Instead of incinerating the acolytes immediately, you might have them die later or in other ways so the party can come across their corpses and/or trail of panic in various places in the dungeon. Maybe they even fight one. Also, this place might need a Fred. "Fred" is an assistant to the big bad with minimal power in the usual sense. He might not even have adventurer levels. His powers are basic adult competence, organization, lack of any overweening hubris or short-sighted greed, and not looking or talking like a megalomaniacal villain. Unlike the acolytes, who want to be necromantic supervillains themselves and so can't be trusted, Fred knows all the projects and traps and where their keys and levers are. He views the heroes as a passing annoyance, to be easily dealt with as long as his boss and co-workers can stop being Stupid Evil for five minutes. Which they can't, but Fred still presents a serious threat just by playing smart and staying alive.
I LOVE THIS. "Listen guys, I'm gonna be honest with you, I'm just here to make a living and I would really appreciate it if you didn't destroy my entire life?" Then when they inevitably don't do that he can just push a button for a net trap and go "well you'll be out of the way until they all get back at least and I can get some paperwork done".
I had a set-up of big bads that included a Fred once. They centered around a renegade angel who wanted to reform Earth so that humanity would control their own destiny without any divine interference once Heaven was out of the picture. Their number included the angel herself, an insane revolutionary who'd picked up genetics as her bread and butter and eschewed magic as a result; a necromantic prodigy who signed on because she was allowed to mess with any number of monstrous corpses that they could get ahold of in order to supply their war effort; a vampiric knight that was hell-bent on seeing humanity gets its new day because her status as an "involuntary monster" left her devoid of a side to fight for in the monster v. human v. angel war and she thought it'd make her a martyr; and...an android built by the angel whose entire purpose was to concoct, independent of any of them (and meant to long outlive them), innovative designs by which humanity would prosper in the post-war economy, including advanced cybertechnologies, superior designs for biological augmentation, amazing medical technologies, and more! She was also the only person in on every single aspect of the angel's plan and who knew that certain members would be pruned as things proceeded, was aware of the finer points of the world's greatest heroes, kept tabs on every innovation made by every member of their group, and she herself managed to give the entire PC group a run for their money when they finally encountered her and realized she was one of the Seekers of Truth they were set out to battle. Ultimately, they came to deduce her purpose from context clues left around her laboratory, and on ceasing hostilities she readily and happily apologized and pledged herself to helping them survive all the war going on around them. When they pointed out that had to do with offing her boss and so on, she retorted she was meant to outlive them anyway, and now that the war was in full swing there was virtually no way it wouldn't end at least 90% to her creator's approximations - enough for her to do her job! They avoided the hell out of her except when needbe after. I remember a PC explicitly commenting "She's not a fighter herself but that lab is a giant death trap and she knows everything about all of us; let's just steer the fuck clear and fight her when we're done with everyone else if needbe."
i like that this makes it easier to follow the story, & if they manage to talk to the survivor they might even get some fore-warning of what's to come! also, i love the idea of a Fred with all my heart. because honestly, if there's one threat no D&D party is ever prepared to deal with... it's a competent adult who makes rational choices.
I'm going to be DM'ing for the first time tomorrow. We're doing a pre-made campaign (lost mine of phandelver), since only one of us has played D&D before, and I don't anticipate any difficulties with that. We're planning another campaign after, and I'm a little stumped on how to do what my sister wants play. Her idea: a Moon Circle druid who gets semi-stuck as a bear. Basically, her character can use Wild Shape to become something that's not a bear, but with the same limitations that would normally apply to Wild Shape. Using Wild Shape to be a bear is beyond her character's abilities to start with, so my idea is that she has some sort of artifact/totem/whatever that allows her to take on the shape of a bear, then in the first major fight the object is damaged while she's in bear form and she winds up stuck. Does anyone know any items that would work for that, or other things to consider while playing with a character like that?
First off, congrats and I hope you have a good time! Second. There's a few things you could do with this. You could say that the nature diety(ies) give her a blessing to protect her but something goes wrong and she ends up stuck, no need for any items. You could straight up homebrew an item that maybe was gifted to her by a powerful member of the clan which says "after the creature attuned to this is injured by x amount, they transform into a bear as if having used Wild Shape". A quick dnd beyond search suggests that there's probably nothing that's under canon which has already been created like that so you could try checking to see if anyone else has made homebrews. She could be cursed to be a bear, again no items required. You might want to consider, after a while, giving her access to an item that allows her to cast spells while in wild form. Because typically you cannot if I recall. Also, Wild Shape means you cannot speak your own language, you speak the language of whatever form you take.
My first session DM'ing went well! I accidentally created "Stewie" the goblin when the halfing rogue told their prisoner "Halflings have two uses for goblins: information or stew" and then rolled a natural 20. I decided the local raiding party involved a lot of scrapping for hierarchy and had him go "ok, this terrifying person is clearly In Charge; I'm switching teams." She has since taken to referring to him as Stewbone or Stewie and frankly cares more about him than the rest of her party, who are just some people who happened to be going to the same town as her. Now I have a week to decide what happens to Stewie, since they're unlikely to be able to bring him to town without causing Way Too Much Fuss.
Cloaks. Goblins are about the same height as halflings, so clearly he's just her very ill cousin from out west. No, further west than that. No, no, not quite so far west, and also a little further north. Can't take off the cloak because it's spelled for preventing contagion and also the disease makes talking hard and walking upright difficult and sunlight just the worst. But, I mean, clearly he's a sick halfling and not a goblin. Why would adventurers be hanging around with a goblin? That makes no sense, and so clearly isn't true. If your players can't come up with a reasonable(ish) way to keep Stewbone, they frankly don't deserve him. Plus, hey, recurring NPC potential if he stays outside or way to make trouble for them if he comes in (though not immediately, probably, if they pass whatever checks you determine necessary, give them a few towns).
i'm DMing the final session of the mini-arc I've been running for my friends before we take a sharp left turn into Curse of Strahd tonight! i'm very nervous and very excited. they've forged their way up and then down below a missing wizard's tower, unconvering all kinds of hidden strange enchanted objects and constructs (and also a misplaced creature from beyond the planes, who is very bored having only recently been forced to experience the concept of linear time). and up until now, they were pretty certain the missing wizard was someone to be worried about. the robots creeped the party out to no end, nevermind the summoned extraplanar entity, and all signs pointed to him building something huge in his basement. and now they've found the deepest room under the tower, having talked the robot butler into granting them access by being shockingly sensible and polite*... they've finally found the wizard. rail-thin, with a month of beard growth, looking super duper rough. they've also found what he was building, because the fellow is sat despondently in the lap of a massive humanoid robot that's serenely petting his hair - in the middle of a cosy sitting-room strewn with scattered papers and with the covers missing from all the chairs, feathers everywhere. Spoiler: wyrm don't look it's spoilers because he's been surviving by using a Fabricate spell to turn the leather seatcovers into vaguely edible jerky, and drinking near-exclusively from his mug of infinitely refilling Wizard Coffee. it was so fun watching the switch flip to 'oh wait, we should have been worried for him. oh no'. i can't wait to see what they do next, because so far it has never been at all what i suspected they might do! *(no but seriously this is the most competent and logical adventuring party i've never seen and i genuinely wasn't prepared for that fact. because 2/3 of the characters are beautiful garbage people and the other is a genuine sweetheart but too curious and impulsive for his own good. 'as a representative of the wizard, can you not escort us to the room and request an audience on our behalf?' absolutely blindsided me because it was so sensible i'd never even considered it)
In hindsight, being sensible and polite would be the logical and obvious way of dealing with a butler. But I too would have expected an adventuring party to attack it, or maybe troll it.
diplomatically minded dnd parties kind of throw off all the challenge levels, the rules are not formulated for it. i've got this ranger, cecil eltheriel-smith (half-elf, of course), who is not so much a fantasy ranger as a park ranger. and his aunt, an elven duchess, raised him to be a gentleman. result: he has absolutely no interest in fighting, and will only do so when there's no other choice, but he will happily march right up to anyone they meet and try to make friends. there was an entire castle of giants that we didn't fight because cecil had a nerdy chat with their leader and promised her that our wizard would be happy to trade notes about time shenanigans.
Oh man, I'm so excited to play my character. An actual full on raised in the court queen. Diplomacy is going to be EVERYTHING. She may not fuck the dragon, but oh it turns out she knows the dragon's aunt and they had a lovely time exploring the mountains together and she's practically the dragon's extended aunt herself.
My friends and I are playing self-insert DND Our DM told us to pick 1 person as our nemesis (real, fictional, A Concept, anything goes!) and not one but two of my friends picked me so now we're doing two separate teams 1 session and battling it tf out
I have crafted myself a character for a game that is not the one I am DM'ing. She's a dragonborn paladin from a city that was absorbed into an expanding, ostensibly goody-goody empire when she was a kid. She bought into the official "order/law to enable good for all" line and became a police officer, then took a tumble down cynicism hill that led to her belief that strict Lawfulness is innately stagnant and too easily corrupted. I think she's more neutral good than chaotic good, since she does see the value of things like oaths and laws, but we'll see how that goes. I think I'll have fun with her!
