webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
edited June 2018
Just received a belt of fire giant strength in the Escape from the Abyss campaign I'm in. My level 11 barbarian is becoming ridiculous. With the Belt of Fire Giant Strength and the ioun stone giving +2 CON I am sitting at 25 strength and 20 Con, with a 14 Dex (I rolled decently for stats). I have a Berserker great axe that has taken me like 6 levels to finally get uncursed, and it adds +1 HP per level, sitting me at 158hp. If I roll decently at next level up and take toughness I could be sitting at 199HP at level 12, with resistance to all damage except psychic at level 12. It's going to be nuts.
I've built this guy to be a tanky bastard and I'm the only one in the party with decent HP. For my last totem feature I'll probably stick with the bear to draw the enemies towards me, since we have two dex fighters, one of which is half rogue, and neither with good con.
Edit: Ah! But on the adjacent page, we have the Peryton, with the "Diving Attack" and "Flyby" abilities.
I was going to silently bookmark this post for later use, but I gotta be honest and say don't throw a Peryton at a party. Most parties are either: A.) going to wreck it (although people may still get downed) or B.) going to get wrecked by it, depending on how much magic your party has at its disposal. Definitely do not give it a surprise round.
A duck! on
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Powerpuppiesdrinking coffee in themountain cabinRegistered Userregular
You're into cautionary tale territory as soon as you're looking for a way to turn off a feature somebody's spent a feat on, anyway
My first ever completely from scratch quest is tomorrow. The aforementioned Oni thing. I'm excited to play a lot of these npcs (something I've always had issue with in the premade modules). I'm mostly just concerned my players will drift into lost and frustrated in this 'sandbox' I've set up. They have a map of the monastery, the head person will give them 3 solid leads, I have some extra combat encounters thrown in to mix things up in the investigation. But I have no idea what my players will do lol. These are the notes I've made for it: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1BTxAMn-bxZT1KnOsz2O95tvmHdTBkcK3YUm08Ny72ZY
There's basically just a collection of NPCs and a timeline that will occur if the party doesn't intervene.
Speaking of Oni. My players absolutely destroyed one the other week.
Oni doens't know much about specific magic because its from another culture. Has learned some things about the history of the "outsiders" though. Gets the drop on the party polymorphed. Party has a gnome who talks to a forest creature who informs them that the old man is, in fact, a giant. Party goes to sleep wary and the elf wakes them up when the Oni goes off get a good angle on them. (to cone of cold while they were alseep).
First round the party is split up before the fight. No good CoC targets. Oni tries to sleep the one who climbed a tree... tree climber is an elf... Druid Faerie Fires then turns into a bear and engages. Oni Fails save. Rogue max damage rolls the sneak attack. (no crit, just max damage roll). Oni fights back against bear, hitting a few times for decent damage but doesn't break concentration. Next round its critical HP. It casts invisibility to run away...
The look on my players face when he said "oh oh oh, i had cast fareie fire" was pretty goddamn great.
Oh shoot I forgot this thread was here. My group finally got back together after a five month break and god damn was it fun. Also me and the other mage type might be murdered in our sleep.
Let's start from the beginning.
Our group was looking for a magical conch of teleportation we knew was inside a giant's keep. The DM emphasized the importance of being undetected by all the giants living there. There were a bunch, they were big, if we were spotted it would be almost certain death.
I make our ranger and rogue invisible so they could scout around and find the conch. The dwarf pulled a Solid Snake and snuck in disguised as a rock. After about 15 minutes of them risking lots of stealth checks our druid says “Oh hey, I have a spell that makes anyone near me undetectable.”
So me, him, and our barbarian head on in to rendezvous with everyone no having to worry about stealth. We still had to deal with the problem of giants freaking everywhere. After another 15 minutes of no luck I say:
"Oh hey, I have a spell that creates an undetectable floating eye that can get past all these people."
Eventually we track down some prisoners. A family of five, a fighter, and a scout. I get the scout to tell us where the conch is, "Behind the queen."
My wife thinks it's no problem and books it for the throne room by herself. She spots the queen, 20,000 pounds of giant slothed on top of a throne. At this point it's been nearly two hours and no freaking conch. We clarify with the prisoner that the conch is literally between the giant's back and the throne so now we need to figure out how to get her to move.
I had a plan.
I get everyone in the throne room. I turn our dwarf in to a giant because I thought it was funny and to also buy us some time. I have everyone break stealth in front of the queen, clap my hands together using magic to make it thunderously loud, and announce "QUEEN UG, WE ARE HERE BEHALF OF THE GOD HYRSAM TO REQUEST YOUR ALLIANCE IN A WAR WITH THE DWARVES!"
DM: Quid that was literally the dumbest thing you could have done.
Me: I HAVE A PLAN SEANNA[/quote]
I do some haggling shenanigans and magic up illusions of live pigs promising her the world. I add any one wish at the end. She eventually acquiesces, I go in to shake her hand, and cast banishment to send her to the Fey dimension for one minute. In this minute the dwarf turned giant literally starts grabbing everything in sight to include a magic staff, a bag of pennies, and a golden puppet theater. Me and the barbarian are digging through the junk the queen was sitting on before finally nabbing the conch we then learn needed five minutes to attune to us. While we're in a throne room filled with pissed off giants barreling towards us. I'm fresh out of any good magic so I do the only thing I can think of and shout "IF ANY OF YOU LAYS A FINGER ON ANY OF US YOU'LL GET DISAPPEARED THE SAME AS THE QUEEN!" Got a 27 on my roll and suddenly every giant backs away terrified.
The barbarian grabs me and takes off out the door with me riding his shoulders. Everyone heads down to a room we knew only had a couple giants in it. The stabby people are finally excited as they get to work while I scream bloody murder stuck on the back of an orc who decides a wall of flame is no reason to stop running.
Once they're dead the druid uses his last spell slot to hide us again and we head back down to the prisoners. This is when my wife starts tearing in to me
Wife: Why would you expose all of us like that?!
Me: I had to convince the giant to let me touch her, duh.
Wife: Why didn't you just walk up to her when you were invisible and touch her?
Me:
While we're sitting there waiting for me to attune to the magic conch, the druid is going through his spell list. "Oh hey, I have a spell that literally finds items." Everyone lost their shit at him. "TWO HOURS, RICK. TWO HOURS WE SPENT WALKING AROUND AND ALL YOU HAD TO DO WAS ASK GOD."
Before using the conch we managed to sneak the prisoners outside. Except for a halfling we saw getting tied to a spit. He was in a different room and getting him out seemed like it would be hard. I am now the proud owner of a magic conch. Everyone in the group hates the magic users.[/quote]
My wife and I also made some good progress fleshing out our rip off of Lies of Locke Lamora.
Edit: Ah! But on the adjacent page, we have the Peryton, with the "Diving Attack" and "Flyby" abilities.
I was going to silently bookmark this post for later use, but I gotta be honest and say don't throw a Peryton at a party. Most parties are either: A.) going to wreck it (although people may still get downed) or B.) going to get wrecked by it, depending on how much magic your party has at its disposal. Definitely do not give it a surprise round.
Ooops. I almost destroyed my party with a group of Perytons, I threw them in to break things up in the RP. I sent 4 after them, but since they didn't have magical weapons (well, a dagger of venom not being shared by the fighter despite the two rogues we have) the fight went pretty poorly, I had 2 of them take some passes and run away. Unfortunately one of them basically rolled max damage with a diving attack + its melee so took out the wizard in one hit. I didn't notice they had damage resistance when I prepped them, if I had I wouldn't have used them.
Anyway the rest of the session went great, and it was really freeing to get away from being on a constant combat grid session and just playing out scenes with characters I wrote myself and knew very well. The players were very interested in the mystery and were trying to piece together what the monster was. I threw in some extra clues as we played to give them something to find and adjusted the world a bit, but felt pretty comfortable doing that because I knew the logic of all the characters involved so it was really fun! I let our little mouse rogue get some spotlight time as they explored the cave that the Oni was using to hide in after making its kills (the entrance being covered by a boulder that the oni is big enough to move). So all in all it went well! Although I have no idea how to actually make this party into a full campaign, I feel like I can keep stringing together hooks from the preceding events, but I'm not really sure what to do to give things an overarching plot.
You're into cautionary tale territory as soon as you're looking for a way to turn off a feature somebody's spent a feat on, anyway
Right, I'm aware of that, and I completely agree. I'm not trying to shut down the feat, this effect is going on a Recharge (4) ability on a boss monster. But it's not fun when combat is just the PCs wailing on a stationary bag of HP. I want the players to move around, I want the enemies to move around. I want the players to use different strategies to win.
Plus Sentinel has plenty of other effects. Mainly I'm just looking to make sure that I have some counterplay options against Sentinel +3 ranged attackers.
My girlfriend's friend came over so we drew up a character real quick and I had three players! It was awesome! Time to sit down and play.
Things went so bad.
It took them an actual hour and a half before they even entered the manor. They didn't want to go up and try any of the dark windows, or the doors. No, after circling around the house and seeing a light on in a second story room, they came to a large hedge and reflection pond at the rear of the house. They spent about 30 minutes arguing about setting the entire hedge on fire as a diversion (why? WHY?), eventually decided that was a bad idea.
So they sent the halfling up the side of the house, tied off their rope, and shimmied down the chimney. Now that everyone is inside, they're slowly going room to room, looking through keyholes and trying to locate people. They've all got darkvision, they're drawing out their own little maps from the descriptions and digging through drawers and stuff. But they are being ridiculously methodical. They find the servants quarters, the halfling sneaks in, loots the dressers, fails to notice that none of the sleeping figures are moving at all (This was about 2 1/2 hours after starting, so I decided at this point the assassin had taken care of them). Finally they're ready to go up the stairs.
A 20 on perception lets the halfling know that directly above her, on the second floor, she can hear the wood creaking, but the sound isn't approaching or receding from her (There were two guards at the top of the stairs, standing in front of the door to the Mayor's room). The hallway on the second floor overlooks the large entryway on the first, so the new player, a drow, is trying to see if she can see anything on one side of it. And she stays watching that for like 10 minutes. So I tell her she can see one of the doors open and close real quick (My idea being the assassin leaving the room to continue towards her target),
They use the diminutive halfling to sneak her way as far up the staircase as she can without being seen. She rolls another perception check, and can't hear any noise. It took probably another half an hour for them to fully climb the stairs where they find both guards dead, pools of blood around their necks.
So, what do they do? Immediately loot them. At this point they're right outside the room where they saw the light (The tiefling actually used the rope to repel down the wall a bit and look in the window, before they entered the house, so they know this room contains the person they've suspected of collaborating with the bandits). But they don't fucking want to go in. More perception checks, I tell the new player she hears sounds of a struggle from within the room (trying to kick them in to gear and get in there). She shares this info and they...keep checking other rooms. A loud crash is heard from the room now, and then silence (They've been super quiet so far, so this sound should speed them up, especially since if someone comes to investigate it is just them in a hall with dead guards). They continue checking rooms. At this point the house is empty save for the mayor, sleeping in his bed. I decide if I roll a 20 the mayor has woken up and goes to investigate.
They keep checking rooms and dressers. Okay, so I'll roll again every time they want to do something that doesn't involve the room where it sounds like someone might have been murdered, adding +1 for every action they take. Eventually they regroup at the bodies, and I roll high enough the mayor wakes up.
So he throws open the door to his bedroom to see his guards dead on the floor, and the three PCs standing above the bodies. He roars out and accuses them of murder, the halfling tries to talk him down, and the tiefling attempts a grapple. And fails. Roll initiative. The group manages to knock him prone, and fucking go to town. They don't even think to knock him out, the tiefling rogue killing him with a crit (2d8+4d6+4, he felt real proud of that one. Highest damage done easily, at level 3). And that's where we left off.
The funny thing is, the tiefling was like "Oh the guards have cloaks? I wanna take one!" And the new player, the drow, had a similiar idea, "Oh they're held on by silver clasps adorned with a roaring dragon? I wanna take one and turn it in to a broach or hairpin".
They broke in to the mayor's manor, found the guards dead, killed the mayor, have yet to see that they took so long the assassin managed to kill her target, the noble they were trying to find dirt on.
And are going to walk around town wearing parts of guard uniforms.
But it was great fun, they were engaging without a second thought. They started with an argument about not letting the tiefling just kill people they came across to keep from being discovered, how they weren't going to be stealing things (They absolutely stole everything they could the moment they got in there). They had silent, in character, arguments because the halfling refused to go in the room where the scuffle and crash was heard. When the new player said something while they were by the bodies, my girlfriend (who is usually happy being an observer), actually shh'd her because the drow wasn't whispering and she was afraid the noise would draw attention.
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AssuranIs swinging on the SpiralRegistered Userregular
My players 12th level party just Roflstomped a full-casting Dracolich. They were on their 5th encounter of the day (3rd combat, 2 puzzles with trap features). Luckily for them, I rolled shit on Initiative, so they all got to go before the Dracolich. I maxed out the Dracolich with 275 hit points. Important to note, the players where still under protection of a heroes feast, cast at the start of the day.
R1: Mage attempts to flee after the rest of the party decides to nope out. Dragon uses two Legendary actions to drop a wall of force, cutting off escape from the entrance after the mage fled.
Ranger/Cleric goes first, dropping a spiritual weapon, then shooting it. Dracolich is protected by mage armor and the ranger rolls poorly, so all 3 attacks miss.
Barbarian rages and engages his boots of flying. 2 successful GWM attacks with a flaming greatsword put some serious hurt on the dracolich. Blow 2 uses of Legendary resistance to keep up the Wall of Force.
Fighter/Paladin goes next. Jumps on the creatures back and brings up his divine power that grants bonus to hit. Dracolich nails the bard with a 4d8 toll the dead for her last legendary attack.
Bard goes next and dispel magics the mage armor. Dracolich counterspells. Bard uses her reaction to counterspell the counterspell. Mage Armor is gone.
Dracolich goes next, invokes fear (no effect, though he didn't realize it) then casts prismatic spray, hitting the barbarian, ranger/cleric, and bard. All 3 succeed, the barbarian takes no damage as I rolled Indigo, the other two take half acid and fire damage respectively.
R2:
Mage misty steps back into the room. Gambles that the creature will attempt to heal, so does half damage with the cantrip that cuts off healing. Dracolich attempts to cast cone of cold with 2 legendary actions, but the counterspell war leads to it fizzling.
Ranger/Cleric fires twice, hitting both times and hits with the spiritual weapon.
Barbarian does his barbarian thing. Only hits 1 time, however, damage is piling up. Wall of Force is down after choosing to keep the last resistance for something else.
Fighter/Paladin goes and smacks the creature. Uses one of his maneuvers to grant the Barbarian an attack. Barbarian crits. Much damage is rolled. Action surges. Smacks the dracolich again, then grants the barbarian another attack. Hits, but not crit. Dracolich is in really bad shape.
Bard goes and casts Dissonant Whispers. Dracolich saves, but takes some damage, ending with 1 hp. Dracolich misses with her cantrip on the barbarian.
Dracolich goes next. Uses its breath weapon and catches the bard and wizard. Both fail. Bard is knocked unconscious and the wizard survives thanks to the temp hps from the Palandin/Fighters Inspiring Leader feat.
Round 3
Wizard attempts to cast a spell, but legendary resistance stops it. Dracolich uses another cantrip, hitting the barbarian.
Ranger/Cleric bonus action healing word heals up the Bard. Then she finishes off the Dracolich with a shot and gets herself a HDYWTDI moment.
The party sets off a symbol (stun) when they attempt to search the lab for the phylactery, but alas, that princess was in another castle. However, much treasure is collected to their delight.
But the Dracolich was only the mini-boss in this dungeon. The party calls for a long rest as the evening ends as the ponder what else could be in store for them if this was the mini-boss.
My party killed a whole village of pterrorfolk, taking out the sentries metal gear solid style and only killing one of the hostages, which is a remarkable improvement for them. This was my first time using 3d printed structures, I had a ruined guardhouse made of stone by some ancient chultans, a few pillars and scattered walls, and the new pterafolk village with huts made of sticks, along with a cage full of prisoners
The bard immediately freed a crazed naked weretiger man from bondage, and then he mauled her for her trouble and she contracted lycanthrope, before he noped out into the jungle. The monk asked the frost giant the party picked up to fastball special him, I let him use monk fall damage mitigation to not die horrifically. The warlock found the head shaman's hut with a captured Spectator inside and, actually having Deep Speech, offered to free it from bondage for help - and then dispelled the magic circle holding it (it proceeded to spend 4 rounds eye lasering pterrorfolk while laughing manically)
13 pterrorfolk down, 3 pterrorfolk shamans (1 extra HD and 5th level warlock casters), 5 harpies, and a smattering of dinosaurs vs 4 level 7s and one frost giant.
The party's adopted daughter got ripped a new one by a black dragon but thanks to some clever thinking they saved her from getting eaten by telepathically getting her to use the Time Stop scroll and hold the spell until he breathed on her, while they distracted him momentarily.
After the long, grueling experience was over and everyone retired to their camp at the base of the mountains, the sorceress lured the still wounded npc (who's also a young dragon, and a threat to her patron Vecna) into her clutches, and performed her dark ritual to remove her heart - binding her to Vecna's service. The sorceress managed to do only 1 point over the damage needed to not get caught. The rest of the players were in "aw fuck" mode.
The bard did get an insight check seeing her friend and realized something was up, but just that perhaps she was more badly hurt by the black dragon than she's letting on? Maybe keep an eye on her
The NPC is now being driven like a jaeger by the warlock's Shadow familiar, but it has access to all of her memories. This happened far earlier than I planned so the party will likely discover what's up before they get where it will be any harm to them, which is fine to me! The warlock has a backup character ready in case, you know, the party kills her when they find out. Nobody at the table is upset and realizes (as players) that some time down the line a betrayal is incoming, and they're fine with it and excited about what's coming
Bard goes next and dispel magics the mage armor. Dracolich counterspells. Bard uses her reaction to counterspell the counterspell. Mage Armor is gone.
Isn't there some rule about not being able to use reactions during your own turn, or am I conflating editions again?
Also, what's the base AC on a Dracolich? Is Mage Armor a big buff for one? I would have assumed most dragons would have better AC than Mage Armor can provide.
So our party's Fey-touched druid finally used her Circle of Dreams Fey Energy healing this session.
Her vision was sent to the past. This time much further back than ever before. She sees herself in the center of a large gathering of fey she still can't make out. They stand around her, chanting in a circle, with warm golden light flowing from them and into her. She's not frightened in this memory but at ease. As the warmth hits her, she feels, for the first time in her younger mind, truly happy. Whole. Filling that "something" that was missing.
Everytime she casts a spell she hasn't cast before, I give her a flashback of how she came to know it. When she was in the Feywild, she was much more powerful than she is now and will start to figure that out as she goes. She didn't catch the hint yet when she cast confusion, which was a spell she just learned after hitting level 7, but she'll get there. Until then, it's a fun ride. But she DID get a hint about how old she was when she was first taken by the fey. Because the fey around her were all much taller and she only reached below their waist. She was, in fact, just a toddler at the time. And she's been gone much, much longer than she realizes yet. It's a fun ride.
Our resident Gunslinger got an RP moment with her IC father (which is poetic coming from her OOC father, I guess). He lets his daughter know that he's heard of what she's doing, helping with the Blight. When she asks how he knows, he just smiles and let's her know that she's hardly the first person with magical friends. He tells her that her mother (the elven side of her half elven heritage) would be so proud and happy as well as she was very close to the natural world. They share an embrace and he tells her he's going away for awhile. He has a very somber tone and it's made more so when he passes off his coat to her (Coat/Cloak of protection +1 and resistance to cold) and tells her to always do what she thinks is right in her heart, not what the others might say around her. She knows he's holding something back but he just bids her a farewell soon after as he seems to be hurried by his task. This thread will reappear later.
Those were the big RP moments I fit in for any character backstories this time. The group fought a dire troll in a somewhat enclose space. Clever use of Spiked Growth again was used but given the strength of the troll, I let him leap part of the way through when he felt how dangerous it was.
They got to use the Idol of the Holly King to help with the fight, the reward they got for defeating the two Fomorians and the sole reason they were in this nightmarish hedge maze to begin with. It kind of works like one of those magical statues as it summons a companion for 10 minutes every other day (I might tweek this to make it a week, I haven't decided). The bear avatar is quite beefier than a normal beer and has a CR 6. I'll be keeping an eye on its power levels as the campaign goes on as it helped quite a bit. Still, the Paladin almost went down, finally feeling mortal which was sobering to him.
They reached my campaign's primary city of Haven and as the name suggests, is this nigh perfect sprawling city. There are no slums or poverty. Everyone helps to keep the city in shape. It's my attempt at looking at a Paradise City WITHOUT falling into the trope of it secretly being broken or whatever. It's really just a nice, wonderful city that treats its citizens with kindness and respect. It still has SOME minor blemishes that are allowed to exist as it serves the city as a whole. Which brings the party to meet some of them next session.
Four different "Factions" seek to help the heroes with finding out where the entrance is to the First Grove that they found a Druid Keystone for. Their options are going to be;
Boss - A pixie literally named Boss (nickname) who runs the tavern and inn called the Siren's Song on the Port District. He's a smuggler of goods and the lead place to gamble along with some pit fighting though no killings take place or are permitted. Bare fisted fights with clerics on hand. Boss understands that though the practices are frowned upon, he believes the reason his place isn't brought down by the King and his Silver Guard is due to the fact that everyone is their on their own accord and no one is permanently injured. Boss believes he has some contacts that can get the group the location they need but he needs their help in finding what happened to a missing smuggling ship off the coast. He also offers a pearl of some power to the tempest cleric who should be able to use it's power.
Sabal'vyrae - Sabal is not so secretly a dragon ... sort of. Her family was cursed a few generations back to be trapped in a humanoid form and are unable to transform back. Still, their families strength and durability is that of a normal dragon so really all they are missing are their majestic forms, their flight, and their breath weapons. She runs one of the 12 major houses that helps govern with the king there but she's mostly hands off unless she finds the ruling affects her in some way. She's more a Neutral type. Her whole deal is she's a librarian and collector of artifacts/tomes first. Her dragon side definitely shows in her desire to collect. The party has something she wants as they still possess a Scrying Orb that can actually Scry across planes which is normally impossible. Her offer will be tempting as all she wants is the Orb. If they need it for future tasks in their quest, she'll even allow them to come in and use it as they see fit, but that in the end, it will belong to her. No side quests needed. To sweeten the deal, as she is a collector of knowledge, she has knowledge on our Paladin's new artifact axe he has and how to unlock more of its power (taking it from +1 to +2) if they side with her. She has an extensive library along with books on the First Grove which she will share to allow them to find where they need to go.
Gabriel - a charming Tiefling bard (blade) who runs the equivalent of a thieves guild in the city. They focus mostly on forgeries and the like but have been known to acquire property for one investor to another. Gabriel does take contracts for people's lives but they have to be proven guilty of something of great offense before doing so. They are basically people that deserve justice but are too outside the law's ability to catch as easily. It is believed the king may or may not know about this though Gabriel believes its the former and that it's a necessary evil. His guild are seen favorably by the commoners as they are known to look out for them against those who might prey on people in dire straights and have been known to do jobs for favors over money when needed. They are also known to have adventurers in their employ for various items they can use to sell along the way to keep business open and good. During one of these adventuring travels he believes he knows exactly what their looking for and where to find it. But first they'd have to help him with an old ruins plunder that his own men are finding a bit too difficult to muster. He also sweetens the deal by having an item similar to the Gunslinger's that she might find helpful ...
Aura - A fey woman who rules one of the other 12 noble houses that Sabal'vyrae is also a member of. However, Aura is very hands on and acts in the best interest of the city. She's kind, polite, and welcoming of all who are the same. She truly believes in the idea of goodness and justice. In truth, she's also the runaway Queen to the Seelie Court after having left her position for various reasons. What she offers can be to help to find some answers for the Druid who's missing time and memories. Working with Aura is working directly for the city and it's king so that also adds as good footing after just entering the city. She needs help with tracking down a defector who went missing from the Feywild who was on their way to the city, somewhere deep within the Wyld Wood. She was able to use divination magic to track the missing person to within a square mile within the woods but needs the party to help with finding answers. As a former Seelie Queen, she can contact the current proxy to the throne that she assigned, Cernunnos, who should know the exact location to the First Grove.
Our party will have to make a decision with each decision giving just one person in the group an item while also serving to see which particular NPCs' personality and ethics clicks with which players. I'm kind of excited to see how it plays out.
Bard goes next and dispel magics the mage armor. Dracolich counterspells. Bard uses her reaction to counterspell the counterspell. Mage Armor is gone.
Isn't there some rule about not being able to use reactions during your own turn, or am I conflating editions again?
Also, what's the base AC on a Dracolich? Is Mage Armor a big buff for one? I would have assumed most dragons would have better AC than Mage Armor can provide.
strictly speaking mage armor doesn't stack with natural armor, so a dracolich's 18-21 ac (depending on what you picked) wouldn't be increased by mage armor
Or more accurately, the alternate armor calculation for say, an adult blue dracolich, would be 13ac+0 (dex), vs its natural of 19
Absolutely, and as for the AC/mage armor/how it works how it doesn't - it works however the DM wants it to work for that encounter - in fact I love the idea of something like a dracolich having a kind of mage armor that adds on top of a dragon's armor just like how a human's goes on top of their fleshy man hide - make em dispel magic
Session #4 of Nerdy Dads Game night went very well!
A bit of a late start to the session, but it was another good one! Maybe I've been scared of playing with a new group for nothing? It's still not the same as playing with my old friends, but it's not been bad at all!
Recap:
They decided to take on the Redbrands at the Manor. Wisely heading to the Sleeping Giant first, the site of their first encounter with the Redbrands. The one with the split party and the mouthy Bard? The Bard who died in that fight?
So this time, there were only two ruffians out on the porch. And the Barbarian decided to buy a round for the bar and make friends! The ruffians, knowing who these pesky adventurers are, warily decided to drink instead of fight. It was awkward at first. But enough drinks later they were convinced that the Barbarian wanted to join! They set up an interview with a ruffian lieutenant for the next evening!
A few hours before the meeting, the Arcane Trickster and his new familiar posted up out the side entrance that the halfling kid Carp told them about. Seeing that instead of one Lt. and the two ruffians who were supposed to be at the interview instead was a full half dozen ruffian ass kickers, the party decided to go in!
I eased them past the Nothic since one of them passed the check for the memory stealing trick it does and instead of entering the crevasse room proper they moved immediately to the bugbears. They took out the bugbears with not an insignificant amount of trouble. Made friends with Doop and then absolutely stomped the ruffians playing cards in the next room.
Glasstaff clearly heard them stomping around his lab and did a runner. But I made a decision not to let that plot point linger. And once I
described his room as having been quickly ransacked and the secret doors all left open, they gave enthusiastic chase!
This time the Nothic did not let them pass and they engaged in an across the crevasse duel of stink eye vs magic and arrows. One of the rogues and the wizard stopped to deal with the Nothic while the rest of party caught up to Glasstaff at the cistern trying to retrieve his go-bag. The Barbarian and Cleric made short work of him since the rest of his gang was trying to ambush the party over at the dive bar!
By this time, it was 11:30 and we had to call it. It was a school night after all. Next session we will pick up where we left off. (Everyone kept track of their current HP and used up slots without an issue. )
Bard goes next and dispel magics the mage armor. Dracolich counterspells. Bard uses her reaction to counterspell the counterspell. Mage Armor is gone.
Isn't there some rule about not being able to use reactions during your own turn, or am I conflating editions again?
Also, what's the base AC on a Dracolich? Is Mage Armor a big buff for one? I would have assumed most dragons would have better AC than Mage Armor can provide.
strictly speaking mage armor doesn't stack with natural armor, so a dracolich's 18-21 ac (depending on what you picked) wouldn't be increased by mage armor
Or more accurately, the alternate armor calculation for say, an adult blue dracolich, would be 13ac+0 (dex), vs its natural of 19
Couple of things:
1.) Regarding the counterspell of a counterspell. Sage Advice suggests it is perfectly legal to counterspell a counterspell on your own turn.
2.) You are correct, RAW, Mage Armor wouldn't stack with Natural Armor. I completely forgot about this while making the monster at 2 AM the day before game. My bad.
With that said, I'm probably going to ignore RAW again in the future if it makes for a better encounter. Hell, I broke it for the Dracolich being able to cast a spell of up to 5th level with 2 legendary actions and really that was what made the fight even close to fair for the Dracolich.
Seriously, the dpr of a sharpshooting ranger and GWM Barbarian getting extra attacks from the fighter is so high, especially if/when the bard drops faerie fire. Basically, I at least Max the hit points of whatever solo they fight and sometimes I double their suggested hps.
I make no bones about my players being "epic" heroes, so I make epic monsters to fight them. I mean the current questline is that they are collecting artifacts to stop an apotheosis attempt by the BBEG.
It's a variation of this. I didn't feel the need to cut out the figures because frankly it seems like way too much work. But I also use the "facing" rule, so I needed a way to determine front and back. I already had a bunch of 1" washers spray painted black, so I decided instead of the black strip at the bottom being inserted into a foam base, I'd just make a round base and glue them down. I also decided (though the pic doesn't show it) to make the character "back" 100% desaturated and 50% darker.
If I was doing it over again (which I might), I'd see if I could print on better paper at a higher DPI. And I'd brighten the artwork a bit. And I wouldn't "fill in" the space between the legs with black.
I'm really happy with how they turned out, overall. This style allows me to have creatures that are non-regular shapes. Why would a serpentine creature take up 10x10, for example? Now I can have a 5x10 creature.
Why would a serpentine creature take up 10x10, for example? Now I can have a 5x10 creature.
Because, generally, in D&D there is no facing rule, and your serpentine creature is understood, in the abstract round structure, to be taking up more space than it would at-rest as it writhes around, biting and clawing and wing buffeting, etc., the things it’s fighting.
Similarly, people don’t actually take up 5’x5’ of space.
Why would a serpentine creature take up 10x10, for example? Now I can have a 5x10 creature.
Because, generally, in D&D there is no facing rule, and your serpentine creature is understood, in the abstract round structure, to be taking up more space than it would at-rest as it writhes around, biting and clawing and wing buffeting, etc., the things it’s fighting.
Similarly, people don’t actually take up 5’x5’ of space.
It was a rhetorical question. I know why the standard rules are the way they are, it's supposed to represent the space needed to fight. And I think it largely makes sense for bipedal creatures, who can basically rotate around the Z axis without dramatically changing the space they occupy.
But I added the facing rule because I like it, and realized the thing keeping you from having irregularly sized creatures is the lack of facing, so it was like a bonus feature.
(Plus I don't have to track down 2" washers or weld a bunch of 1" ones together :P)
Also, for future reference the fighter could only use Commanding Strike once during its turn. The fighter uses one attack and it's bonus action to give the barb 1 attack using the barbs reaction. Even using Action Surge the fighter only ever has the one bonus action and the barb only has one reaction too. Easy to miss, I did the same thing early on with my fighter.
I mentioned this earlier, my wife and I are making a campaign centered around a similar setting to the Locke Lamora series. For anyone not familiar it's mostly centered around pulling off heists against the rich.
One of the details we're intent on including is that "actual" magic users like wizards, warlocks, and sorcerers discovered in the area are forced by the mage's guild to join or be killed. Whereas druids, bards, clerics, rangers, and paladins are dismissed as charlatans, lucky, or just extremely physically gifted people.
I think that seems like a good idea. We'd still allow for the first three, just make clear that they need to be careful with their magic and hope at least one person would pick one for the sake of the first arc we want to run.
Also, for future reference the fighter could only use Commanding Strike once during its turn. The fighter uses one attack and it's bonus action to give the barb 1 attack using the barbs reaction. Even using Action Surge the fighter only ever has the one bonus action and the barb only has one reaction too. Easy to miss, I did the same thing early on with my fighter.
Bard goes next and dispel magics the mage armor. Dracolich counterspells. Bard uses her reaction to counterspell the counterspell. Mage Armor is gone.
Isn't there some rule about not being able to use reactions during your own turn, or am I conflating editions again?
Also, what's the base AC on a Dracolich? Is Mage Armor a big buff for one? I would have assumed most dragons would have better AC than Mage Armor can provide.
strictly speaking mage armor doesn't stack with natural armor, so a dracolich's 18-21 ac (depending on what you picked) wouldn't be increased by mage armor
Or more accurately, the alternate armor calculation for say, an adult blue dracolich, would be 13ac+0 (dex), vs its natural of 19
Couple of things:
1.) Regarding the counterspell of a counterspell. Sage Advice suggests it is perfectly legal to counterspell a counterspell on your own turn.
2.) You are correct, RAW, Mage Armor wouldn't stack with Natural Armor. I completely forgot about this while making the monster at 2 AM the day before game. My bad.
With that said, I'm probably going to ignore RAW again in the future if it makes for a better encounter. Hell, I broke it for the Dracolich being able to cast a spell of up to 5th level with 2 legendary actions and really that was what made the fight even close to fair for the Dracolich.
Seriously, the dpr of a sharpshooting ranger and GWM Barbarian getting extra attacks from the fighter is so high, especially if/when the bard drops faerie fire. Basically, I at least Max the hit points of whatever solo they fight and sometimes I double their suggested hps.
I make no bones about my players being "epic" heroes, so I make epic monsters to fight them. I mean the current questline is that they are collecting artifacts to stop an apotheosis attempt by the BBEG.
Oh yeah, the most important thing about designing your encounters is to remember that if RAW is in your way, it's no longer a tool and is now a hindrance.
The only area you should be careful is if you're nerfing your player's class abilities (since it always feels bad), and to be consistent with house rules
I'd argue the only real problem with the Dragon's AC buff is you're calling it Mage Armour. Mage Armour does a specific thing (And other spells/abilities) do a specific thing. If you're going to call it that, I feel it should act the same as when the players do it, just to avoid the "Hey! How come?" questions. If you were to call the spell Improved Mage Armour however, then you're sorted
I'd argue the only real problem with the Dragon's AC buff is you're calling it Mage Armour. Mage Armour does a specific thing (And other spells/abilities) do a specific thing. If you're going to call it that, I feel it should act the same as when the players do it, just to avoid the "Hey! How come?" questions. If you were to call the spell Improved Mage Armour however, then you're sorted
"Mage armor will stack with your natural armor in the event you become a dracolich" might work too
but then be prepared for a player to make it their life goal to become a dracolich :surprised:
I'd argue the only real problem with the Dragon's AC buff is you're calling it Mage Armour. Mage Armour does a specific thing (And other spells/abilities) do a specific thing. If you're going to call it that, I feel it should act the same as when the players do it, just to avoid the "Hey! How come?" questions. If you were to call the spell Improved Mage Armour however, then you're sorted
"Mage armor will stack with your natural armor in the event you become a dracolich" might work too
but then be prepared for a player to make it their life goal to become a dracolich :surprised:
Isn't that already the goal for most players?
I mean, sure, I'd settle for lichdom, but if I could get the options package and upgrade to dracolich? Just show me where to sign, then where to shove my soul.
Last night went well. Even with the wizard player not able to come, the paladin, rogue, and bard managed to blow through the 50 HP I initially set for the spark drake way faster than I expected. I ended up letting them rack up 120 damage before it died. And I could have let it go even further - I realized I gave the creature way more knockdown/pushback abilities than straight up damage dealing ones, so they were still pretty comfortable HP-wise.
But I'm really proud of the "telegraphed attacks" homebrew rule. When it reared back on its hind legs and took no other action on a turn, the rogue moved away and the paladin said on his turn he was was going to trust in his shield and attacked it anyway. He got slammed with a DC 16 dex save (which he failed, because paladin). When it ran to the middle of the room and started shaking a cloud of particles into the air, every single player ran and hid behind a pillar, which saved them from serious harm. Although amusingly, they seemed overly concerned with line of sight instead of distance, which tells me I should have been more explicit about the effective range.
I'm really going for FFXIV style telegraphs, but I need a better way to represent them.
Last night went well. Even with the wizard player not able to come, the paladin, rogue, and bard managed to blow through the 50 HP I initially set for the spark drake way faster than I expected. I ended up letting them rack up 120 damage before it died. And I could have let it go even further - I realized I gave the creature way more knockdown/pushback abilities than straight up damage dealing ones, so they were still pretty comfortable HP-wise.
But I'm really proud of the "telegraphed attacks" homebrew rule. When it reared back on its hind legs and took no other action on a turn, the rogue moved away and the paladin said on his turn he was was going to trust in his shield and attacked it anyway. He got slammed with a DC 16 dex save (which he failed, because paladin). When it ran to the middle of the room and started shaking a cloud of particles into the air, every single player ran and hid behind a pillar, which saved them from serious harm. Although amusingly, they seemed overly concerned with line of sight instead of distance, which tells me I should have been more explicit about the effective range.
I'm really going for FFXIV style telegraphs, but I need a better way to represent them.
What uh... what sort of spells were they trying to cast, where that's a required component?
Last night went well. Even with the wizard player not able to come, the paladin, rogue, and bard managed to blow through the 50 HP I initially set for the spark drake way faster than I expected. I ended up letting them rack up 120 damage before it died. And I could have let it go even further - I realized I gave the creature way more knockdown/pushback abilities than straight up damage dealing ones, so they were still pretty comfortable HP-wise.
But I'm really proud of the "telegraphed attacks" homebrew rule. When it reared back on its hind legs and took no other action on a turn, the rogue moved away and the paladin said on his turn he was was going to trust in his shield and attacked it anyway. He got slammed with a DC 16 dex save (which he failed, because paladin). When it ran to the middle of the room and started shaking a cloud of particles into the air, every single player ran and hid behind a pillar, which saved them from serious harm. Although amusingly, they seemed overly concerned with line of sight instead of distance, which tells me I should have been more explicit about the effective range.
I'm really going for FFXIV style telegraphs, but I need a better way to represent them.
What uh... what sort of spells were they trying to cast, where that's a required component?
Posts
I've built this guy to be a tanky bastard and I'm the only one in the party with decent HP. For my last totem feature I'll probably stick with the bear to draw the enemies towards me, since we have two dex fighters, one of which is half rogue, and neither with good con.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
I was going to silently bookmark this post for later use, but I gotta be honest and say don't throw a Peryton at a party. Most parties are either: A.) going to wreck it (although people may still get downed) or B.) going to get wrecked by it, depending on how much magic your party has at its disposal. Definitely do not give it a surprise round.
Speaking of Oni. My players absolutely destroyed one the other week.
Oni doens't know much about specific magic because its from another culture. Has learned some things about the history of the "outsiders" though. Gets the drop on the party polymorphed. Party has a gnome who talks to a forest creature who informs them that the old man is, in fact, a giant. Party goes to sleep wary and the elf wakes them up when the Oni goes off get a good angle on them. (to cone of cold while they were alseep).
First round the party is split up before the fight. No good CoC targets. Oni tries to sleep the one who climbed a tree... tree climber is an elf... Druid Faerie Fires then turns into a bear and engages. Oni Fails save. Rogue max damage rolls the sneak attack. (no crit, just max damage roll). Oni fights back against bear, hitting a few times for decent damage but doesn't break concentration. Next round its critical HP. It casts invisibility to run away...
The look on my players face when he said "oh oh oh, i had cast fareie fire" was pretty goddamn great.
Our group was looking for a magical conch of teleportation we knew was inside a giant's keep. The DM emphasized the importance of being undetected by all the giants living there. There were a bunch, they were big, if we were spotted it would be almost certain death.
I make our ranger and rogue invisible so they could scout around and find the conch. The dwarf pulled a Solid Snake and snuck in disguised as a rock. After about 15 minutes of them risking lots of stealth checks our druid says “Oh hey, I have a spell that makes anyone near me undetectable.”
So me, him, and our barbarian head on in to rendezvous with everyone no having to worry about stealth. We still had to deal with the problem of giants freaking everywhere. After another 15 minutes of no luck I say:
"Oh hey, I have a spell that creates an undetectable floating eye that can get past all these people."
Eventually we track down some prisoners. A family of five, a fighter, and a scout. I get the scout to tell us where the conch is, "Behind the queen."
My wife thinks it's no problem and books it for the throne room by herself. She spots the queen, 20,000 pounds of giant slothed on top of a throne. At this point it's been nearly two hours and no freaking conch. We clarify with the prisoner that the conch is literally between the giant's back and the throne so now we need to figure out how to get her to move.
I had a plan.
I get everyone in the throne room. I turn our dwarf in to a giant because I thought it was funny and to also buy us some time. I have everyone break stealth in front of the queen, clap my hands together using magic to make it thunderously loud, and announce "QUEEN UG, WE ARE HERE BEHALF OF THE GOD HYRSAM TO REQUEST YOUR ALLIANCE IN A WAR WITH THE DWARVES!"
DM: Quid that was literally the dumbest thing you could have done.
Me: I HAVE A PLAN SEANNA[/quote]
I do some haggling shenanigans and magic up illusions of live pigs promising her the world. I add any one wish at the end. She eventually acquiesces, I go in to shake her hand, and cast banishment to send her to the Fey dimension for one minute. In this minute the dwarf turned giant literally starts grabbing everything in sight to include a magic staff, a bag of pennies, and a golden puppet theater. Me and the barbarian are digging through the junk the queen was sitting on before finally nabbing the conch we then learn needed five minutes to attune to us. While we're in a throne room filled with pissed off giants barreling towards us. I'm fresh out of any good magic so I do the only thing I can think of and shout "IF ANY OF YOU LAYS A FINGER ON ANY OF US YOU'LL GET DISAPPEARED THE SAME AS THE QUEEN!" Got a 27 on my roll and suddenly every giant backs away terrified.
The barbarian grabs me and takes off out the door with me riding his shoulders. Everyone heads down to a room we knew only had a couple giants in it. The stabby people are finally excited as they get to work while I scream bloody murder stuck on the back of an orc who decides a wall of flame is no reason to stop running.
Once they're dead the druid uses his last spell slot to hide us again and we head back down to the prisoners. This is when my wife starts tearing in to me
Wife: Why would you expose all of us like that?!
Me: I had to convince the giant to let me touch her, duh.
Wife: Why didn't you just walk up to her when you were invisible and touch her?
Me:
While we're sitting there waiting for me to attune to the magic conch, the druid is going through his spell list. "Oh hey, I have a spell that literally finds items." Everyone lost their shit at him. "TWO HOURS, RICK. TWO HOURS WE SPENT WALKING AROUND AND ALL YOU HAD TO DO WAS ASK GOD."
Before using the conch we managed to sneak the prisoners outside. Except for a halfling we saw getting tied to a spit. He was in a different room and getting him out seemed like it would be hard. I am now the proud owner of a magic conch. Everyone in the group hates the magic users.[/quote]
My wife and I also made some good progress fleshing out our rip off of Lies of Locke Lamora.
Ooops. I almost destroyed my party with a group of Perytons, I threw them in to break things up in the RP. I sent 4 after them, but since they didn't have magical weapons (well, a dagger of venom not being shared by the fighter despite the two rogues we have) the fight went pretty poorly, I had 2 of them take some passes and run away. Unfortunately one of them basically rolled max damage with a diving attack + its melee so took out the wizard in one hit. I didn't notice they had damage resistance when I prepped them, if I had I wouldn't have used them.
Anyway the rest of the session went great, and it was really freeing to get away from being on a constant combat grid session and just playing out scenes with characters I wrote myself and knew very well. The players were very interested in the mystery and were trying to piece together what the monster was. I threw in some extra clues as we played to give them something to find and adjusted the world a bit, but felt pretty comfortable doing that because I knew the logic of all the characters involved so it was really fun! I let our little mouse rogue get some spotlight time as they explored the cave that the Oni was using to hide in after making its kills (the entrance being covered by a boulder that the oni is big enough to move). So all in all it went well! Although I have no idea how to actually make this party into a full campaign, I feel like I can keep stringing together hooks from the preceding events, but I'm not really sure what to do to give things an overarching plot.
Right, I'm aware of that, and I completely agree. I'm not trying to shut down the feat, this effect is going on a Recharge (4) ability on a boss monster. But it's not fun when combat is just the PCs wailing on a stationary bag of HP. I want the players to move around, I want the enemies to move around. I want the players to use different strategies to win.
Plus Sentinel has plenty of other effects. Mainly I'm just looking to make sure that I have some counterplay options against Sentinel +3 ranged attackers.
Things went so bad.
So they sent the halfling up the side of the house, tied off their rope, and shimmied down the chimney. Now that everyone is inside, they're slowly going room to room, looking through keyholes and trying to locate people. They've all got darkvision, they're drawing out their own little maps from the descriptions and digging through drawers and stuff. But they are being ridiculously methodical. They find the servants quarters, the halfling sneaks in, loots the dressers, fails to notice that none of the sleeping figures are moving at all (This was about 2 1/2 hours after starting, so I decided at this point the assassin had taken care of them). Finally they're ready to go up the stairs.
A 20 on perception lets the halfling know that directly above her, on the second floor, she can hear the wood creaking, but the sound isn't approaching or receding from her (There were two guards at the top of the stairs, standing in front of the door to the Mayor's room). The hallway on the second floor overlooks the large entryway on the first, so the new player, a drow, is trying to see if she can see anything on one side of it. And she stays watching that for like 10 minutes. So I tell her she can see one of the doors open and close real quick (My idea being the assassin leaving the room to continue towards her target),
They use the diminutive halfling to sneak her way as far up the staircase as she can without being seen. She rolls another perception check, and can't hear any noise. It took probably another half an hour for them to fully climb the stairs where they find both guards dead, pools of blood around their necks.
So, what do they do? Immediately loot them. At this point they're right outside the room where they saw the light (The tiefling actually used the rope to repel down the wall a bit and look in the window, before they entered the house, so they know this room contains the person they've suspected of collaborating with the bandits). But they don't fucking want to go in. More perception checks, I tell the new player she hears sounds of a struggle from within the room (trying to kick them in to gear and get in there). She shares this info and they...keep checking other rooms. A loud crash is heard from the room now, and then silence (They've been super quiet so far, so this sound should speed them up, especially since if someone comes to investigate it is just them in a hall with dead guards). They continue checking rooms. At this point the house is empty save for the mayor, sleeping in his bed. I decide if I roll a 20 the mayor has woken up and goes to investigate.
They keep checking rooms and dressers. Okay, so I'll roll again every time they want to do something that doesn't involve the room where it sounds like someone might have been murdered, adding +1 for every action they take. Eventually they regroup at the bodies, and I roll high enough the mayor wakes up.
So he throws open the door to his bedroom to see his guards dead on the floor, and the three PCs standing above the bodies. He roars out and accuses them of murder, the halfling tries to talk him down, and the tiefling attempts a grapple. And fails. Roll initiative. The group manages to knock him prone, and fucking go to town. They don't even think to knock him out, the tiefling rogue killing him with a crit (2d8+4d6+4, he felt real proud of that one. Highest damage done easily, at level 3). And that's where we left off.
The funny thing is, the tiefling was like "Oh the guards have cloaks? I wanna take one!" And the new player, the drow, had a similiar idea, "Oh they're held on by silver clasps adorned with a roaring dragon? I wanna take one and turn it in to a broach or hairpin".
They broke in to the mayor's manor, found the guards dead, killed the mayor, have yet to see that they took so long the assassin managed to kill her target, the noble they were trying to find dirt on.
And are going to walk around town wearing parts of guard uniforms.
But it was great fun, they were engaging without a second thought. They started with an argument about not letting the tiefling just kill people they came across to keep from being discovered, how they weren't going to be stealing things (They absolutely stole everything they could the moment they got in there). They had silent, in character, arguments because the halfling refused to go in the room where the scuffle and crash was heard. When the new player said something while they were by the bodies, my girlfriend (who is usually happy being an observer), actually shh'd her because the drow wasn't whispering and she was afraid the noise would draw attention.
R1: Mage attempts to flee after the rest of the party decides to nope out. Dragon uses two Legendary actions to drop a wall of force, cutting off escape from the entrance after the mage fled.
Ranger/Cleric goes first, dropping a spiritual weapon, then shooting it. Dracolich is protected by mage armor and the ranger rolls poorly, so all 3 attacks miss.
Barbarian rages and engages his boots of flying. 2 successful GWM attacks with a flaming greatsword put some serious hurt on the dracolich. Blow 2 uses of Legendary resistance to keep up the Wall of Force.
Fighter/Paladin goes next. Jumps on the creatures back and brings up his divine power that grants bonus to hit. Dracolich nails the bard with a 4d8 toll the dead for her last legendary attack.
Bard goes next and dispel magics the mage armor. Dracolich counterspells. Bard uses her reaction to counterspell the counterspell. Mage Armor is gone.
Dracolich goes next, invokes fear (no effect, though he didn't realize it) then casts prismatic spray, hitting the barbarian, ranger/cleric, and bard. All 3 succeed, the barbarian takes no damage as I rolled Indigo, the other two take half acid and fire damage respectively.
R2:
Mage misty steps back into the room. Gambles that the creature will attempt to heal, so does half damage with the cantrip that cuts off healing. Dracolich attempts to cast cone of cold with 2 legendary actions, but the counterspell war leads to it fizzling.
Ranger/Cleric fires twice, hitting both times and hits with the spiritual weapon.
Barbarian does his barbarian thing. Only hits 1 time, however, damage is piling up. Wall of Force is down after choosing to keep the last resistance for something else.
Fighter/Paladin goes and smacks the creature. Uses one of his maneuvers to grant the Barbarian an attack. Barbarian crits. Much damage is rolled. Action surges. Smacks the dracolich again, then grants the barbarian another attack. Hits, but not crit. Dracolich is in really bad shape.
Bard goes and casts Dissonant Whispers. Dracolich saves, but takes some damage, ending with 1 hp. Dracolich misses with her cantrip on the barbarian.
Dracolich goes next. Uses its breath weapon and catches the bard and wizard. Both fail. Bard is knocked unconscious and the wizard survives thanks to the temp hps from the Palandin/Fighters Inspiring Leader feat.
Round 3
Wizard attempts to cast a spell, but legendary resistance stops it. Dracolich uses another cantrip, hitting the barbarian.
Ranger/Cleric bonus action healing word heals up the Bard. Then she finishes off the Dracolich with a shot and gets herself a HDYWTDI moment.
The party sets off a symbol (stun) when they attempt to search the lab for the phylactery, but alas, that princess was in another castle. However, much treasure is collected to their delight.
But the Dracolich was only the mini-boss in this dungeon. The party calls for a long rest as the evening ends as the ponder what else could be in store for them if this was the mini-boss.
The bard immediately freed a crazed naked weretiger man from bondage, and then he mauled her for her trouble and she contracted lycanthrope, before he noped out into the jungle. The monk asked the frost giant the party picked up to fastball special him, I let him use monk fall damage mitigation to not die horrifically. The warlock found the head shaman's hut with a captured Spectator inside and, actually having Deep Speech, offered to free it from bondage for help - and then dispelled the magic circle holding it (it proceeded to spend 4 rounds eye lasering pterrorfolk while laughing manically)
13 pterrorfolk down, 3 pterrorfolk shamans (1 extra HD and 5th level warlock casters), 5 harpies, and a smattering of dinosaurs vs 4 level 7s and one frost giant.
The party's adopted daughter got ripped a new one by a black dragon but thanks to some clever thinking they saved her from getting eaten by telepathically getting her to use the Time Stop scroll and hold the spell until he breathed on her, while they distracted him momentarily.
After the long, grueling experience was over and everyone retired to their camp at the base of the mountains, the sorceress lured the still wounded npc (who's also a young dragon, and a threat to her patron Vecna) into her clutches, and performed her dark ritual to remove her heart - binding her to Vecna's service. The sorceress managed to do only 1 point over the damage needed to not get caught. The rest of the players were in "aw fuck" mode.
The bard did get an insight check seeing her friend and realized something was up, but just that perhaps she was more badly hurt by the black dragon than she's letting on? Maybe keep an eye on her
The NPC is now being driven like a jaeger by the warlock's Shadow familiar, but it has access to all of her memories. This happened far earlier than I planned so the party will likely discover what's up before they get where it will be any harm to them, which is fine to me! The warlock has a backup character ready in case, you know, the party kills her when they find out. Nobody at the table is upset and realizes (as players) that some time down the line a betrayal is incoming, and they're fine with it and excited about what's coming
Isn't there some rule about not being able to use reactions during your own turn, or am I conflating editions again?
Also, what's the base AC on a Dracolich? Is Mage Armor a big buff for one? I would have assumed most dragons would have better AC than Mage Armor can provide.
Her vision was sent to the past. This time much further back than ever before. She sees herself in the center of a large gathering of fey she still can't make out. They stand around her, chanting in a circle, with warm golden light flowing from them and into her. She's not frightened in this memory but at ease. As the warmth hits her, she feels, for the first time in her younger mind, truly happy. Whole. Filling that "something" that was missing.
Everytime she casts a spell she hasn't cast before, I give her a flashback of how she came to know it. When she was in the Feywild, she was much more powerful than she is now and will start to figure that out as she goes. She didn't catch the hint yet when she cast confusion, which was a spell she just learned after hitting level 7, but she'll get there. Until then, it's a fun ride. But she DID get a hint about how old she was when she was first taken by the fey. Because the fey around her were all much taller and she only reached below their waist. She was, in fact, just a toddler at the time. And she's been gone much, much longer than she realizes yet. It's a fun ride.
Our resident Gunslinger got an RP moment with her IC father (which is poetic coming from her OOC father, I guess). He lets his daughter know that he's heard of what she's doing, helping with the Blight. When she asks how he knows, he just smiles and let's her know that she's hardly the first person with magical friends. He tells her that her mother (the elven side of her half elven heritage) would be so proud and happy as well as she was very close to the natural world. They share an embrace and he tells her he's going away for awhile. He has a very somber tone and it's made more so when he passes off his coat to her (Coat/Cloak of protection +1 and resistance to cold) and tells her to always do what she thinks is right in her heart, not what the others might say around her. She knows he's holding something back but he just bids her a farewell soon after as he seems to be hurried by his task. This thread will reappear later.
Those were the big RP moments I fit in for any character backstories this time. The group fought a dire troll in a somewhat enclose space. Clever use of Spiked Growth again was used but given the strength of the troll, I let him leap part of the way through when he felt how dangerous it was.
They got to use the Idol of the Holly King to help with the fight, the reward they got for defeating the two Fomorians and the sole reason they were in this nightmarish hedge maze to begin with. It kind of works like one of those magical statues as it summons a companion for 10 minutes every other day (I might tweek this to make it a week, I haven't decided). The bear avatar is quite beefier than a normal beer and has a CR 6. I'll be keeping an eye on its power levels as the campaign goes on as it helped quite a bit. Still, the Paladin almost went down, finally feeling mortal which was sobering to him.
They reached my campaign's primary city of Haven and as the name suggests, is this nigh perfect sprawling city. There are no slums or poverty. Everyone helps to keep the city in shape. It's my attempt at looking at a Paradise City WITHOUT falling into the trope of it secretly being broken or whatever. It's really just a nice, wonderful city that treats its citizens with kindness and respect. It still has SOME minor blemishes that are allowed to exist as it serves the city as a whole. Which brings the party to meet some of them next session.
Four different "Factions" seek to help the heroes with finding out where the entrance is to the First Grove that they found a Druid Keystone for. Their options are going to be;
Boss - A pixie literally named Boss (nickname) who runs the tavern and inn called the Siren's Song on the Port District. He's a smuggler of goods and the lead place to gamble along with some pit fighting though no killings take place or are permitted. Bare fisted fights with clerics on hand. Boss understands that though the practices are frowned upon, he believes the reason his place isn't brought down by the King and his Silver Guard is due to the fact that everyone is their on their own accord and no one is permanently injured. Boss believes he has some contacts that can get the group the location they need but he needs their help in finding what happened to a missing smuggling ship off the coast. He also offers a pearl of some power to the tempest cleric who should be able to use it's power.
Sabal'vyrae - Sabal is not so secretly a dragon ... sort of. Her family was cursed a few generations back to be trapped in a humanoid form and are unable to transform back. Still, their families strength and durability is that of a normal dragon so really all they are missing are their majestic forms, their flight, and their breath weapons. She runs one of the 12 major houses that helps govern with the king there but she's mostly hands off unless she finds the ruling affects her in some way. She's more a Neutral type. Her whole deal is she's a librarian and collector of artifacts/tomes first. Her dragon side definitely shows in her desire to collect. The party has something she wants as they still possess a Scrying Orb that can actually Scry across planes which is normally impossible. Her offer will be tempting as all she wants is the Orb. If they need it for future tasks in their quest, she'll even allow them to come in and use it as they see fit, but that in the end, it will belong to her. No side quests needed. To sweeten the deal, as she is a collector of knowledge, she has knowledge on our Paladin's new artifact axe he has and how to unlock more of its power (taking it from +1 to +2) if they side with her. She has an extensive library along with books on the First Grove which she will share to allow them to find where they need to go.
Gabriel - a charming Tiefling bard (blade) who runs the equivalent of a thieves guild in the city. They focus mostly on forgeries and the like but have been known to acquire property for one investor to another. Gabriel does take contracts for people's lives but they have to be proven guilty of something of great offense before doing so. They are basically people that deserve justice but are too outside the law's ability to catch as easily. It is believed the king may or may not know about this though Gabriel believes its the former and that it's a necessary evil. His guild are seen favorably by the commoners as they are known to look out for them against those who might prey on people in dire straights and have been known to do jobs for favors over money when needed. They are also known to have adventurers in their employ for various items they can use to sell along the way to keep business open and good. During one of these adventuring travels he believes he knows exactly what their looking for and where to find it. But first they'd have to help him with an old ruins plunder that his own men are finding a bit too difficult to muster. He also sweetens the deal by having an item similar to the Gunslinger's that she might find helpful ...
Aura - A fey woman who rules one of the other 12 noble houses that Sabal'vyrae is also a member of. However, Aura is very hands on and acts in the best interest of the city. She's kind, polite, and welcoming of all who are the same. She truly believes in the idea of goodness and justice. In truth, she's also the runaway Queen to the Seelie Court after having left her position for various reasons. What she offers can be to help to find some answers for the Druid who's missing time and memories. Working with Aura is working directly for the city and it's king so that also adds as good footing after just entering the city. She needs help with tracking down a defector who went missing from the Feywild who was on their way to the city, somewhere deep within the Wyld Wood. She was able to use divination magic to track the missing person to within a square mile within the woods but needs the party to help with finding answers. As a former Seelie Queen, she can contact the current proxy to the throne that she assigned, Cernunnos, who should know the exact location to the First Grove.
Our party will have to make a decision with each decision giving just one person in the group an item while also serving to see which particular NPCs' personality and ethics clicks with which players. I'm kind of excited to see how it plays out.
TLDR: I love D&D once a week now.
strictly speaking mage armor doesn't stack with natural armor, so a dracolich's 18-21 ac (depending on what you picked) wouldn't be increased by mage armor
Or more accurately, the alternate armor calculation for say, an adult blue dracolich, would be 13ac+0 (dex), vs its natural of 19
As a treat for my players, and because I hate having to pick a mini that's "close enough".
Will be taking these guys for a spin tomorrow night!
A bit of a late start to the session, but it was another good one! Maybe I've been scared of playing with a new group for nothing? It's still not the same as playing with my old friends, but it's not been bad at all!
Recap:
So this time, there were only two ruffians out on the porch. And the Barbarian decided to buy a round for the bar and make friends! The ruffians, knowing who these pesky adventurers are, warily decided to drink instead of fight. It was awkward at first. But enough drinks later they were convinced that the Barbarian wanted to join! They set up an interview with a ruffian lieutenant for the next evening!
A few hours before the meeting, the Arcane Trickster and his new familiar posted up out the side entrance that the halfling kid Carp told them about. Seeing that instead of one Lt. and the two ruffians who were supposed to be at the interview instead was a full half dozen ruffian ass kickers, the party decided to go in!
I eased them past the Nothic since one of them passed the check for the memory stealing trick it does and instead of entering the crevasse room proper they moved immediately to the bugbears. They took out the bugbears with not an insignificant amount of trouble. Made friends with Doop and then absolutely stomped the ruffians playing cards in the next room.
Glasstaff clearly heard them stomping around his lab and did a runner. But I made a decision not to let that plot point linger. And once I
described his room as having been quickly ransacked and the secret doors all left open, they gave enthusiastic chase!
This time the Nothic did not let them pass and they engaged in an across the crevasse duel of stink eye vs magic and arrows. One of the rogues and the wizard stopped to deal with the Nothic while the rest of party caught up to Glasstaff at the cistern trying to retrieve his go-bag. The Barbarian and Cleric made short work of him since the rest of his gang was trying to ambush the party over at the dive bar!
By this time, it was 11:30 and we had to call it. It was a school night after all. Next session we will pick up where we left off. (Everyone kept track of their current HP and used up slots without an issue.
A good time was had by all!
What did you do and how did you do it!?
Couple of things:
1.) Regarding the counterspell of a counterspell. Sage Advice suggests it is perfectly legal to counterspell a counterspell on your own turn.
2.) You are correct, RAW, Mage Armor wouldn't stack with Natural Armor. I completely forgot about this while making the monster at 2 AM the day before game. My bad.
With that said, I'm probably going to ignore RAW again in the future if it makes for a better encounter. Hell, I broke it for the Dracolich being able to cast a spell of up to 5th level with 2 legendary actions and really that was what made the fight even close to fair for the Dracolich.
Seriously, the dpr of a sharpshooting ranger and GWM Barbarian getting extra attacks from the fighter is so high, especially if/when the bard drops faerie fire. Basically, I at least Max the hit points of whatever solo they fight and sometimes I double their suggested hps.
I make no bones about my players being "epic" heroes, so I make epic monsters to fight them. I mean the current questline is that they are collecting artifacts to stop an apotheosis attempt by the BBEG.
It's a variation of this. I didn't feel the need to cut out the figures because frankly it seems like way too much work. But I also use the "facing" rule, so I needed a way to determine front and back. I already had a bunch of 1" washers spray painted black, so I decided instead of the black strip at the bottom being inserted into a foam base, I'd just make a round base and glue them down. I also decided (though the pic doesn't show it) to make the character "back" 100% desaturated and 50% darker.
If I was doing it over again (which I might), I'd see if I could print on better paper at a higher DPI. And I'd brighten the artwork a bit. And I wouldn't "fill in" the space between the legs with black.
I'm really happy with how they turned out, overall. This style allows me to have creatures that are non-regular shapes. Why would a serpentine creature take up 10x10, for example? Now I can have a 5x10 creature.
Similarly, people don’t actually take up 5’x5’ of space.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
It was a rhetorical question. I know why the standard rules are the way they are, it's supposed to represent the space needed to fight. And I think it largely makes sense for bipedal creatures, who can basically rotate around the Z axis without dramatically changing the space they occupy.
But I added the facing rule because I like it, and realized the thing keeping you from having irregularly sized creatures is the lack of facing, so it was like a bonus feature.
(Plus I don't have to track down 2" washers or weld a bunch of 1" ones together :P)
One of the details we're intent on including is that "actual" magic users like wizards, warlocks, and sorcerers discovered in the area are forced by the mage's guild to join or be killed. Whereas druids, bards, clerics, rangers, and paladins are dismissed as charlatans, lucky, or just extremely physically gifted people.
I think that seems like a good idea. We'd still allow for the first three, just make clear that they need to be careful with their magic and hope at least one person would pick one for the sake of the first arc we want to run.
Comics, Games, Booze
Thanks for the heads up.
Oh yeah, the most important thing about designing your encounters is to remember that if RAW is in your way, it's no longer a tool and is now a hindrance.
The only area you should be careful is if you're nerfing your player's class abilities (since it always feels bad), and to be consistent with house rules
Draconic Ward
"Mage armor will stack with your natural armor in the event you become a dracolich" might work too
but then be prepared for a player to make it their life goal to become a dracolich :surprised:
Isn't that already the goal for most players?
I mean, sure, I'd settle for lichdom, but if I could get the options package and upgrade to dracolich? Just show me where to sign, then where to shove my soul.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
But I'm really proud of the "telegraphed attacks" homebrew rule. When it reared back on its hind legs and took no other action on a turn, the rogue moved away and the paladin said on his turn he was was going to trust in his shield and attacked it anyway. He got slammed with a DC 16 dex save (which he failed, because paladin). When it ran to the middle of the room and started shaking a cloud of particles into the air, every single player ran and hid behind a pillar, which saved them from serious harm. Although amusingly, they seemed overly concerned with line of sight instead of distance, which tells me I should have been more explicit about the effective range.
I'm really going for FFXIV style telegraphs, but I need a better way to represent them.
What uh... what sort of spells were they trying to cast, where that's a required component?
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Wait, no, that's four flaming balls that drop...