly died but we beat the guy! Next time we're off to the dragon's island again to learn m o r e about this whole business
So, quick recap of my character. 15 year old NG orc paladin raised in human lands, charisma 18, int 7. Worships an agricultural deity. Speaks three languages, but functionally illiterate. Spends ninety percent of her time acting like an awkward child who has suddenly found herself surrounded by people who are much more important than she is, and the remaining ten percent being a clever and politically savvy negotiator. Right now the party is in a country full of demons who are no longer evil. The demon country is at war with a nation of wood elves. These wood elves are kind of jerks, and have sent some assassins after us before. Last week, we defeated a band of them who had somehow snuck into the military hospital, so this week, we got to go to the main prison/POW camp. The demonic utopia has a prison system that is like Norway levels of high quality restorative justice. We ate a meal in their cafeteria, and my character was like, "Trying new foods and appreciating the bounty of the earth is a way of honoring Chautea. I will try some of everything!" So then I ate some basilisk meat and a salad containing venus fly traps, and drank something bright blue that tasted like literal lightning. No ill effects so far. After eating, we got to go meet a high-level covert ops elf, specifically one of the ones who had tried to assassinate us before. She was ... partway through becoming some form of aberration. DM had a great time describing the way her face looked like there were living things moving under her skin... No luck on fixing that, but the demons are calling in some kind of healing specialist. Plus, our concern got us enough sympathy that she made us a very poorly drawn map of how to sneak into her country to kill the queen. So now apparently that's our main quest? We are a very focused party. I swear.
I'm not going to plot recap but we're underwater on a search and we've been attacked twice by mudmen. Poor fancy boy Rav'aashta got covered in mud like, 5 times. M u d b o y Edit:we have met an aquatic elf named Swoos.... pronounced swooce. He's rhe underwater DMPC tank lmao
So for reasons (read: my brain being its dumb ass self) I stiiiiill haven't really played DnD. And now I'm preparing to run Death House (which is an intro adventure for Curse of Strahd, for those not ~in the know~) to play with my wife. I was wanting to do a session 0 on Friday and play on Sunday but there's a whole encounter I have to improvise because the original writing sucks. Did I mention I'm a first time DM? Spoiler I'm going to rewrite the nursemaid encounter because I just think it sucks she just gets fridged like that. So I'm turning that into a non-combat encounter because like, she's the only one who has any clue what's going on! Also, I named her Klara because they didn't even bother giving her a name which also sucks But I'm super excited for my DM PC, they are a super extra Tiefling sorcerer, Barovia is going to hate them :D
Sorry for posting right after myself, but... I ran my first game! I'm a real DM now! We spontaneously decided we have time and hell, why not play DnD so we made characters for my wife (a half-orc barbarian and an air genasi druid) and a second one for me bc she wanted me to (a half-elf bard) and then played for two hours. A lot of it was just party banter though and in hindsight I was railroading a lot so I'm not 100% happy with my DM ability yet but my wife said it was a lot of fun and she can't wait to play again, which is great because we didn't even get inside the Death House yet. I had a bit more trouble playing my bard just because I had no concept for who he is, but the sorcerer is so fun to play! Also it shows I'm still pretty unfamiliar with the rules, I ruled a lot of stuff just going by what was fun to play at the moment ^^" Btw, have any of you played Curse of Strahd yet and have some advice on how to change some of the problematic stuff, like the antiziganism? I have a few ideas, but I'd love to hear what more experienced DMs or players did with that!
Hello more experienced d&d people I am here to ask advice I'm DMing a group next week and one of my players is playing Laura, half-elf warlock who saw her parents succumb to evil and desperately does not want to go the same way, a goal that is made way more complicated by her having made a warlock pact with the same fiend they did. It wants her to kill things, she usually dkes NOT want to kill things, all that fun stuff Anyways because of her not being into this whole violence thing he wants to play her like occasionally putting on a blindfold and essentially letting the fiend dictate her actions for the battle. rp wise, this is mostly so she doesn't have to be the only one responsible for whatever damage she does - if anyone dies, she can just keep being angry with the fiend instead of facing her INNER demons. mechanics wise it's still him playing and there's no disadvantage to hit or anything like that unless she's fighting the fiends control , but the more she gives control up the bigger the chance is that the fiend'll attack someone in the party instead. (she also has a choker that will literally choke her out if she deals a certain amount of killing blows before a short rest. just in case she loses control entirely. I am so here for this character.) Anyways what I wanted to ask was is there any suitable way to mechanics wise reward him for actually wearing the blindfold, since now it's basically a risk with no reward? I was thinking we could probably justify something like making spells more effective by saying the fiends power is less filtered through her when it's not subject to her judgment, but I don't know what kind of adjustments could be made without it being too much. Should I just be giving him inspiration for it?
p.s. I'm generally super hype for this party because the initial hook I gave them was I have an OC with a task to you and why you listen to her is up to you. Are you a friend doing it out of the goodness of your heart? Professional tired by [where she works] only there for the money? Rival trying to discover her secret? Spiteful ex only there bc she's blackmailing you? so far the party is 3 exes, one of whom is there in disguise pretending to be a professional but actually dead set on ruining her life, the current girlfriend, and a friend who's doing it because he owes her money for lunch. it's going to be a DISASTER
If you're okay with tracking stuff, you could start out with, say, +1 per damage die and/or +1 to any relevant DC/resists? Like, 1d6 > 1d6+1, 3d8 > 3d8+3, a target's constitution check (resist becoming nauseated/demons/whatever?) that would normally be caster level +5 is cl+6, etc I am unsure how "useful" it would be at lower levels, but you could always tweak the buff as you go along, justify it IC as varying levels of control of/familiarity with the mortal vessel?
So it started Forever Ago (immediately after the conclusion of Team Jailbird Arc 1) but NEW GAME NEW PARTY NEW HIGHLIGHTS The usual DM is a player in this game, and Tsalta the ranger's player is this story's DM. The general jist is that this party has been thrown together by what probably isn't complete happenstance but sure looks like it: each one of them's been suddenly spirited away from their daily life into the mysterious (and possibly on a parallel plane) Hare Ear Fjord. It's a picturesque coastal landscape and...apparently kind of a holiday spot for gods, or so it's said by the locals. Spoiler: party portraits and introductions Meet "Ponytail Party", who don't have a better nickname yet lmao Himo Moonwhisper: Eldritch Knight. Left his elfy hometown to become a city boy. Confrontational, sarcastic, a Macho Man who likes to take the bluntest possible approach to problem-solving. More bookish and academically inclined than you'd think, not actually as much of a Bro as he makes himself out to be. He is, however, a hardened and cynical crime boy who'd rather stab a potential threat several times in the back than discern whether it is a threat at all. Better safe than sorry, as far as he's concerned. Gorstag Moonwhisper: Himo's brother, who remained in Elfy Hometown(tm) until it was struck by a plague that wiped out most of the population and also at some point he got exiled...probably not in that order. Ended up camping out in the woods and chilling among nature quite happily palling it up with the wildlife - including a not-quite-regular fox. That fox has a disconcerting ability to jump a solid ten feet in the air vertically. He's got a bit of an itchy bowstring finger - in that way, he's not unlike his brother. Doesn’t eat meat if he can help it, but is too polite to openly decline. Unsure exactly how to social interaction after years of living in the wild, but does his best! Julian Montgomery Summerwind (played by me): A slightly eccentric student of magibotany, on a mission to write a comprehensive encyclopaedia of magical flora and plant-beasts. Also he has an accidentally-created plant-creature in his backpack, which he's procrastinating on returning to college with because what if they want to dissect Maximilian?? He’s a conflict-avoidant softboy with a tendency to cast aside self-preservation instincts in favour of ooh how FASCINATING!! Very personable but prone to verbosity and waffling, and 100% too bi to function. He triest to assume the best in people, even if that means being a bit too trusting. Favourite spell: Sleep. Heather Winterbright (played by @inchwyrm ) : The daughter of a noble who dealt with her strict upbringing with the tried and tested method of ‘rebellion-bang an orc’…and didn’t account for what can happen as a result: pregnancy, half-orc babies, and being immediately disowned. What Heather has inherited is a whole lot of baggage and insecurity about how people might treat her. There’s a reason she ran off to live in the woods, after all. Standing well over six feet tall, she looks and sounds like she could crush your entire skull but she’s a sweetheart who quite literally would not hurt a fly. She is far more likely to hurt you for trying to hurt a fly. (Or because she moved too quickly around you - she struggles to gauge her own strength.) Her wildshapes are primarily creepy-crawlies - she's very defensive of creatures that people find 'ugly' or 'gross'. Go figure. (Heather and Julian know one another from before the game - despite a bumpy introduction (he was taking cuttings of a rare plant in her neck of the woods) they hit it off once Julian had recovered from getting whacked over the head with her staff. To be fair, she was only aiming to prod him in the shoulder! He took a genuine interest in her love of nature and didn't shy from her formidable appearance, and in return she showed him where all the cool plants were so he could bring good research back home. :3) Game highlights so far include: Heather trying to knock out a bullywug to non-fatally subdue it...and rolling so badly that she whiffed and clocked the frogdude next to him at full force, nearly killing that one outright. Oh, Heather bb... She trips over her own feet on almost every dex check, bless her heart. Julian using Alter Self to turn into very ~Shape Of Water~ fishman to search some ponds for a mysterious item...and immediately diving into a three-foot-deep pool, humiliating himself absolutely in front of everyone. He thought it was deeper than that! Gorstag's quietly rising offence when his fox took a liking to an NPC and rode around on the guy's shoulder for ages...Gorstag does his best to be polite, but watching him get slightly passive-aggressive and insist that no his fox doesn't need food, he's already been fed thank you was kind of great. Himo's unrequited crush on Heather. It's so much. She finds him insufferable - she loudly calls out his bullshit, she's tried to physically clock him on multiple occasions (for killing bullywugs, for trying to help her sit down when she'd had too much wine, for being petty because he wouldn't let her borrow his crowbar)...and yet that's exactly what's got him so moony-eyed about her. She big!! She could lift him!! She's exactly as unbothered by treating him as acceptable collateral in AOE spells as he was with her when they first met!! It all reached a head when she saved his life in a battle with a yuan-ti, after which he straight-up took a knee and swore an oath to be her sword and shield. THIS BOY IS SO EXTRA. The part where the party accidentally did.......multiple murders?? The party with two relatively pacifistic members....did multiple murders of definite innocents. (It's a long story, involving a series of terrible misunderstandings where everyone thought the snake people were turning innocent people into stone and we were trapped in the snake people's house. Turned out they were just chill snake folks, and the petrified people were Very Bad, Actually. We thought they'd kidnapped this girl's sister....literally the opposite. Literally saved her from kidnappers. In the party's defence, it LOOKED very bad. And to be fair, Himo started it. It snowballed from there. It was MUCH.) I do not even know how to do the Snake Murder Debacle justice in shortform, but Heather got us out of it. She confessed to the Lady of the house (a medusa, of course) and managed to de-escalate the whole thing to the point where she was offering to come back and visit the Lady from time to time to give her someone to talk to, and because they'd found so much common ground. It was such a good scene, aaaaaaa ;A; ....And now we're all trying to collect shards of a broken divine artifact because a Creepy Shapeshifting Creature is trying to ALSO gather them and we should probably not let that happen.
what do you do when you're GMing an adventure path that calls for the PCs to fight were-sharks but the book doesn't give you a picture of the were-sharks to use for tokens? street sharks
My personal favorite story was from a sort of game test that I was doing. I was playing an orc monk who was basically just in it for the chance to fight things (she just fucking loved fighting) and there were reports of something ~weird~ going down at the beach. We were getting our information from guards who were telling us about this. I tried and failed a persuasion check to get them to come with us and was met with "no way, there's dark magic down there, I can't fight against it". My character, who was now trying to be intimidating because she was Large and also completely missing the concept because Words Are Hard goes "oh dark magic is no problem, I can see in the dark!" and just literally physically pulls this guard woman along with her down to the beach.
Ok, so, I am currently working on homebrewing a Wizard School system that is Similar Enough that I could probably never sell it but Different Enough that MY LORE NOW. Anyways. I want to create a system of spell creation/customization, but am having some trouble figuring the best way to go about it. I want something that has some crunch to it, but can still be kinda whimsical. I guess I'll ramble about my ideas under a spoiler, and anyone that wants can give tips/tell me which sounds most fun? Spoiler Alright, so, my first thought is to divide things up into "schools" of magic, but that is? Kinda harder than it seems? Because they can be a very hard and nebulous thing to divide. Like TES annoys me bc, for example, Destruction seems to be anything elemental, like there's no non destructive uses for, say, lightning, and how do you get the lightning and fire? Are you summoning it? Are you just manipulating energy around you? Then why can't you do so much more? But its. Really nebulous. Like for example, on the list I tried making "illusions" and "divination" were separate, but both could conceivably effect the mind- spells like mind reading fell under divination, but isn't illusion just tricking the mind? Or is it effecting light? This has been a source of stress for me. Idea two is just a straight elemental thing. You are either born with an element or you have to learn them, and each element finds different things easier. The more unsuited your element is to the task, the higher the dc. This is simple but almost too simple? I want something with a little more meat. Idea three is elements, but a combination of two, and each unique combination of two has its own specialty. Like lets say that earth and water is healing, and fire and earth is like. idk. Changing somethings shape. That kinda thing. I'm still not sure. I'm also not sure how I should have one spell having multiple effects. Should there be certain things that are Primary effects and certain things that are Secondary effects? Should it be like if:then- spell does a primary thing and under certain conditions does other things. I am fairly sure that there are also gonna be "tags" you can add that will effect the spell in certain ways or allow it to do certain things, like allowing a spell to be held with concentration or be ongoing. Or should duration be its own separate thing? I don’t wanna handle range as a square by square thing, so should it be by how many ppl it can effect and from how far away, or how wide an area? Which. Would still basically be square by square. I am also toying with the idea of having focuses and/or styles, which would effect how each person does magic. Like usin just your hands as a focus would make spellcasting quicker and more on the go but have a chance of damaging you, while using a staff would be more conductive to idk channelling elements. That kinda thing. Styles would be things like ritual casting- takes long and requires materials but reduces the number of successes needed, or song would make it easier to cast spells that effect people but harder to summon fire. I'm still not sure. Ok while typing this I also came up with two new ideas. One is magic as computer programming, kinda. You have to do lots of complicated Science Math or something to figure out how to Make The Universe Do What You Want It To, and spells are like. Variables, or cheat codes or something. This is a cool idea but would be hard for me bc I don't really know how to code. The other is magic as like. Linguistics. You have bases that tie to some kinda element or something like that, and based on how you tweak them or what other elements you add the spell can do different things. What do ppl think?
I think if you are attempting to add lore(?) like this you would be best off with one or both of your bottom 2 options. The rest of them seem very. narrow. Which to my understanding is not what you want (correct me if I'm wrong). Arithmancy is already A Thing and I'm sure you could find a bunch of things to help you base your ideas on. (If you're interested in the like. Actual mathematical bits I would imagine creating a spell would be a bit like creating and solving a differential equation to discover a function that would give you a certain output) As for the other aspect, in terms of having a bunch of base elements to be possibly put into a spell in order to do things I feel like cooking is a better example than linguistics, and I feel like it should also come with more ways for it to go Really Badly like "yeah sure these two bases go fine in their own spells but together they literally blow up in your face, and you didn't roll high enough to know that". In terms of your schools of magic issue, 1. I feel you. Like. Hardcore I feel you. 2. It's your thing! Make it whatever you want. In other words, instead of you asking me if fire is conjured or manipulated, I should be asking that to you. You have to make that decision. Alternately, you can say it can be either and just depends on the caster. Maybe one caster who specializes in conjuration literally conjures jets of flame from the elemental plane of fire, whereas a different caster who specializes in transmutation might transmute the elements in the air to something combustible and that's how that happens. Unless you're going all in on a four elements type deal, both ideas 2 and 3 seem immensely restrictive in terms of what kind of magic you can do with this (which maybe that's what you want, maybe this magic is Not Meant to be used on more complex things like mind control or conjuring creatures, but I can't tell based on what you've given so far) Spoiler: Shameless and off topic Are you perhaps looking for more players? I'm Dying to play and cannot find anyone
