I've been dicking around with this random useless item generator and I absolutely love this one someone on reddit got
ILLITHID-CRAFTED FOLDABLE TABLE THAT THINKS YOU'RE UGLY, CRITIQUES YOUR OUTFIT, SPITS OUT A GOLD COIN, AND TELLS YOU TO BUY SOMETHING ELSE TO WEAR WHENEVER YOU ROLL A NATURAL 20
I definitely want to introduce a useful item that does something like this, a sword or something
I prefer donjon's since the items might actually may be useful: Though the best of which usually aren't.
Hopeful Key: This magical brass key fits into any lock, but cannot open any.
Pendant of Direction (Wondrous Item): This translucent blue gemstone pendant is marked with a symbol of inlaid gold. When held aloft at a place where you have a choice of directions to take, a faint beam of blue light will shine from the pendant in one of those directions.
Elven Rope Armor (Armor, leather): This armor has been masterfully woven from silk rope, and provides the same Armor Class as leather armor. You can use an action to speak its command word, causing the armor to unweave itself into 100' of rope. Speaking the command word a second time weaves the rope back into armor.
Rod of Invulnerability (Rod): This thin glass rod cannot be damaged or destroyed by any means short of a Wish spell, divine intervention, etc.
Glamered Javelin (Weapon, javelin): When you throw this javelin, it assumes the appearance of a [RANDOM THING] until just before it strikes something.
Rod of the Arch-Wizard (Rod): You can use an action to touch this marble rod to a section of stone no more than 5 feet in any dimension and form it into an arched passage. The rod can't be used this way again until the next dawn.
Red Herring of Location (Wondrous Item): This totem is of a small fish, carved from red stone and engraved with a symbol of divination. While holding it next to your nose, you can use an action to speak its command word and describe or name a familiar object. You sense the direction to a location within 1,000 feet of you, though it turns out that the object isn't there. The totem can't be used this way again until the next dawn.
Halfling's Greatsword (Weapon, greatsword, requires attunement): This magical greatsword weighs much less than normal. It does not have the heavy property, but only deals 1d6 slashing damage on a hit.
I can't get it to re-generate Ayekea's instant Fortress but that is another good one as well.
Oh my god. I have to give my party the Pendant of Direction. It's the kind of thing that seems incredibly useful, right up until you realize it isn't.
Edit: it's even better than I initially thought! No matter where you are, you always have a choice of where to go. In an open field? You've got 360 degrees of freedom. Even if you limit it to roads or pathways, it could always just point back the way you came from
IF you're going to do that i suggest having an RNG on your phone...
"Just a second let me check my notes about this... it points south easterly
Edit: The thing that i like about the Red Herring is that its incredibly useful in some situations. Lets say you're sneaking around the big bads castle. And you are pretty sure he is there somewhere... But you know what his ring looks like..
Glamered Javelin (Weapon, javelin): When you throw this javelin, it assumes the appearance of a [RANDOM THING] until just before it strikes something.
I think it would be pretty sweet if it maintained the glamour even after striking. I am amused by the idea of impaling someone with a thrown umbrella or potted plant, etc.
Glamered Javelin (Weapon, javelin): When you throw this javelin, it assumes the appearance of a [RANDOM THING] until just before it strikes something.
I think it would be pretty sweet if it maintained the glamour even after striking. I am amused by the idea of impaling someone with a thrown umbrella or potted plant, etc.
It takes a minute to get there, but here's Colin Firth beating the shit outta 6 guys with a "magic" umbrella...
Doesn't ceremony specifically say in it that you can only benefit from a given ceremony once ever? At least, for the wedding ceremony?
[...]
Funeral Rite is pretty clear, it targets a corpse, but it's unclear whether the protection lasts if the target becomes de-corpsed. For wedding, it depends on your definition of widowed - same issue, are you really a widow if your spouse is resurrected?
I will say I'd probably both count the Ceremony as continuing to take effect, given your spouse is alive, and that Funeral Rite wouldn't work on a resurrected character, as you've changed the nature of the corpse (though you would have to change the character back into a corpse at some point...but you could argue it's a different object).
Ivellius on
Me elsewhere:
Steam, various fora: Ivellius
League of Legends: Doctor Ivellius
Twitch, probably another place or two I forget: LPIvellius
My monthly Strahd game lives! We hadn't played since march but lives finally aligned and hopefully we can get back to regular sessions.
We had left off on a bit of a cliff hanger, with two party members downed and three failed death saves between them, plus six new enemies approaching! But we stabilized in the first round of the new session and managed to turn things around. I'm playing a super cheesy crossbow expert sharpshooting battlemaster fighter, and I love him. Putting out 45 damage to a single target in one turn is so satisfying, and that would be before popping action surge or any of my battlemaster tactics.
In story news, my character has a grudge against a specific NPC and is going to murder him in his sleep one of these sessions, I'm looking forward to how the rest of the (generally good aligned) party reacts.
Strahd spoilers
The coffin maker didn't warn us about the vampires in the attic and we lost a party member to them, my character's best friend since childhood. Now my character has a grudge against vampire-spawn in general and that coffin maker in particular, who seems to have gone into hiding since we burned down his shop with all the vampires inside. My character has been asking around Vallaki for any news on his location, as subtly as a character with a -1 charisma modifier can!
Meta wise I'm pretty sure his best friend dying is the best thing that's happened for my character all campaign, now he has a solid reason to want to hurt Strahd and will strike any deal to make that happen.
So my buddy is going to be running a one off tomorrow and for the hell of it we decided to each build a character that everyone would randomly pick from.
My contribution to this insanity is a Tabaxi lore bard, who I named "NekoNekomimi-Chan", rolled badly for HPs with, has 15 god dam proficiencies (one of which is the badgermin; the result of a theremin, taxidermy and either mental illness or utter boredom), the inspiring leader feat, an eclectic mix of spells and a personality that mixes bad anime school girl tropes with cat stereotypes.
I will report the results from the game.
So i promsed you guys a story about NekoNekomimi-Chan and i'd love to give you one, but unfortunately the one off that we were in was just a series of Puzzles the GM was reading off from a pre-written module; I think it was called igor's maze or something.
Still though, my one buddy was determined to sell his role as hard as he could, and he did a bang up job playing the part of a japanese idol in the most annoying way possible; in fact he's so enthralled by the character that he's going to try and play it at the next store campaign.
Also, I wound up getting the GM's character and he has the nasty habit of not filling in the background components or alignment... Which is a bit of a problem when the only things I have to go on are my character's race (kenku), name (*drum solo*), class (fighter/monk/rogue) and background (minstrel). Now, he did this so that whoever got the character would have maximum freedom, but without any characteristics or even alignment I had effectively nothing to work with... so that's what I decided my character would be: a complete and utter zombie who just followed other people around and did what he was told. :P
My pixie sorcerer played an instrumental part in a heist on Saturday, doing the prep work. Pretending to be a rich kid and alter selfed to appear to be one, my two adopted "dwarven dads" (fighter and cleric) delivered me over to a kid's house "my friend" (who I ran into disguised like this once before when I was using subtle spell to blamelessly cause all kinds of destruction), one who's parent's vault we need to rob. My plan is simple, come up with excuses to look around their house and get a layout of defenses, guard numbers and positions, where and how to get into the vault. All I have to do is manipulate one human child into showing me around her house including the parts her parents don't let her into - I got 20 charisma this should be easy.
Instead, the DM had the girl roll a persuasion check to have me use my magic to prank her older brother (knowing I could cast spells, my excuse being that all elf kids can do that), and I arbitrarily set the check at 15 because this mission is important so even THIS character would be hard to be dissuaded from it...
So I cast tiny servant on a bunch of dishes and we had them throw her brother in the pool and then the DM described how she spent the next 3 hours showing me her stuff and I showed her my wand of fireballs, magical poison crossbow, dagger of rust that dissolves metal, and I gave her a vial of Dust of Disappearance in trade for a fancy doll that talks before returning to my party with very little information about the defenses.
I made up most of the defenses layout (even going totally off mission I got a somewhat accurate guard count at least) and rolled a deception against every party member's insight and they all believed me. The dust of disappearance was actually reasonably crucial for phase one of this robbery as well.
This robbery is going to go so well next week. The rest of the session was spent doing a job to clean out a gang of kobolds in the slums the guards aren't paid enough to care about, and also the party realizing we could start a fight club in the boxing ring adjacent to the whorehouse. I have a feeling this is going to end up with the party being crime bosses of some variety
character pictured below, by Blameless Cleric of this forum (wand is used as a staff):
Both of those settings are awesome (and kind of similar). I fondly remember that jungle continent on Eberron from D&D Online, and Ravnica was the only Magic set I actually ever got into.
Eberron book, $20 on DMsguild, introduction contains the same disclaimer as UA:
"The game mechanics are in draft form, usable in your campaign but not refined by final game design and editing. They aren't officially part of the game and aren't permitted in Adventurer's League events. If Wizards of the Coast decides to make this material official, it will be refined based on your feedback and then appear in a DnD book."
Oh, it will appear in a DnD book if it becomes official. That's weird, because I thought the thing I'm supposed to be paying $20 for here was a DnD book. But apparently it isn't!
Apparently it's an unfinished long-form Unearthed Arcana article that I have to pay $20 to read and then, presumably, pay another $50 to buy the final version of after I help finish it for you. Neat!
We've graduated from the Xanathar's 'sell you a book containing your own revisions to all the half-finished content we already gave you for free' model to 'we're gonna make you buy the playtest material, too'.
I'm excited to see some Eberron content, but it really doesn't seem like "I would like your team of professional game designers to design a finished game and then sell it to me" should be such a big ask.
Man. WotC just does not know how to sell this game to people.
I mean they have multiple entries on the top 100 books on amazon for 2018. The core 3 and Xanathars, and the PHB is in the top 50 best sellers of all time there... seems like they are fairly good at selling the game.
Man. WotC just does not know how to sell this game to people.
I mean they have multiple entries on the top 100 books on amazon for 2018. The core 3 and Xanathars, and the PHB is in the top 50 best sellers of all time there... seems like they are fairly good at selling the game.
Just not at making it - they need their customers to do that part for them (and, apparently, to pay for the privilege).
+1
Options
AssuranIs swinging on the SpiralRegistered Userregular
Yeah, I'm highly disappointed with the two pieces of news today.
Eberron because paying $20 for Beta material is gross and Ravnica because I can't believe their first non-Realms campaign setting book is for a Magic setting instead of a beloved setting like Planeshift, Dragonlance, Eberron, Greyhawk, Spelljammer, or Dark Sun.
I am many will like the Ravnica setting, but I'll be hard passing on it.
+1
Options
KasynI'm not saying I don't like our chances.She called me the master.Registered Userregular
edited July 2018
So my character in a longtime current campaign is a river pirate, with some indeterminate amount of crew for my ship. They've already factored into about three or four of our combat encounters, but we've always handled it as just some extremely generic NPCs with a very quick and dirty amount of damage and hitpoints. I started the campaign with close to 30, but I'm down to the low 20s now.
My DM was foolhardy enough to sign off on allowing me to use some of stats of the more generic, low CR creatures from the Monster Manual for my remaining crew, so I've put them all into custom statblocks. For the most part the vast majority of them are like 1/8 CR redshirts, but we've had a few of the specially named guys come up before, so I'll have a couple that are 1/2 to 1 CR. In the process we agreed to cut my crew down to an even 20 so we can randomize certain events and which ones of them might be involved in any given fight.
There are some tools out there that let you put together custom statblocks that look straight out of the books, I'm already mostly done with them, so this is going to be very fun to bust out the next time we use my crew in a session.
It has always been a big deal for my character when even the most random and nameless members of his crew died, and he's nearly gone broke from sending substantial amounts of gold to the family whenever one of his guys eats it. Now I get to destroy their physical stat card every time that happens, and after all the effort that went into this, I think I'll be just about as bummed as my character is when that takes place.
Man. WotC just does not know how to sell this game to people.
I mean they have multiple entries on the top 100 books on amazon for 2018. The core 3 and Xanathars, and the PHB is in the top 50 best sellers of all time there... seems like they are fairly good at selling the game.
Just not at making it - they need their customers to do that part for them (and, apparently, to pay for the privilege).
Considering what shits the customers looking for that piece of content are going to be about it, it makes sense they would want both serious input from serious adherents to the content, and to determine who's serious among those adherents.
ie: if they fuck up the initial book offering for eberron they are just fucked. This method allows them to ensure what ebberon's fans actually like about it and want in a book release.
Notice the difference in prep between ebberon and the ravnica book for November. Ravnica has 0 expectation on its contents or general performance. They can just dev it themselves for fun, and shotgun it out there because it has 0 history as an RPG campaign setting and they can just roll the dice on it.
Ebberon on the other hand has 14 years of expectations and adventures to live up to with players already currently playing in that setting. There's a ton of player expectation to manage, and getting the setting right seems to be more important to them than getting it right now.
Doing it this way provides a few things. 1 money for art, 2 to determine how much money even a light, no print, ebberon offering can get them (to assess actual interest), and 3 to get more refined feedback on the materials as they currently exist from folks that give enoughof a shit about it to pay for beta.
Man. WotC just does not know how to sell this game to people.
I mean they have multiple entries on the top 100 books on amazon for 2018. The core 3 and Xanathars, and the PHB is in the top 50 best sellers of all time there... seems like they are fairly good at selling the game.
Just not at making it - they need their customers to do that part for them (and, apparently, to pay for the privilege).
I'm actually 100% on board with their previous/current model of sending out UA stuff and having players test it out and see how things shake. It lets me play/use material before I would have before and sometimes busted things get brought in line and weak things get tweaked up instead of them going live like that.
I am 100% NOT on board with paying money to do so. If there was some open disclaimer that also said "your $20 gets you the finished product on DMSguild for free" then I would only be MOSTLY upset instead. Them still slapping the D&D logo on it and charging for an openly potentially unfinished product just kind of sucks. However if most of it is going to Mr. Baker himself for doing it (And him saying this is the Eberron he's playing at home) then that helps a bit.
I'll sit and wait on it for awhile for now. Feels weird to pay for a beta.
Man. WotC just does not know how to sell this game to people.
I mean they have multiple entries on the top 100 books on amazon for 2018. The core 3 and Xanathars, and the PHB is in the top 50 best sellers of all time there... seems like they are fairly good at selling the game.
Just not at making it - they need their customers to do that part for them (and, apparently, to pay for the privilege).
Considering what shits the customers looking for that piece of content are going to be about it, it makes sense they would want both serious input from serious adherents to the content, and to determine who's serious among those adherents.
ie: if they fuck up the initial book offering for eberron they are just fucked. This method allows them to ensure what ebberon's fans actually like about it and want in a book release.
Notice the difference in prep between ebberon and the ravnica book for November. Ravnica has 0 expectation on its contents or general performance. They can just dev it themselves for fun, and shotgun it out there because it has 0 history as an RPG campaign setting and they can just roll the dice on it.
Ebberon on the other hand has 14 years of expectations and adventures to live up to with players already currently playing in that setting. There's a ton of player expectation to manage, and getting the setting right seems to be more important to them than getting it right now.
Doing it this way provides a few things. 1 money for art, 2 to determine how much money even a light, no print, ebberon offering can get them (to assess actual interest), and 3 to get more refined feedback on the materials as they currently exist from folks that give enoughof a shit about it to pay for beta.
I'm not minimizing the value or importance of playtesting (although I don't really like their habit of printing products composed almost entirely of already-publicly-playtested content - you'd think they'd have the capacity to playtest some content internally so that it's still new when it shows up in a book, or at least isn't still a first draft when it goes to the public). I am, however, pretty unimpressed with the decision to both publicly playtest a product and expect their playtesters to pay for the playtest. I am further unimpressed with the decision to announce this as 'a new book' and then bury the admission that it's only playtest content inside the cover, halfway through the introduction, where most people will only see it after they've bought what they thought was, y'know, a finished product. Playtesting is important; this is a shitty way to playtest.
I've seen way worse, and considering how the table top game dev life goes I got little problem with them trying to get money in Keith baker's pocket for the work he's doing so far. Especially considering they are doing it by selling the content he endorses as ebberon official (this content is what he's playing on his table), and that he's already got followups on. Like in Baker's announcement he immediately warns that it is all unearthed arcana content, and that they are still working towards a full print release version.
Yeah, I'm highly disappointed with the two pieces of news today.
Eberron because paying $20 for Beta material is gross and Ravnica because I can't believe their first non-Realms campaign setting book is for a Magic setting instead of a beloved setting like Planeshift, Dragonlance, Eberron, Greyhawk, Spelljammer, or Dark Sun.
I am many will like the Ravnica setting, but I'll be hard passing on it.
Yeah, I'm highly disappointed with the two pieces of news today.
Eberron because paying $20 for Beta material is gross and Ravnica because I can't believe their first non-Realms campaign setting book is for a Magic setting instead of a beloved setting like Planeshift, Dragonlance, Eberron, Greyhawk, Spelljammer, or Dark Sun.
I am many will like the Ravnica setting, but I'll be hard passing on it.
Yeah, I'm really wanting new planescape
I think pretty much any major existing beloved settings from the past are going to be this kind of slow roll release like ebberon... because they literally cannot afford to toss any dice on those releases. They have to get em perfect, or not do them at all or the customer base for the product just fuckin eats itself.
Like i see the ravnica book as a test:
"What happens when we release a known, but not necessarily popular campaign setting? Does it bomb because current edition players aren't interested in new settings? Does it do marginally well because MtG players and fans of the setting are enough to drive sales on their own? Does it do well because current edition players are thirsty for content and settings materials?"
Basically they need to figure out if folks other than yourself are going to buy a planescape book, or if you are their only customers. If you're their only customers, and the setting won't really expand the brands... then they either don't print the book, or they send it through so many feedback loops they can ensure that they can guarantee that the legacy players will purchase it to justify the print run.
I've seen way worse, and considering how the table top game dev life goes I got little problem with them trying to get money in Keith baker's pocket for the work he's doing so far. Especially considering they are doing it by selling the content he endorses as ebberon official (this content is what he's playing on his table), and that he's already got followups on. Like in Baker's announcement he immediately warns that it is all unearthed arcana content, and that they are still working towards a full print release version.
Let's not pretend that Wizards of the Coast doesn't have the money to pay Keith Baker for his work without preselling their playtest material. This isn't some indie startup. You can't juke from 'they know how to sell this game, their books are flying off the shelves and they're making TONS of money!' to 'they gotta panhandle by selling incomplete products to keep the lights on until they can make a full release' in the span of three posts.
I've seen way worse, and considering how the table top game dev life goes I got little problem with them trying to get money in Keith baker's pocket for the work he's doing so far. Especially considering they are doing it by selling the content he endorses as ebberon official (this content is what he's playing on his table), and that he's already got followups on. Like in Baker's announcement he immediately warns that it is all unearthed arcana content, and that they are still working towards a full print release version.
Let's not pretend that Wizards of the Coast doesn't have the money to pay Keith Baker for his work without preselling their playtest material. This isn't some indie startup. You can't juke from 'they know how to sell this game, their books are flying off the shelves and they're making TONS of money!' to 'they gotta panhandle by selling incomplete products to keep the lights on until they can make a full release' in the span of three posts.
Dude they've been rebuilding the business for years now. D&D and Magic are different businesses as far as Hasbro is concerned. Why do you think the d&d team went from a massive dedicated group to like... 3 to 6 dedicated employees for this edition. This entire edition is about rebuilding the company and developing an entirely new business strategy. They can be both good at that (which they are), and still not be rolling in dough.
If a bloated staff makes for a bloated product line, then I say wotc should keep on keeping on!
But asking consumers to pay for unfinished product is bullshit. I applaud using things like UA articles to push new ideas and test material... but selling that material to players, especially when it is likely to be changed very soon, is bullshit.
Speaking of Planescape, for a bit of fun I’m making a race (currently) calling Mixling that represent the general population of Sigil for the game I’m gonna run.
Basically you start as the most standard medium, 30 feet walking human with no racial bonuses.
Then you pick a “Maternal Heritage” which gives you a constant useful thing like Dark Vision or Fire Resistance.
A “Paternal Heritage”, which gives you that fluff trait like Powerful Build or Small.
Finally a “Quirk of the Blood”, a once per short rest deal, like a cantrip or limited flight or whatever.
All so a player can be a berk that has an aasimar mum and a tiefling dad plus their grand uncle was a githyanki.
Yeah, I'm highly disappointed with the two pieces of news today.
Eberron because paying $20 for Beta material is gross and Ravnica because I can't believe their first non-Realms campaign setting book is for a Magic setting instead of a beloved setting like Planeshift, Dragonlance, Eberron, Greyhawk, Spelljammer, or Dark Sun.
I am many will like the Ravnica setting, but I'll be hard passing on it.
Yeah, I'm really wanting new planescape
meh, I have absolutely no faith that the current team there could do it justice.
also Planescape was and is totally defined by the art of Tony DiTerlizzi and it would be a no-go to even try to start a new version without him.
Going back to that Rube Goldberg “these two people get +2AC and their bodies can’t be turned if they die” bit from a page and a half or so ago:
As a “cheaper than Bracers of Defense!” min-max exercise it’s just kind of excessive, but as something that arises from the setting that could be amazing. It reminds me of an old account of a Call of Cthulhu game where everything the players wanted, the GM said “sure, why not?”, e.g., “well my character was in the War so maybe I have an old ...Hotchkiss gun? In like ...my basement?” “Sure, why not?” and of course in the end none of it mattered.
Imagine that your party is helping some small town fight off “the blood moon, when the dead walk” and everyone’s cool, ready to swat down a bunch of mooks and a couple bosses and get some XP, when all of a sudden the villagers all start marrying each other, then murdering each other (nice, clean stabs through the heart), then the village cleric raises the freshly-blessed corpses and they switch partners and do it all again. While your party is standing around, jaws slack, a nice young lad, fresh aortal blood dripping from his vestal robes, comes up with a glass of wine and some ritual garlands. “Will you be joining us in the Widow’s Wedding? I know it looks extreme to outsiders, but it’s our only chance to survive what’s coming; in our experience, only dipping our souls in the River of the Damned for a moment gives us the strength to survive ...them.”
Posts
but it's full size so mostly it just looks like a floating cloak
MUDDY MULTI-BARREL BLOWGUN DISGUISED AS A BAGPIPE THAT PRODUCES 1D4+1 WILD DIRE WEASELS WHENEVER AN ARTIFICIAL CREATURE IS CREATED
Dunno man, that's a dog I wouldn't mind having.
...might actually be useful?
It should be a wand that is an umbrella.
Because of the shade, you see.
Hopeful Key: This magical brass key fits into any lock, but cannot open any.
Pendant of Direction (Wondrous Item): This translucent blue gemstone pendant is marked with a symbol of inlaid gold. When held aloft at a place where you have a choice of directions to take, a faint beam of blue light will shine from the pendant in one of those directions.
Elven Rope Armor (Armor, leather): This armor has been masterfully woven from silk rope, and provides the same Armor Class as leather armor. You can use an action to speak its command word, causing the armor to unweave itself into 100' of rope. Speaking the command word a second time weaves the rope back into armor.
Rod of Invulnerability (Rod): This thin glass rod cannot be damaged or destroyed by any means short of a Wish spell, divine intervention, etc.
Glamered Javelin (Weapon, javelin): When you throw this javelin, it assumes the appearance of a [RANDOM THING] until just before it strikes something.
Rod of the Arch-Wizard (Rod): You can use an action to touch this marble rod to a section of stone no more than 5 feet in any dimension and form it into an arched passage. The rod can't be used this way again until the next dawn.
Red Herring of Location (Wondrous Item): This totem is of a small fish, carved from red stone and engraved with a symbol of divination. While holding it next to your nose, you can use an action to speak its command word and describe or name a familiar object. You sense the direction to a location within 1,000 feet of you, though it turns out that the object isn't there. The totem can't be used this way again until the next dawn.
Halfling's Greatsword (Weapon, greatsword, requires attunement): This magical greatsword weighs much less than normal. It does not have the heavy property, but only deals 1d6 slashing damage on a hit.
I can't get it to re-generate Ayekea's instant Fortress but that is another good one as well.
Edit: it's even better than I initially thought! No matter where you are, you always have a choice of where to go. In an open field? You've got 360 degrees of freedom. Even if you limit it to roads or pathways, it could always just point back the way you came from
"Just a second let me check my notes about this... it points south easterly
Edit: The thing that i like about the Red Herring is that its incredibly useful in some situations. Lets say you're sneaking around the big bads castle. And you are pretty sure he is there somewhere... But you know what his ring looks like..
Now you know where the big bad isn't
I think it would be pretty sweet if it maintained the glamour even after striking. I am amused by the idea of impaling someone with a thrown umbrella or potted plant, etc.
"Can the statue be of me throwing the javelin?" "yes"
It takes a minute to get there, but here's Colin Firth beating the shit outta 6 guys with a "magic" umbrella...
Gentle Repose if you need it.
I will say I'd probably both count the Ceremony as continuing to take effect, given your spouse is alive, and that Funeral Rite wouldn't work on a resurrected character, as you've changed the nature of the corpse (though you would have to change the character back into a corpse at some point...but you could argue it's a different object).
Steam, various fora: Ivellius
League of Legends: Doctor Ivellius
Twitch, probably another place or two I forget: LPIvellius
There was also another piece of armor that reveals an unpopular opinion of someone nearby whenever you act heroically.
We had left off on a bit of a cliff hanger, with two party members downed and three failed death saves between them, plus six new enemies approaching! But we stabilized in the first round of the new session and managed to turn things around. I'm playing a super cheesy crossbow expert sharpshooting battlemaster fighter, and I love him. Putting out 45 damage to a single target in one turn is so satisfying, and that would be before popping action surge or any of my battlemaster tactics.
In story news, my character has a grudge against a specific NPC and is going to murder him in his sleep one of these sessions, I'm looking forward to how the rest of the (generally good aligned) party reacts.
Strahd spoilers
Meta wise I'm pretty sure his best friend dying is the best thing that's happened for my character all campaign, now he has a solid reason to want to hurt Strahd and will strike any deal to make that happen.
at one point with that generator I got a corset that produces sexual tension when you bathe with an enemy
I don't think the corset actually does anything, the sexual tension with Ugash of Avernus was there all along
So i promsed you guys a story about NekoNekomimi-Chan and i'd love to give you one, but unfortunately the one off that we were in was just a series of Puzzles the GM was reading off from a pre-written module; I think it was called igor's maze or something.
Still though, my one buddy was determined to sell his role as hard as he could, and he did a bang up job playing the part of a japanese idol in the most annoying way possible; in fact he's so enthralled by the character that he's going to try and play it at the next store campaign.
Also, I wound up getting the GM's character and he has the nasty habit of not filling in the background components or alignment... Which is a bit of a problem when the only things I have to go on are my character's race (kenku), name (*drum solo*), class (fighter/monk/rogue) and background (minstrel). Now, he did this so that whoever got the character would have maximum freedom, but without any characteristics or even alignment I had effectively nothing to work with... so that's what I decided my character would be: a complete and utter zombie who just followed other people around and did what he was told. :P
Instead, the DM had the girl roll a persuasion check to have me use my magic to prank her older brother (knowing I could cast spells, my excuse being that all elf kids can do that), and I arbitrarily set the check at 15 because this mission is important so even THIS character would be hard to be dissuaded from it...
So I cast tiny servant on a bunch of dishes and we had them throw her brother in the pool and then the DM described how she spent the next 3 hours showing me her stuff and I showed her my wand of fireballs, magical poison crossbow, dagger of rust that dissolves metal, and I gave her a vial of Dust of Disappearance in trade for a fancy doll that talks before returning to my party with very little information about the defenses.
I made up most of the defenses layout (even going totally off mission I got a somewhat accurate guard count at least) and rolled a deception against every party member's insight and they all believed me. The dust of disappearance was actually reasonably crucial for phase one of this robbery as well.
This robbery is going to go so well next week. The rest of the session was spent doing a job to clean out a gang of kobolds in the slums the guards aren't paid enough to care about, and also the party realizing we could start a fight club in the boxing ring adjacent to the whorehouse. I have a feeling this is going to end up with the party being crime bosses of some variety
character pictured below, by Blameless Cleric of this forum (wand is used as a staff):
rad
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
"The game mechanics are in draft form, usable in your campaign but not refined by final game design and editing. They aren't officially part of the game and aren't permitted in Adventurer's League events. If Wizards of the Coast decides to make this material official, it will be refined based on your feedback and then appear in a DnD book."
Oh, it will appear in a DnD book if it becomes official. That's weird, because I thought the thing I'm supposed to be paying $20 for here was a DnD book. But apparently it isn't!
Apparently it's an unfinished long-form Unearthed Arcana article that I have to pay $20 to read and then, presumably, pay another $50 to buy the final version of after I help finish it for you. Neat!
We've graduated from the Xanathar's 'sell you a book containing your own revisions to all the half-finished content we already gave you for free' model to 'we're gonna make you buy the playtest material, too'.
I'm excited to see some Eberron content, but it really doesn't seem like "I would like your team of professional game designers to design a finished game and then sell it to me" should be such a big ask.
I mean they have multiple entries on the top 100 books on amazon for 2018. The core 3 and Xanathars, and the PHB is in the top 50 best sellers of all time there... seems like they are fairly good at selling the game.
Just not at making it - they need their customers to do that part for them (and, apparently, to pay for the privilege).
Eberron because paying $20 for Beta material is gross and Ravnica because I can't believe their first non-Realms campaign setting book is for a Magic setting instead of a beloved setting like Planeshift, Dragonlance, Eberron, Greyhawk, Spelljammer, or Dark Sun.
I am many will like the Ravnica setting, but I'll be hard passing on it.
My DM was foolhardy enough to sign off on allowing me to use some of stats of the more generic, low CR creatures from the Monster Manual for my remaining crew, so I've put them all into custom statblocks. For the most part the vast majority of them are like 1/8 CR redshirts, but we've had a few of the specially named guys come up before, so I'll have a couple that are 1/2 to 1 CR. In the process we agreed to cut my crew down to an even 20 so we can randomize certain events and which ones of them might be involved in any given fight.
There are some tools out there that let you put together custom statblocks that look straight out of the books, I'm already mostly done with them, so this is going to be very fun to bust out the next time we use my crew in a session.
It has always been a big deal for my character when even the most random and nameless members of his crew died, and he's nearly gone broke from sending substantial amounts of gold to the family whenever one of his guys eats it. Now I get to destroy their physical stat card every time that happens, and after all the effort that went into this, I think I'll be just about as bummed as my character is when that takes place.
Considering what shits the customers looking for that piece of content are going to be about it, it makes sense they would want both serious input from serious adherents to the content, and to determine who's serious among those adherents.
ie: if they fuck up the initial book offering for eberron they are just fucked. This method allows them to ensure what ebberon's fans actually like about it and want in a book release.
Notice the difference in prep between ebberon and the ravnica book for November. Ravnica has 0 expectation on its contents or general performance. They can just dev it themselves for fun, and shotgun it out there because it has 0 history as an RPG campaign setting and they can just roll the dice on it.
Ebberon on the other hand has 14 years of expectations and adventures to live up to with players already currently playing in that setting. There's a ton of player expectation to manage, and getting the setting right seems to be more important to them than getting it right now.
Doing it this way provides a few things. 1 money for art, 2 to determine how much money even a light, no print, ebberon offering can get them (to assess actual interest), and 3 to get more refined feedback on the materials as they currently exist from folks that give enoughof a shit about it to pay for beta.
I'm actually 100% on board with their previous/current model of sending out UA stuff and having players test it out and see how things shake. It lets me play/use material before I would have before and sometimes busted things get brought in line and weak things get tweaked up instead of them going live like that.
I am 100% NOT on board with paying money to do so. If there was some open disclaimer that also said "your $20 gets you the finished product on DMSguild for free" then I would only be MOSTLY upset instead. Them still slapping the D&D logo on it and charging for an openly potentially unfinished product just kind of sucks. However if most of it is going to Mr. Baker himself for doing it (And him saying this is the Eberron he's playing at home) then that helps a bit.
I'll sit and wait on it for awhile for now. Feels weird to pay for a beta.
I'm not minimizing the value or importance of playtesting (although I don't really like their habit of printing products composed almost entirely of already-publicly-playtested content - you'd think they'd have the capacity to playtest some content internally so that it's still new when it shows up in a book, or at least isn't still a first draft when it goes to the public). I am, however, pretty unimpressed with the decision to both publicly playtest a product and expect their playtesters to pay for the playtest. I am further unimpressed with the decision to announce this as 'a new book' and then bury the admission that it's only playtest content inside the cover, halfway through the introduction, where most people will only see it after they've bought what they thought was, y'know, a finished product. Playtesting is important; this is a shitty way to playtest.
Yeah, I'm really wanting new planescape
I think pretty much any major existing beloved settings from the past are going to be this kind of slow roll release like ebberon... because they literally cannot afford to toss any dice on those releases. They have to get em perfect, or not do them at all or the customer base for the product just fuckin eats itself.
Like i see the ravnica book as a test:
"What happens when we release a known, but not necessarily popular campaign setting? Does it bomb because current edition players aren't interested in new settings? Does it do marginally well because MtG players and fans of the setting are enough to drive sales on their own? Does it do well because current edition players are thirsty for content and settings materials?"
Basically they need to figure out if folks other than yourself are going to buy a planescape book, or if you are their only customers. If you're their only customers, and the setting won't really expand the brands... then they either don't print the book, or they send it through so many feedback loops they can ensure that they can guarantee that the legacy players will purchase it to justify the print run.
Let's not pretend that Wizards of the Coast doesn't have the money to pay Keith Baker for his work without preselling their playtest material. This isn't some indie startup. You can't juke from 'they know how to sell this game, their books are flying off the shelves and they're making TONS of money!' to 'they gotta panhandle by selling incomplete products to keep the lights on until they can make a full release' in the span of three posts.
Dude they've been rebuilding the business for years now. D&D and Magic are different businesses as far as Hasbro is concerned. Why do you think the d&d team went from a massive dedicated group to like... 3 to 6 dedicated employees for this edition. This entire edition is about rebuilding the company and developing an entirely new business strategy. They can be both good at that (which they are), and still not be rolling in dough.
But asking consumers to pay for unfinished product is bullshit. I applaud using things like UA articles to push new ideas and test material... but selling that material to players, especially when it is likely to be changed very soon, is bullshit.
Basically you start as the most standard medium, 30 feet walking human with no racial bonuses.
Then you pick a “Maternal Heritage” which gives you a constant useful thing like Dark Vision or Fire Resistance.
A “Paternal Heritage”, which gives you that fluff trait like Powerful Build or Small.
Finally a “Quirk of the Blood”, a once per short rest deal, like a cantrip or limited flight or whatever.
All so a player can be a berk that has an aasimar mum and a tiefling dad plus their grand uncle was a githyanki.
meh, I have absolutely no faith that the current team there could do it justice.
also Planescape was and is totally defined by the art of Tony DiTerlizzi and it would be a no-go to even try to start a new version without him.
As a “cheaper than Bracers of Defense!” min-max exercise it’s just kind of excessive, but as something that arises from the setting that could be amazing. It reminds me of an old account of a Call of Cthulhu game where everything the players wanted, the GM said “sure, why not?”, e.g., “well my character was in the War so maybe I have an old ...Hotchkiss gun? In like ...my basement?” “Sure, why not?” and of course in the end none of it mattered.
Imagine that your party is helping some small town fight off “the blood moon, when the dead walk” and everyone’s cool, ready to swat down a bunch of mooks and a couple bosses and get some XP, when all of a sudden the villagers all start marrying each other, then murdering each other (nice, clean stabs through the heart), then the village cleric raises the freshly-blessed corpses and they switch partners and do it all again. While your party is standing around, jaws slack, a nice young lad, fresh aortal blood dripping from his vestal robes, comes up with a glass of wine and some ritual garlands. “Will you be joining us in the Widow’s Wedding? I know it looks extreme to outsiders, but it’s our only chance to survive what’s coming; in our experience, only dipping our souls in the River of the Damned for a moment gives us the strength to survive ...them.”
“...sure, why not?”
Your Ad Here! Reasonable Rates!