Oh look a reaction gif, how infuriatingly dismissive.
First of all, the person who wrote that post is a researcher in social sciences. Second of all, there is a theory in psych which has been the basis of a significant number of studies in the field that bears huge resemblance to D&D's two axis alignment system. It's not "fundamentally incoherent," as it resembles real world theories.
I've usually been of the opinion that Alignments as a mechanic are generally bullshit anyway.
In my experience, the considerable portion of the time player character alignments would either be so binding as to be infuriatingly restrictive and, ultimately, pretty boring, or they define so little that they're essentially irrelevant.
So I tend to just suggest that my players pick an alignment that most accurately represents how their character might view their own morality, but then disregard it entirely when it comes to their own roleplaying choices. I never bring them up myself as a GM unless, I suppose, someone casts a detect alignment spell (and then I'm more likely to suggest notions of things like animosity, killing intent, endearment, etc than state an alignment outright).
Oh look a reaction gif, how infuriatingly dismissive.
First of all, the person who wrote that post is a researcher in social sciences. Second of all, there is a theory in psych which has been the basis of a significant number of studies in the field that bears huge resemblance to D&D's two axis alignment system. It's not "fundamentally incoherent," as it resembles real world theories.
So don't be a goose.
Except that it's not. It's an attempt to shoehorn complicated issues into a matrix that can't contain the complexity of those issues.
I've usually been of the opinion that Alignments as a mechanic are generally bullshit anyway.
In my experience, the considerable portion of the time player character alignments would either be so binding as to be infuriatingly restrictive and, ultimately, pretty boring, or they define so little that they're essentially irrelevant.
So I tend to just suggest that my players pick an alignment that most accurately represents how their character might view their own morality, but then disregard it entirely when it comes to their own roleplaying choices. I never bring them up myself as a GM unless, I suppose, someone casts a detect alignment spell (and then I'm more likely to suggest notions of things like animosity, killing intent, endearment, etc than state an alignment outright).
If you replace "disregard it entirely" with "consider it but do not allow it to define your decisions" I think you actually pretty much have the intended implementation of alignment. When people think of alignment they think of "lawful stupid" but alignment isn't intended to be a character bible, it's intended as a quick way to get a feel for how someone would be likely to react. Key word there is "likely," since even the best person is not totally good, and everyone goes against their own alignment sometimes.
I guess I feel like it's far more interesting to define a character's morality and personal code by their actions and individual character traits- their actual history both before and within the campaign- rather than rendering it down to a vague couple of words. I've actually had, on several occasions, players explain to me what their character is like and then the alignment I guess they chose be completely different to what they saw it as being.
I just don't feel like the system is particularly useful for anything other than acting as a seed for players to think about their character, and that doesn't even require them to pick an alignment anyway.
I've played enough other systems that lack alignments entirely to know that they don't really mean much when you have so many other, more interesting ways, to explain who your character is.
I guess I feel like it's far more interesting to define a character's morality and personal code by their actions and individual character traits- their actual history both before and within the campaign- rather than rendering it down to a vague couple of words. I've actually had, on several occasions, players explain to me what their character is like and then the alignment I guess they chose be completely different to what they saw it as being.
I just don't feel like the system is particularly useful for anything other than acting as a seed for players to think about their character, and that doesn't even require them to pick an alignment anyway.
I've played enough other systems that lack alignments entirely to know that they don't really mean much when you have so many other, more interesting ways, to explain who your character is.
It's a little like saying "I'm an ENFP." It's not supposed to be a definition, it's just supposed to be helpful. I actually like alignment a lot if I'm playing a character that differs from me significantly. It helps me to get into my character's head a little bit more explicitly than I otherwise would. I appreciate things being spelled out, so saying things like "my character has a tendency to respect authority" or, alternately "my character has a tendency to distrust authority" is helpful to me as a player, because it clearly differentiates between my personal patterns of thought and decision making and my character's.
To put it another way, just the fact that it's spelled out, even if I don't abide by it (exactly or even in most situations), puts me into a mindset that allows me to more easily think as my character would. I'm sure for some people, this is not the case, and alignment is only a limiter to roleplaying, but for the some which are like me it helps immensely, even though it is by nature imprecise.
Question for you nerds who've been D&Ding for a long time: what is the explanation for the clay golem's life drain effect on hit?
I was considering using a golem in an imminent encounter, but the life drain effect is shockingly brutal and not what I want for the encounter.
Also, the PCs killed a major story NPC with a wand of wonder fireball, in a fit of stereotypicality. Now they plan to use a spell to speak to his dead body. I am considering having the charred head, which they're taking with them to consult, establish a permanent connection to his spirit and peevishly harangue them as they try to make their way through his former home.
So now that my heart has grown three sizes I guess I should consider running a 5E PbP again? Poop.
That's a pretty good justification for running a coherent system instead. Have you heard about your personal lord and savior, Strike?
Yeah in reality 5E is pretty low on my list of things I actually want to run. Ahead of it are Shadowrun, World of Darkness, Eclipse Phase, a custom Cortex Plus hack, and Strike (maybe, I haven't read through it yet).
I'm a little fantasied-out right now, if that list didn't make it obvious.
So now that my heart has grown three sizes I guess I should consider running a 5E PbP again? Poop.
That's a pretty good justification for running a coherent system instead. Have you heard about your personal lord and savior, Strike?
Yeah in reality 5E is pretty low on my list of things I actually want to run. Ahead of it are Shadowrun, World of Darkness, Eclipse Phase, a custom Cortex Plus hack, and Strike (maybe, I haven't read through it yet).
I'm a little fantasied-out right now, if that list didn't make it obvious.
I have a Son of Ether I've been absolutely dying to play.
But honestly if you're interested in Mage I'd say hold off until the M20 stuff gets released. The main book should be coming along some time this Spring and promises to be pretty sweet.
Unless of course you were talking about Awakening in which case forget everything I just said :P
I think alignment might could work, but is usually over-simplified.
For one thing, there should definitely be a separation between "personal alignment" and "ideal alignment". For example, I seem to recall a character in Chronicles of the Black Company who was supporting the side of Good (his "ideal alignment") by committing Evil acts that the more scrupulous characters on that side would balk at. Personally, I prefer for players to stick with the 4E alignments for their personal alignment (Lawful Good, Good, Unaligned, Evil, and Chaotic Evil) because they are the least controversial, while extraplanar creatures and their zealous followers could choose the more exotic alignments.
Second, why don't the rules emphasize alignment degrees for different creatures? The 3.5 DMG did this for planes:
Each part of the moral/ethical alignment trait has a descriptor, either "mildly" or "strongly", to show how powerful the influence of alignment is on the plane. A plane could be mildly good-aligned and strongly chaos-aligned, for example.
In the following pages, it describes Limbo as strongly chaos-aligned, whereas the Abyss is mildly chaos-aligned and mildly evil-aligned. Further on, Mechanus is described as strongly law-aligned, while the Nine Hells are mildly law-aligned and mildly-evil aligned.
I'd be interested to hear if the 5E DMG makes similar distinctions regarding a plane's alignment.
Under this idea of graded alignments, I'd say that the average couatl is probably mildly Lawful Good. In contrast, the couatls of the hypothetical state I'm working on are divided between a dominant strongly-lawful, mildly-good faction and a weaker mildly-lawful, strongly-good faction (that might be relatively new).
Personally, I would think that these strongly-lawful, mildly-good couatls might follow a utilitarian vision that prioritizes the goal of creating a permanent, perfect Lawful Good world without any trace of Chaos or Evil in the future over reducing the suffering of those imperfect people who find the society they live in intolerably restrictive. The opposing faction could find this point of view too accepting of "necessary evils" and seek to overthrow it, which in the minds of the dominant faction would be implicitly supporting mortals with a tendency towards Evil and Chaos who could be a threat to the heavenly world they seek to create.
I'm fine with old school or new school. I think they both have their strengths and weaknesses. Old school Mage was way more fantastically but it was difficult to write adventures. The Technocracy was a poorly defined antagonist. Also you could never let a Mage into a mixed party - they will outclass everyone else. New Mage is better suited to adventure storytelling and keeps them from getting cuckoo too quickly.
I seem to recall those mildly and strongly terms having actual mechanical effects and aren't exactly meant to be parsed as simple english.
As for the general topic of alignment: alignment as a guide, roughly akin to those 20 questions things when making a character, is fine and is a mental tool I often use. Alignment as a straight jacket, like it started as or is often times used by shitty DMs, is bullshit. I still remember the Dragonlance book that had a handy chart for tracking alignment influencing actions so you could tell somebody when their alignment changed....
The whole topic is a combination of the above and all the baggage that people bring into things when you use the words "Good" or "Evil" to describe choices that they are making (for a proxy, but still them choosing.)
So now that my heart has grown three sizes I guess I should consider running a 5E PbP again? Poop.
That's a pretty good justification for running a coherent system instead. Have you heard about your personal lord and savior, Strike?
Yeah in reality 5E is pretty low on my list of things I actually want to run. Ahead of it are Shadowrun, World of Darkness, Eclipse Phase, a custom Cortex Plus hack, and Strike (maybe, I haven't read through it yet).
I'm a little fantasied-out right now, if that list didn't make it obvious.
*ears perk up*
I have this really cool (well, cool to me at least) idea for a super-campaign that starts in World of Darkness, continues in Shadowrun, and ends in Eclipse Phase.
The World of Darkness portion takes place entirely on a cruise ship.
I'm fine with old school or new school. I think they both have their strengths and weaknesses. Old school Mage was way more fantastically but it was difficult to write adventures. The Technocracy was a poorly defined antagonist. Also you could never let a Mage into a mixed party - they will outclass everyone else. New Mage is better suited to adventure storytelling and keeps them from getting cuckoo too quickly.
So I take it modern versions no longer include in rules books what to do if a major campaign villain is turned into a lawn chair which the Mage then sits upon and summons up some margaritas to refresh themselves?
I kind of love the idea of a post-Ascension Technocracy that, in light of recent discoveries in dark matter and dark energy, basically invites the SoE to rejoin as the Students of Ether, studying Prime.
AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
Curse of the Black Pearls: DINOSORE!
When last we left I had given myself a bit of an issue are of course the result of a weekly game. This means that when I left the game hanging mid combat a week ago my first task was reassembling where everything was. I actually never really had a habit of taking photos of real life games before, as you've probably noticed by now I don't usually take photos of my Trail of Cthulhu game, but it was a lifesaver this week. A quick check on my previous stuff and I was able to determine where the proper place for everything to go was.
Because there were Lizardfolk riding dinosaurs to slay and they weren't going to do it themselves. The parties clerics player sadly was not present due to another conflict and I decided to run the player character myself. When DMing I often debate what to do with players who can't attend a session and usually I have two principles. In a game like Trail where the entire group isn't always essential for the survival of everyone or to progress - mostly due to multiple skills being useful for getting similar clues - I usually just remove the investigator entirely. DnD however is more like a team sport where you're losing your best bowler, batsman, quarterback or your star hitter. You need that player around for the encounter to be balanced!
Hence my general philosophy has always been to either hand the character sheet to someone else or run that character myself. Generally speaking while I'm not a total expert on everything a players characters can do - I tend to design encounters somewhat agnostic approach and go for a "What makes this unique or interesting?" style - most of the time I can follow along enough to play someones character effectively. This is especially true if you have largely new players to roleplaying as I do in this game and the missing player has a more complicated set up, which basically always means a caster of some sort.
So any of the things that happened to Narvarie during this play report are totally my fault.
At the beginning of this session Narvarie had taken a bit of a beating and so lost her aura of spirits, so I had her retreat to the log (mostly to keep away from the T-Rex) and pelt the Shaman/T-Rex with bolts. Done with my fiddling with player characters for the round, the others quickly got to work in giving the T-Rex an impressively bad knee wound and then getting critically hit - guess who - as Kasswok was brutally entrapped by the monsters jaws. One would think having nearly 20 AC and 51 HP would help quite a lot, but apparently the dice I have completely disagree with this idea. Kasswok was well on his way to accumulating his third lasting wound, an injury mechanic picked up after going down to 0 HP more than twice in the same fight, in a row.
Eventually the player characters got full control as the escalation increased odds of hitting from "Dicey" to "Never miss" as intended, but there was one last curious aspect about this fight: Could the Blackscale Lizardfolk shaman manage to get away into the river as planned? Upon the slaying of the T-Rex by Glorkk, who was beginning to pick up critical hits left and right - possibly compensating for how many Kasswok managed to receive - the shaman made a bolt for it. Now let's just make sure one thing is clear, in all my experience running roleplaying games players absolutely despise the idea that any monster can escape an encounter. That's precisely what the shaman was about to do. With his steed nearly down he dismounted, got a running start and changed his shape into a crocodile at the last moment to head straight into the river. This river was pretty deep and fast flowing, but no issue for someone whose form was a crocodile.
At this point I gave the characters an entire round to finish off the T-Rex but also have a sporting chance at killing the chronically wounded shaman as he fled. With his generally high AC (magic) and depth under the water, I ruled that attacks had disadvantage against him. Sure enough a nervous hit later, which didn't do *quite* enough damage and the shaman was away down the murky river and out of sight in no time. This meant that potential enemies ahead or where the player characters were going could be very well aware they were around and trying to snoop around in the jungle. The whole star wars "They will retreat for now, but only to return in greater numbers" canard.
At this point I remembered that Moira actually existed and had her pop back up, much to the player characters chagrin as they were unimpressed she didn't take part in the fight. Generally speaking, having to control a player character meant that I changed how I used Moira a bit and more or less forgot to implement her (she was trying to sneak up around the other side of the combat). Either way, eventually the characters continued and they grilled Moira for a bit, who was forced to concede she had a hidden agenda. In reality, she was responsible for the Black Pearl the characters were looking for falling into the hands of a terrible and ancient demon of the jungle, a Marilith. The Marilith had been defeated many years ago and was thought to be long gone, but when Moira led a group calling themselves "Scholars" to the Dragonborn city of Ka’rhashan, she got more than she bargained for.
The scholars, who were actually Crimson Legionnaires in disguise, broke into the temple where the Dragonborn kept the relic - which they called the Tchulchican stone. Fleeing the city under pursuit by Moira and the Dragonborn defenders, they fled into the jungle and unfortunately lost the stone to some terror within. Before the Dragonborn could track them down the stone had been recovered and taken to an ancient city controlled by Yuan-ti and Blackscale Lizardfolk, where a profane ritual soon rose the Marilith from her prison in Khyber to wage war against all those who dare step foot in Q'Barra once again. Naturally this story did not impress the characters any, but they accepted her explanation and I decided to make Moira more useful in combat, though she does not have a tremendous amount of overall skill/firepower compared to a full character.
Incidentally, if you do decide to add an NPC who participates in a combat like this at most give them abilities that support or do a little bit of damage here and there. NPCs that overshadow what the characters are doing can be far more annoying than anything else and if too complicated has that issue of "Playing chess against yourself", which I was already experiencing a bit as I took over Narvaries character for the evening. Hence I decided to give Moira purely support spells after the session and a simple hand crossbow/short sword combo so she can chip into a fight. Unlike characters, she also doesn't benefit from escalation to further demonstrate that characters are exceptional compared to most other people in the world.
After this the characters started to notice that the jungle was rotting, becoming blackened, bark was twisting and foul water was leeching through the ground. Large portions of the jungle were slowly descending into a kind of hellish mangrove swamp crossed with a really dark forest kind of trope. Reebu rose to the task of analyzing the magic and found that it radiated from a familiar - but horrifying - source: A black pearl was behind the increasing swampification of the reason. Further they sound came across a Dragonborn Hunting camp, only to find its defenders slaughtered and large snake like tracks lining the ground everywhere. Evidence of Yuan-ti operating in the area and also to give the characters an indication of what they were dealing with.
Moira at this point mentioned that she feared the Dragonborn were going to kill her for the treason she enabled the Legion to carry out. She did calm the characters nerves a bit by informing them that the Dragonborn were not inherently homicidal to all outsiders, so they would probably listen to the characters at the very least. She also reiterated her pledge to lead the characters safely to the city, regardless of what consequences she should face from the Dragonborn once she arrived.
The next encounter of the night was a kind of goofy one but did sell the idea of "This thing is twisting and poisoning the entire jungle terribly". I decided to take inspiration from a goofy 3.5 edition monster called the Orcwort, essentially a large tree with a gaping maw and black pods within its branches. The neat gimmick with this monster is that it has these little wortlings that it spawns from the pods, which basically rove around murdering things and then sticking them around the orcwort to feed it. Naturally a murderous tree monster seemed like a fabulous idea and so I built an encounter around them!
To make the Orcwort, I basically used many of the basic stats and concepts from the roper, such as destructible tendrils, it could curl in tendrils to bring characters to its mouth and it had a long reach (20ft in this case). Wortlings were very weak cannon fodder, designed only to rush characters, crab them with their claws and use their bonus drag action to carry the character back to the orcwort that created it. I ruled that the players suspicions about the pods and caution meant that they didn't blunder straight into the Orcworts at first, but saw them spawning their creatures early enough to react in an even fight.
Initially the orcworts were able to send their spawn straight to the characters without much incident, latching onto some and drawing them a bit closer. For the most part this resulted in a very static fight - we barely used 1/10th of the map here - partly because of the orcworts and wortlings ability to restrain enemies. Naturally Kasswork got smacked a lot and drawn towards one of the plants and so did the wizard Reebu, who took a bit of a first turn mauling. Most of the other characters escaped unscathed until the second orcwort sprang to life and sent its wortlings forth to battle the characters.
At this point lots of plant monsters and trees must be a good time for a fireball, right?
Yep. The Orcworts writhed with veiny planty terror (or at least the closest approximate of it) as the fireball instantly disintegrated almost every plant in the encounter in one destructive blow. A total of about 85 damage, with a save for half, did in much of the HP of the normally very resilient Orcworts and easily cleared the board of every Wortling in range. This moment was especially great for Reebu, who other than being knocked unconscious by it, had a truly terrible night of rolling. In the previous encounter he got a 1, 3 and a 2 on consecutive turns, so I was feeling a bit bad for him until he just wrecked the entire encounter in one spell! After that I felt he should be most satisfied!
The Orcworts posed no significant opposition, including for the first time being unable to critically hit or indeed, even being able to hit Kasswok at all despite having advantage on most attacks (grabbed characters are restrained). In some ways this is the kind of encounter where players "Karma" or "Luck" just feels like it evens out for them. Here they were able to find a note from a former Crimson Legion expedition who fell afoul of these things, which was to inform the characters that the legion was still actively hunting for the pearl here. They also acquired a suit of plate, a +1 suit of studded leather and a magical battleaxe. Cannily though, the characters decided to identify the axe first rather than attune it, figuring out that the axe was an axe of berserking, a powerful but risky weapon to be using.
Although they decided not to use it, due to the whole potential of Glorkk chasing everyone down with his axe mercilessly should he fail the wrong roll, I did make a note that they knew something important about powerful demons: They tended to be immune to non-magical weapons (or at least very hard to hurt). Glorkk currently doesn't have a magical weapon and his battleaxe is mundane, so possibly it might be a choice they have to make. Either way, they were finally coming upon the city at last but there was still one significant pitfall to cross before then!
Question for you nerds who've been D&Ding for a long time: what is the explanation for the clay golem's life drain effect on hit?
I read every version of the MM going back to 1st edition to try and answer this. The clay golem has almost always had the ability to interfere with healing, but no explicit explanation has ever been provided in the fiction. The 1e and 2e versions of this ability are absurdly punishing: damage done by a clay golem can only be removed by a heal spell cast by a priest of at least 17th (!) level.
So I cannot tell you the exact reasoning behind this ability. From context, it seems like the clay golem -- in keeping with its origin in Jewish myth -- is meant to be closely associated with priests/divine casters. The 1e and 2e sources are very explicit that a clay golem is a type of golem that only priests create (wizards are responsible for others). So there is meant to be a kind of sacral aspect to the clay golem. Perhaps the wounds that inflicts are intended to be an expression of divine punishment, which resists the magic of lesser priests and requires someone with some serious pull with the gods to heal. This is all speculation based on context clues, though. As is often the case, the mind of Gary Gygax is opaque.
That's as good an explanation as any Hachface though in the traditional origins of the Golem they weren't really created for any sacred duty. They were created by abusing (/using) knowledge of the divine name rather than anything we would associate as divine action. Really a pale imitation of the creation of Adam. It isn't accidental or inappropriate that it's the same category that we get Frankenstein's monster from.
Really my theory is that they had that HP drain thing simply to keep up the reputation of being enormous assholes. Golems were always traditionally a giant FU to casters and now we let the fighters enjoy some of that F-ing.
That's as good an explanation as any Hachface though in the traditional origins of the Golem they weren't really created for any sacred duty. They were created by abusing (/using) knowledge of the divine name rather than anything we would associate as divine action. Really a pale imitation of the creation of Adam. It isn't accidental or inappropriate that it's the same category that we get Frankenstein's monster from.
Really my theory is that they had that HP drain thing simply to keep up the reputation of being enormous assholes. Golems were always traditionally a giant FU to casters and now we let the fighters enjoy some of that F-ing.
The most famous mythical attestation of the golem is probably the golem of Prague. It is very likely this was Gygax's source in writing up the D&D golem. In this story the golem was created to protect the Jewry of Prague from antisemitic pogroms. Although the story contains a warning against hubris (the golem ultimately breaks free of control and must be deactivated by its creator), the clear intent of the golem is to be a defender of the faithful.
Edit: Apparently there is an even earlier golem myth in which the rabbi who created a golem is permanently scarred while deactivating it. That might be the ultimate origin of the D&D's golem to inflict persistent wounds.
Gygax or whoever: "Okay. Golem. How do I make this interesting ... I don't know, life drain or something?"
Dwelling on it for a week, he returns: "Yeah, that's good enough."
I think it's more like he had strange assumptions in his head that informed the decisions he made, and he never really articulated those assumptions, because for a long time D&D was practically a one-man operation and no one stopped him to say "Gary this makes no fucking sense"
Solid game design was never one of his goals with the project. This is the guy that explicitly said that the big secret about the game was that no one actually needed the rules; the DM was just supposed to make up everything as they went anyway and make it work. At best he probably saw his entire product as a sample to get you started, something to inspire you to make up your own stuff, with a little bit of "this is kind of how I do things at my table."
That's pretty much how it was played, too, mostly out of necessity; the game simply didn't work otherwise. Not for a couple more editions.
Triptycho: A card-and-dice tabletop indie RPG currently in development and playtesting
Gygax or whoever: "Okay. Golem. How do I make this interesting ... I don't know, life drain or something?"
Dwelling on it for a week, he returns: "Yeah, that's good enough."
I think it's more like he had strange assumptions in his head that informed the decisions he made, and he never really articulated those assumptions, because for a long time D&D was practically a one-man operation and no one stopped him to say "Gary this makes no fucking sense"
Umm Arneson?
I'm not saying that you're not fundementally correct, but it was by no way a one-man operation.
Don't forget, you wee bairns, that he was making things in the dark days before the Internet, where you'd do research by thinking really hard, going to the library and finding nothing, and then thinking really hard again.
Just knowing what a golem was should be respected.
Our group's running the "Rise of Tiamat" campaign, and we'd just finished our first session after some sort of time skip. Several awesome scenes were played, and plans were hatched and carried out (mostly) for the most part. Our party ended up scraping through the night, badly beaten, but never quite gave up and saved the day (again, mostly). The mechanics of 5e continue to be unobtrusive for us, and instead of having to look up minor bonuses for every little thing we had we were able to fluidly handle our characters' abilities. The hardest part for us was remembering when the various bard bonuses got used, because it became a trick of remembering the other person's skills and how they affected us instead of remembering our own skills.
GNU Terry Pratchett
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
Rise of Tiamat is actually quite an improvement on Hoard of the Dragon Queen. It has a really interesting political set up to it, I feel the encounters are better designed and it is generally less full of blatant errors than the first part (which honestly felt rushed to coincide with 5E coming out). I really recommend it.
I'm fine with old school or new school. I think they both have their strengths and weaknesses. Old school Mage was way more fantastically but it was difficult to write adventures. The Technocracy was a poorly defined antagonist. Also you could never let a Mage into a mixed party - they will outclass everyone else. New Mage is better suited to adventure storytelling and keeps them from getting cuckoo too quickly.
So I take it modern versions no longer include in rules books what to do if a major campaign villain is turned into a lawn chair which the Mage then sits upon and summons up some margaritas to refresh themselves?
And the world is lesser for it too.
"Oh, you're a mage? Can you make me a sword?"
"Yes! Bamph! You're a sword. I always wanted a werewolf trapped in a silver katana."
HachfaceNot the Minister Farrakhan you're thinking ofDammit, Shepard!Registered Userregular
Further adventures in 5e editing:
Page 269 of the Player's Handbook says that a rod of cancellation can destroy a prismatic wall outright. The rod of cancelation is never defined in the Dungeon Master's Guide.
Page 269 of the Player's Handbook says that a rod of cancellation can destroy a prismatic wall outright. The rod of cancelation is never defined in the Dungeon Master's Guide.
The Rod of Cancellation is the pen used by a Hasbro executive to sign the paperwork that ended 4E.
Alignment: Neutral Evil
Purpose: Maximize Profits
Powers:
Cast Dominate Designer at will, 30 foot radius.
+10 to bearer's Diplomacy checks to barter for souls.
Curse:
Bearer takes a cumulative -1 penalty to Int, Cha and Wis for each day that passes without firing someone, which removes all penalties.
Page 269 of the Player's Handbook says that a rod of cancellation can destroy a prismatic wall outright. The rod of cancelation is never defined in the Dungeon Master's Guide.
This is why they needed to stagger the core book releases.
They needed the time to determine what they could remove from the later books to put into further splatbooks.
AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
Curse of the Black Pearls
This session turned out to be especially dramatic, as the players encountered their first Yuan-ti of the campaign. Now before I go any further let me emphasize that Yuan-ti are by far and away one of my favourite monstrous villains in Dungeons and Dragons. I've always liked their general xenophobic culture, arrogance and vast range of powerful melee or caster types. At least one kind of Yuan-ti is just a gigantic pile of sentient snakes hanging out together! They are also excellent tacticians and brilliantly smart, so they make fantastic antagonists for characters to face.
As a result, I wanted to make sure that the first encounter that my players had against Yuan-ti was especially dangerous feeling, emphasizing the monsters superior tactical minds and martial skills to other monsters they had faced (notably, the Blackscale Lizardfolk). The characters had to face a deadly encounter with an old stone bridge over the middle of long (200') drop down into the raging river below, while spiders climbed up the sides of the cliff and Lizardfolk blocked the bridge to prevent any easy charge down of the Yuan-ti archer.
In short it did everything I wanted it to, but it almost did a bit too much as the dreaded specter of the total party kill began to rear its head. To say this encounter was incredibly close would be a total understatement, but it was immensely satisfying for me as a DM because it really established one thing: Be really, really, scared of Yuan-ti.
As the characters advanced towards Ka'rhashan they eventually came to a very narrow ravine, which was cut through the jungle and had an old stone bridge across it. The 200' drop down was bad enough, but the narrow bridge and lack of cover made it a particular murder zone for archers and sure enough, a hulking Yuan-ti with a massive bow accompanied by two blackscale lizardfolk met the characters on the opposite side of the bridge. Scuttling up the cliff where the characters were currently standing was a surprise from the Yuan-ti: Four large jungle spiders!
These spiders I envisaged as being like spitting spiders, tossing out sticky threads to envelop enemies and root them in place. This tactic is more than just for inconveniencing the PCs: The Yuan-ti archer then targets the webbed up enemies and (attacking with advantage, as being webbed makes a target restrained) sinks arrows coated in lethal poison right into them. In the middle of the map is the 10' bridge, which I simply had both Lizardfolk stand at one end of with a delayed trigger to move up and attack any PC that got within their movement range (30').
Simple tactics but brutally effective in practice. Other than a fireball from Reebu, there wasn't much to harm the Yuan-ti and the Blackscale lizardfolk did their job in holding up the Barbarian and Paladin at the bridge. The spiders restrained most characters or at least distracted them enough that the lethally accurate and powerful arrows of the Yuan-ti dropped character after character. Within a few rounds we had an extremely dramatic combat, which looked something like this:
The Yuan-ti (on the bottom) was doing major damage to the player characters, who had cleared out the spiders by this point but had the two Blackscale Lizardfolk left (in the fray above), while Kasswok, Glorkk, Reebu, Moira (the NPC helping them) were all down and bleeding out. Thankfully for the party the cleric Narvarie and the rogue Calliara had not been downed, so were able to force some potions down allies throats and heal the two front line fighters to at least some semblance of fighting ability. A couple of brutal rounds later, dispatching the lizardfolk and the Yuan-ti had seen enough: He departed leaving the surviving Blackscale Lizardfolk to his doom.
This encounter was by all accounts extremely tough, because it combined favorable terrain for the monsters in question (the narrow bridge, the spiders being able to climb up the cliff and the archers far position back). It was however, almost too challenging and could have led to a TPK. It's a problem that I face sometimes where I always like to have unique, interesting but very challenging combat encounters like this as a normal thing. What I would have done here if I had inflicted a dreaded TPK, was - assuming the players didn't die - had them taken to a nearby Yuan-ti temple and then "sacrificed" to their dark god. This would have made for an intriguing potential escape and a second chance at life, which is rather justified because I will be making a big thing out of the Yuan-ti mass sacrificing prisoners later in this adventure.
In any event, I think there is a deep respect for Yuan-ti from this encounter and that's all I wanted to end up conveying!
After recovering from this, the characters went onwards to the Dragonborn city, currently being besieged by Lizardfolk and Yuan-ti, and successfully navigated narrow cliffs, a flock of easily startled birds (until magically put to sleep, where being players they nicked some of the birds entirely) and the winding river pathway to arrive at Ka'rhashan at last. Their welcome? Spears pointed at them and angry draconic, as the Dragonborn immediately dragged off Moira to be executed and the characters to the Emporer, Xarseth, to see what he made of them.
Here the characters had an interesting decision: They didn't have to save Moira at all, but the Dragonborn were rather upset with her in general and rather justifiably given she's responsible for the current predicament their city is in. As such, she was due to be executed the next morning but the characters stood up and asked for her to be spared. After some back and forth, Xarseth made them an offer: Take on some of his best and they would spare Moira. Fail, and she would be executed. The players debated it for a while and then - rather heroically IMO - accepted the offer.
This began a second and just as dramatic encounter where they had to face 3 heavily armed and breath weapon equipped Dragonborn elite champions. There were also a few new rules:
A character who leaves the arena area was automatically eliminated and couldn't come back.
The Dragonborn would not kill fallen characters at the end, should the party be TPKed - I actually made this encounter very very hard to win deliberately.
The party could choose how many entered, which also determined the strength of their opponents (less PCs = less opposition as well).
This fight began with Reebu throwing down a wall of fire just behind the dragonborn and doing some significant damage, though those with affinity to fire certainly got some benefit (extra damage). The wall actually did quite a fair chunk of damage in the end and downed one of the Dragonborn, but the large combination of area breath weapons and solid attacks really hammered the characters considerably. This was an even and intense fight, swinging wildly between both the dragonborn and the party!
Finally the fight progressed towards where only Reebu was left standing with the final Dragonborn Champion on a mere 1 HP, having felled the second to last PC Kasswok just the turn beforehand. Should Reebu have failed to down him, it would have been the Dragonborn with a clear line of fire with his lightning breath and one very squishy wizard left. Fortunately for Reebu, he had one last trick up his gnomish sleeve and dumped a gigantic fireball right on top of him: No to hit roll required! That final explosion ended the battle in dramatic style, with the combat literally perched on an exciting knife edge for the entire final 2 rounds. Overall I was extremely satisfied and it was the perfect place to end for the night.
And also to inform the characters that they were now all level 6 for the next session! Next time, introducing a new player as Glorkk departs due to a scheduling conflict and I need to think of a neat way to have one character enter, while another leaves...
Posts
First of all, the person who wrote that post is a researcher in social sciences. Second of all, there is a theory in psych which has been the basis of a significant number of studies in the field that bears huge resemblance to D&D's two axis alignment system. It's not "fundamentally incoherent," as it resembles real world theories.
So don't be a goose.
In my experience, the considerable portion of the time player character alignments would either be so binding as to be infuriatingly restrictive and, ultimately, pretty boring, or they define so little that they're essentially irrelevant.
So I tend to just suggest that my players pick an alignment that most accurately represents how their character might view their own morality, but then disregard it entirely when it comes to their own roleplaying choices. I never bring them up myself as a GM unless, I suppose, someone casts a detect alignment spell (and then I'm more likely to suggest notions of things like animosity, killing intent, endearment, etc than state an alignment outright).
Except that it's not. It's an attempt to shoehorn complicated issues into a matrix that can't contain the complexity of those issues.
If you replace "disregard it entirely" with "consider it but do not allow it to define your decisions" I think you actually pretty much have the intended implementation of alignment. When people think of alignment they think of "lawful stupid" but alignment isn't intended to be a character bible, it's intended as a quick way to get a feel for how someone would be likely to react. Key word there is "likely," since even the best person is not totally good, and everyone goes against their own alignment sometimes.
I just don't feel like the system is particularly useful for anything other than acting as a seed for players to think about their character, and that doesn't even require them to pick an alignment anyway.
I've played enough other systems that lack alignments entirely to know that they don't really mean much when you have so many other, more interesting ways, to explain who your character is.
It's a little like saying "I'm an ENFP." It's not supposed to be a definition, it's just supposed to be helpful. I actually like alignment a lot if I'm playing a character that differs from me significantly. It helps me to get into my character's head a little bit more explicitly than I otherwise would. I appreciate things being spelled out, so saying things like "my character has a tendency to respect authority" or, alternately "my character has a tendency to distrust authority" is helpful to me as a player, because it clearly differentiates between my personal patterns of thought and decision making and my character's.
To put it another way, just the fact that it's spelled out, even if I don't abide by it (exactly or even in most situations), puts me into a mindset that allows me to more easily think as my character would. I'm sure for some people, this is not the case, and alignment is only a limiter to roleplaying, but for the some which are like me it helps immensely, even though it is by nature imprecise.
I was considering using a golem in an imminent encounter, but the life drain effect is shockingly brutal and not what I want for the encounter.
Also, the PCs killed a major story NPC with a wand of wonder fireball, in a fit of stereotypicality. Now they plan to use a spell to speak to his dead body. I am considering having the charred head, which they're taking with them to consult, establish a permanent connection to his spirit and peevishly harangue them as they try to make their way through his former home.
1. I am glad it's not being run by Mike Mearls.
2. I am glad Jeremy Crawford recognizes the importance of rules and RAW when you're selling people a product that you intend for them to use.
3. I am glad that we will be seeing rules clarifications and actual errata.
So now that my heart has grown three sizes I guess I should consider running a 5E PbP again? Poop.
I'm a little fantasied-out right now, if that list didn't make it obvious.
I feel bad saying that, as I've been procrastinating on offering you all a chance to play some D6 Star Wars.
*ears perk up*
But honestly if you're interested in Mage I'd say hold off until the M20 stuff gets released. The main book should be coming along some time this Spring and promises to be pretty sweet.
Unless of course you were talking about Awakening in which case forget everything I just said :P
For one thing, there should definitely be a separation between "personal alignment" and "ideal alignment". For example, I seem to recall a character in Chronicles of the Black Company who was supporting the side of Good (his "ideal alignment") by committing Evil acts that the more scrupulous characters on that side would balk at. Personally, I prefer for players to stick with the 4E alignments for their personal alignment (Lawful Good, Good, Unaligned, Evil, and Chaotic Evil) because they are the least controversial, while extraplanar creatures and their zealous followers could choose the more exotic alignments.
Second, why don't the rules emphasize alignment degrees for different creatures? The 3.5 DMG did this for planes:
In the following pages, it describes Limbo as strongly chaos-aligned, whereas the Abyss is mildly chaos-aligned and mildly evil-aligned. Further on, Mechanus is described as strongly law-aligned, while the Nine Hells are mildly law-aligned and mildly-evil aligned.
I'd be interested to hear if the 5E DMG makes similar distinctions regarding a plane's alignment.
Under this idea of graded alignments, I'd say that the average couatl is probably mildly Lawful Good. In contrast, the couatls of the hypothetical state I'm working on are divided between a dominant strongly-lawful, mildly-good faction and a weaker mildly-lawful, strongly-good faction (that might be relatively new).
Personally, I would think that these strongly-lawful, mildly-good couatls might follow a utilitarian vision that prioritizes the goal of creating a permanent, perfect Lawful Good world without any trace of Chaos or Evil in the future over reducing the suffering of those imperfect people who find the society they live in intolerably restrictive. The opposing faction could find this point of view too accepting of "necessary evils" and seek to overthrow it, which in the minds of the dominant faction would be implicitly supporting mortals with a tendency towards Evil and Chaos who could be a threat to the heavenly world they seek to create.
As for the general topic of alignment: alignment as a guide, roughly akin to those 20 questions things when making a character, is fine and is a mental tool I often use. Alignment as a straight jacket, like it started as or is often times used by shitty DMs, is bullshit. I still remember the Dragonlance book that had a handy chart for tracking alignment influencing actions so you could tell somebody when their alignment changed....
The whole topic is a combination of the above and all the baggage that people bring into things when you use the words "Good" or "Evil" to describe choices that they are making (for a proxy, but still them choosing.)
I have this really cool (well, cool to me at least) idea for a super-campaign that starts in World of Darkness, continues in Shadowrun, and ends in Eclipse Phase.
The World of Darkness portion takes place entirely on a cruise ship.
So I take it modern versions no longer include in rules books what to do if a major campaign villain is turned into a lawn chair which the Mage then sits upon and summons up some margaritas to refresh themselves?
When last we left I had given myself a bit of an issue are of course the result of a weekly game. This means that when I left the game hanging mid combat a week ago my first task was reassembling where everything was. I actually never really had a habit of taking photos of real life games before, as you've probably noticed by now I don't usually take photos of my Trail of Cthulhu game, but it was a lifesaver this week. A quick check on my previous stuff and I was able to determine where the proper place for everything to go was.
Because there were Lizardfolk riding dinosaurs to slay and they weren't going to do it themselves. The parties clerics player sadly was not present due to another conflict and I decided to run the player character myself. When DMing I often debate what to do with players who can't attend a session and usually I have two principles. In a game like Trail where the entire group isn't always essential for the survival of everyone or to progress - mostly due to multiple skills being useful for getting similar clues - I usually just remove the investigator entirely. DnD however is more like a team sport where you're losing your best bowler, batsman, quarterback or your star hitter. You need that player around for the encounter to be balanced!
Hence my general philosophy has always been to either hand the character sheet to someone else or run that character myself. Generally speaking while I'm not a total expert on everything a players characters can do - I tend to design encounters somewhat agnostic approach and go for a "What makes this unique or interesting?" style - most of the time I can follow along enough to play someones character effectively. This is especially true if you have largely new players to roleplaying as I do in this game and the missing player has a more complicated set up, which basically always means a caster of some sort.
So any of the things that happened to Narvarie during this play report are totally my fault.
At the beginning of this session Narvarie had taken a bit of a beating and so lost her aura of spirits, so I had her retreat to the log (mostly to keep away from the T-Rex) and pelt the Shaman/T-Rex with bolts. Done with my fiddling with player characters for the round, the others quickly got to work in giving the T-Rex an impressively bad knee wound and then getting critically hit - guess who - as Kasswok was brutally entrapped by the monsters jaws. One would think having nearly 20 AC and 51 HP would help quite a lot, but apparently the dice I have completely disagree with this idea. Kasswok was well on his way to accumulating his third lasting wound, an injury mechanic picked up after going down to 0 HP more than twice in the same fight, in a row.
Eventually the player characters got full control as the escalation increased odds of hitting from "Dicey" to "Never miss" as intended, but there was one last curious aspect about this fight: Could the Blackscale Lizardfolk shaman manage to get away into the river as planned? Upon the slaying of the T-Rex by Glorkk, who was beginning to pick up critical hits left and right - possibly compensating for how many Kasswok managed to receive - the shaman made a bolt for it. Now let's just make sure one thing is clear, in all my experience running roleplaying games players absolutely despise the idea that any monster can escape an encounter. That's precisely what the shaman was about to do. With his steed nearly down he dismounted, got a running start and changed his shape into a crocodile at the last moment to head straight into the river. This river was pretty deep and fast flowing, but no issue for someone whose form was a crocodile.
At this point I gave the characters an entire round to finish off the T-Rex but also have a sporting chance at killing the chronically wounded shaman as he fled. With his generally high AC (magic) and depth under the water, I ruled that attacks had disadvantage against him. Sure enough a nervous hit later, which didn't do *quite* enough damage and the shaman was away down the murky river and out of sight in no time. This meant that potential enemies ahead or where the player characters were going could be very well aware they were around and trying to snoop around in the jungle. The whole star wars "They will retreat for now, but only to return in greater numbers" canard.
At this point I remembered that Moira actually existed and had her pop back up, much to the player characters chagrin as they were unimpressed she didn't take part in the fight. Generally speaking, having to control a player character meant that I changed how I used Moira a bit and more or less forgot to implement her (she was trying to sneak up around the other side of the combat). Either way, eventually the characters continued and they grilled Moira for a bit, who was forced to concede she had a hidden agenda. In reality, she was responsible for the Black Pearl the characters were looking for falling into the hands of a terrible and ancient demon of the jungle, a Marilith. The Marilith had been defeated many years ago and was thought to be long gone, but when Moira led a group calling themselves "Scholars" to the Dragonborn city of Ka’rhashan, she got more than she bargained for.
The scholars, who were actually Crimson Legionnaires in disguise, broke into the temple where the Dragonborn kept the relic - which they called the Tchulchican stone. Fleeing the city under pursuit by Moira and the Dragonborn defenders, they fled into the jungle and unfortunately lost the stone to some terror within. Before the Dragonborn could track them down the stone had been recovered and taken to an ancient city controlled by Yuan-ti and Blackscale Lizardfolk, where a profane ritual soon rose the Marilith from her prison in Khyber to wage war against all those who dare step foot in Q'Barra once again. Naturally this story did not impress the characters any, but they accepted her explanation and I decided to make Moira more useful in combat, though she does not have a tremendous amount of overall skill/firepower compared to a full character.
Incidentally, if you do decide to add an NPC who participates in a combat like this at most give them abilities that support or do a little bit of damage here and there. NPCs that overshadow what the characters are doing can be far more annoying than anything else and if too complicated has that issue of "Playing chess against yourself", which I was already experiencing a bit as I took over Narvaries character for the evening. Hence I decided to give Moira purely support spells after the session and a simple hand crossbow/short sword combo so she can chip into a fight. Unlike characters, she also doesn't benefit from escalation to further demonstrate that characters are exceptional compared to most other people in the world.
After this the characters started to notice that the jungle was rotting, becoming blackened, bark was twisting and foul water was leeching through the ground. Large portions of the jungle were slowly descending into a kind of hellish mangrove swamp crossed with a really dark forest kind of trope. Reebu rose to the task of analyzing the magic and found that it radiated from a familiar - but horrifying - source: A black pearl was behind the increasing swampification of the reason. Further they sound came across a Dragonborn Hunting camp, only to find its defenders slaughtered and large snake like tracks lining the ground everywhere. Evidence of Yuan-ti operating in the area and also to give the characters an indication of what they were dealing with.
Moira at this point mentioned that she feared the Dragonborn were going to kill her for the treason she enabled the Legion to carry out. She did calm the characters nerves a bit by informing them that the Dragonborn were not inherently homicidal to all outsiders, so they would probably listen to the characters at the very least. She also reiterated her pledge to lead the characters safely to the city, regardless of what consequences she should face from the Dragonborn once she arrived.
The next encounter of the night was a kind of goofy one but did sell the idea of "This thing is twisting and poisoning the entire jungle terribly". I decided to take inspiration from a goofy 3.5 edition monster called the Orcwort, essentially a large tree with a gaping maw and black pods within its branches. The neat gimmick with this monster is that it has these little wortlings that it spawns from the pods, which basically rove around murdering things and then sticking them around the orcwort to feed it. Naturally a murderous tree monster seemed like a fabulous idea and so I built an encounter around them!
To make the Orcwort, I basically used many of the basic stats and concepts from the roper, such as destructible tendrils, it could curl in tendrils to bring characters to its mouth and it had a long reach (20ft in this case). Wortlings were very weak cannon fodder, designed only to rush characters, crab them with their claws and use their bonus drag action to carry the character back to the orcwort that created it. I ruled that the players suspicions about the pods and caution meant that they didn't blunder straight into the Orcworts at first, but saw them spawning their creatures early enough to react in an even fight.
Initially the orcworts were able to send their spawn straight to the characters without much incident, latching onto some and drawing them a bit closer. For the most part this resulted in a very static fight - we barely used 1/10th of the map here - partly because of the orcworts and wortlings ability to restrain enemies. Naturally Kasswork got smacked a lot and drawn towards one of the plants and so did the wizard Reebu, who took a bit of a first turn mauling. Most of the other characters escaped unscathed until the second orcwort sprang to life and sent its wortlings forth to battle the characters.
At this point lots of plant monsters and trees must be a good time for a fireball, right?
Yep. The Orcworts writhed with veiny planty terror (or at least the closest approximate of it) as the fireball instantly disintegrated almost every plant in the encounter in one destructive blow. A total of about 85 damage, with a save for half, did in much of the HP of the normally very resilient Orcworts and easily cleared the board of every Wortling in range. This moment was especially great for Reebu, who other than being knocked unconscious by it, had a truly terrible night of rolling. In the previous encounter he got a 1, 3 and a 2 on consecutive turns, so I was feeling a bit bad for him until he just wrecked the entire encounter in one spell! After that I felt he should be most satisfied!
The Orcworts posed no significant opposition, including for the first time being unable to critically hit or indeed, even being able to hit Kasswok at all despite having advantage on most attacks (grabbed characters are restrained). In some ways this is the kind of encounter where players "Karma" or "Luck" just feels like it evens out for them. Here they were able to find a note from a former Crimson Legion expedition who fell afoul of these things, which was to inform the characters that the legion was still actively hunting for the pearl here. They also acquired a suit of plate, a +1 suit of studded leather and a magical battleaxe. Cannily though, the characters decided to identify the axe first rather than attune it, figuring out that the axe was an axe of berserking, a powerful but risky weapon to be using.
Although they decided not to use it, due to the whole potential of Glorkk chasing everyone down with his axe mercilessly should he fail the wrong roll, I did make a note that they knew something important about powerful demons: They tended to be immune to non-magical weapons (or at least very hard to hurt). Glorkk currently doesn't have a magical weapon and his battleaxe is mundane, so possibly it might be a choice they have to make. Either way, they were finally coming upon the city at last but there was still one significant pitfall to cross before then!
I read every version of the MM going back to 1st edition to try and answer this. The clay golem has almost always had the ability to interfere with healing, but no explicit explanation has ever been provided in the fiction. The 1e and 2e versions of this ability are absurdly punishing: damage done by a clay golem can only be removed by a heal spell cast by a priest of at least 17th (!) level.
So I cannot tell you the exact reasoning behind this ability. From context, it seems like the clay golem -- in keeping with its origin in Jewish myth -- is meant to be closely associated with priests/divine casters. The 1e and 2e sources are very explicit that a clay golem is a type of golem that only priests create (wizards are responsible for others). So there is meant to be a kind of sacral aspect to the clay golem. Perhaps the wounds that inflicts are intended to be an expression of divine punishment, which resists the magic of lesser priests and requires someone with some serious pull with the gods to heal. This is all speculation based on context clues, though. As is often the case, the mind of Gary Gygax is opaque.
Really my theory is that they had that HP drain thing simply to keep up the reputation of being enormous assholes. Golems were always traditionally a giant FU to casters and now we let the fighters enjoy some of that F-ing.
The most famous mythical attestation of the golem is probably the golem of Prague. It is very likely this was Gygax's source in writing up the D&D golem. In this story the golem was created to protect the Jewry of Prague from antisemitic pogroms. Although the story contains a warning against hubris (the golem ultimately breaks free of control and must be deactivated by its creator), the clear intent of the golem is to be a defender of the faithful.
Edit: Apparently there is an even earlier golem myth in which the rabbi who created a golem is permanently scarred while deactivating it. That might be the ultimate origin of the D&D's golem to inflict persistent wounds.
Gygax or whoever: "Okay. Golem. How do I make this interesting ... I don't know, life drain or something? Yeah that's good enough."
END SCENE
Nah I really don't think that's the case. Gygax put a fair amount of thought into these things. His thoughts are just tortured and logic-defying.
Gygax or whoever: "Okay. Golem. How do I make this interesting ... I don't know, life drain or something?"
Dwelling on it for a week, he returns: "Yeah, that's good enough."
I think it's more like he had strange assumptions in his head that informed the decisions he made, and he never really articulated those assumptions, because for a long time D&D was practically a one-man operation and no one stopped him to say "Gary this makes no fucking sense"
That's pretty much how it was played, too, mostly out of necessity; the game simply didn't work otherwise. Not for a couple more editions.
Umm Arneson?
I'm not saying that you're not fundementally correct, but it was by no way a one-man operation.
Just knowing what a golem was should be respected.
PSN: Wstfgl | GamerTag: An Evil Plan | Battle.net: FallenIdle#1970
Hit me up on BoardGameArena! User: Loaded D1
And the world is lesser for it too.
"Oh, you're a mage? Can you make me a sword?"
"Yes! Bamph! You're a sword. I always wanted a werewolf trapped in a silver katana."
Page 269 of the Player's Handbook says that a rod of cancellation can destroy a prismatic wall outright. The rod of cancelation is never defined in the Dungeon Master's Guide.
Alignment: Neutral Evil
Purpose: Maximize Profits
Powers:
Cast Dominate Designer at will, 30 foot radius.
+10 to bearer's Diplomacy checks to barter for souls.
Curse:
Bearer takes a cumulative -1 penalty to Int, Cha and Wis for each day that passes without firing someone, which removes all penalties.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
This is why they needed to stagger the core book releases.
They needed the time to determine what they could remove from the later books to put into further splatbooks.
This session turned out to be especially dramatic, as the players encountered their first Yuan-ti of the campaign. Now before I go any further let me emphasize that Yuan-ti are by far and away one of my favourite monstrous villains in Dungeons and Dragons. I've always liked their general xenophobic culture, arrogance and vast range of powerful melee or caster types. At least one kind of Yuan-ti is just a gigantic pile of sentient snakes hanging out together! They are also excellent tacticians and brilliantly smart, so they make fantastic antagonists for characters to face.
As a result, I wanted to make sure that the first encounter that my players had against Yuan-ti was especially dangerous feeling, emphasizing the monsters superior tactical minds and martial skills to other monsters they had faced (notably, the Blackscale Lizardfolk). The characters had to face a deadly encounter with an old stone bridge over the middle of long (200') drop down into the raging river below, while spiders climbed up the sides of the cliff and Lizardfolk blocked the bridge to prevent any easy charge down of the Yuan-ti archer.
In short it did everything I wanted it to, but it almost did a bit too much as the dreaded specter of the total party kill began to rear its head. To say this encounter was incredibly close would be a total understatement, but it was immensely satisfying for me as a DM because it really established one thing: Be really, really, scared of Yuan-ti.
As the characters advanced towards Ka'rhashan they eventually came to a very narrow ravine, which was cut through the jungle and had an old stone bridge across it. The 200' drop down was bad enough, but the narrow bridge and lack of cover made it a particular murder zone for archers and sure enough, a hulking Yuan-ti with a massive bow accompanied by two blackscale lizardfolk met the characters on the opposite side of the bridge. Scuttling up the cliff where the characters were currently standing was a surprise from the Yuan-ti: Four large jungle spiders!
These spiders I envisaged as being like spitting spiders, tossing out sticky threads to envelop enemies and root them in place. This tactic is more than just for inconveniencing the PCs: The Yuan-ti archer then targets the webbed up enemies and (attacking with advantage, as being webbed makes a target restrained) sinks arrows coated in lethal poison right into them. In the middle of the map is the 10' bridge, which I simply had both Lizardfolk stand at one end of with a delayed trigger to move up and attack any PC that got within their movement range (30').
Simple tactics but brutally effective in practice. Other than a fireball from Reebu, there wasn't much to harm the Yuan-ti and the Blackscale lizardfolk did their job in holding up the Barbarian and Paladin at the bridge. The spiders restrained most characters or at least distracted them enough that the lethally accurate and powerful arrows of the Yuan-ti dropped character after character. Within a few rounds we had an extremely dramatic combat, which looked something like this:
The Yuan-ti (on the bottom) was doing major damage to the player characters, who had cleared out the spiders by this point but had the two Blackscale Lizardfolk left (in the fray above), while Kasswok, Glorkk, Reebu, Moira (the NPC helping them) were all down and bleeding out. Thankfully for the party the cleric Narvarie and the rogue Calliara had not been downed, so were able to force some potions down allies throats and heal the two front line fighters to at least some semblance of fighting ability. A couple of brutal rounds later, dispatching the lizardfolk and the Yuan-ti had seen enough: He departed leaving the surviving Blackscale Lizardfolk to his doom.
This encounter was by all accounts extremely tough, because it combined favorable terrain for the monsters in question (the narrow bridge, the spiders being able to climb up the cliff and the archers far position back). It was however, almost too challenging and could have led to a TPK. It's a problem that I face sometimes where I always like to have unique, interesting but very challenging combat encounters like this as a normal thing. What I would have done here if I had inflicted a dreaded TPK, was - assuming the players didn't die - had them taken to a nearby Yuan-ti temple and then "sacrificed" to their dark god. This would have made for an intriguing potential escape and a second chance at life, which is rather justified because I will be making a big thing out of the Yuan-ti mass sacrificing prisoners later in this adventure.
In any event, I think there is a deep respect for Yuan-ti from this encounter and that's all I wanted to end up conveying!
After recovering from this, the characters went onwards to the Dragonborn city, currently being besieged by Lizardfolk and Yuan-ti, and successfully navigated narrow cliffs, a flock of easily startled birds (until magically put to sleep, where being players they nicked some of the birds entirely) and the winding river pathway to arrive at Ka'rhashan at last. Their welcome? Spears pointed at them and angry draconic, as the Dragonborn immediately dragged off Moira to be executed and the characters to the Emporer, Xarseth, to see what he made of them.
Here the characters had an interesting decision: They didn't have to save Moira at all, but the Dragonborn were rather upset with her in general and rather justifiably given she's responsible for the current predicament their city is in. As such, she was due to be executed the next morning but the characters stood up and asked for her to be spared. After some back and forth, Xarseth made them an offer: Take on some of his best and they would spare Moira. Fail, and she would be executed. The players debated it for a while and then - rather heroically IMO - accepted the offer.
This began a second and just as dramatic encounter where they had to face 3 heavily armed and breath weapon equipped Dragonborn elite champions. There were also a few new rules:
A character who leaves the arena area was automatically eliminated and couldn't come back.
The Dragonborn would not kill fallen characters at the end, should the party be TPKed - I actually made this encounter very very hard to win deliberately.
The party could choose how many entered, which also determined the strength of their opponents (less PCs = less opposition as well).
This fight began with Reebu throwing down a wall of fire just behind the dragonborn and doing some significant damage, though those with affinity to fire certainly got some benefit (extra damage). The wall actually did quite a fair chunk of damage in the end and downed one of the Dragonborn, but the large combination of area breath weapons and solid attacks really hammered the characters considerably. This was an even and intense fight, swinging wildly between both the dragonborn and the party!
Finally the fight progressed towards where only Reebu was left standing with the final Dragonborn Champion on a mere 1 HP, having felled the second to last PC Kasswok just the turn beforehand. Should Reebu have failed to down him, it would have been the Dragonborn with a clear line of fire with his lightning breath and one very squishy wizard left. Fortunately for Reebu, he had one last trick up his gnomish sleeve and dumped a gigantic fireball right on top of him: No to hit roll required! That final explosion ended the battle in dramatic style, with the combat literally perched on an exciting knife edge for the entire final 2 rounds. Overall I was extremely satisfied and it was the perfect place to end for the night.
And also to inform the characters that they were now all level 6 for the next session! Next time, introducing a new player as Glorkk departs due to a scheduling conflict and I need to think of a neat way to have one character enter, while another leaves...