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[DnD 5E] You can't triple stamp a double stamp!
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Not if you use the rule that nat 1 and 20 are not crit fail and success, respectively, but rather failing by 10 or succeeding by 10 from the DC. That way vs a say 18 ac enemy, the fighter would have to roll an 8 or lower to crit fail, and a 28 or higher to crit succeed.
Not to chide but give a similar example, I had a rule (inspired by Sin City) that jamming a gun with one roll then failing to unjam the gun in Dark Heresy with the automatic fail roll (100) would result in a misfire and break the gun and hurt the character. I got hard resistance to this and I agree with the rest of the thread that these kinds of penalties that really only hurt the players would not be received well and don't really add much.
Start like I did in phandelin, have the first goblins they encounter show them what the Vietnam war was like, try to mulch a player character early on to emphasize the new campaign is hard mode
Going in order:
1. Why is 'take more short rests' a goal? What is the problem you're trying to solve? What do you see it adding to the adventures?
2. This really isn't your decision to make. How the players respond to a threat is up to the players. If you want more challenging combats, build in terrain, have clever enemies. But from the reading of it, you're deciding what the players' actions should be and that's not up to you.
3. What problem do you see with limited application of tools?
4. This is the same as 2. You're setting up combats with one 'right' way to solve them, and that's very poor design.
Now, we do critical fumbles, but it takes rolling more than one nat 1 in a row. so the chances are reduced down to 1 in 400, then usually what happens is a person will get a negative 1 against that type of enemy, or specific application of a skill check. If you keep rolling nat 1s then it gets worse. Our mage rolled triple ones once doing stealth, and now has a permanent -5 to stealth checks, but at a 1 in 8000 chance it maybe comes up once a campaign. This rule also is in effect for nat 20s too. I ended up with advantage against all ghosts in the last campaign. It came in handy a few times.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
These are very solid questions to consider but as far as 2 and 4 go, I would suggest that it perhaps goes beyond “if you want to have more challenging combats, add <this> or <that>”. I think the issue being described is that the players see every combat situation as something they can - and should! - alpha-strike their way out of, and so far that’s worked for them. How the players respond is not up to the DM, that’s true, but the solution space of possible consequences totally is. One or two combats where the party says “Oh! Battle! Right, burn all our cooldowns and it’s on to the loot table!”, only to find that their opponents are fighting to subdue - with the following “You wake up bound in a dirt-floored tent. There’s some kind of sibilant chanting outside and the firelit shadows on the tent walls are making the hair on your neck and arms stand aaaaall the way up.”, and the following daring escape - might reset the existing dynamic and get the players trying different things. Still things that it’s not the DM’s role to mandate or control, but still something other than “I burn all my daily and encounter powers. I’m off to the fridge, anyone else need a drink?”
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The point was to stay away from building combat encounters like puzzles, where there's one 'right' solution to 'solve' the combat. That's not good design, and players typically don't respond well to it.
Like using pit traps with shit-covered punji sticks, hiding alchemist fire and black powder in baby swaddles, creeping back after an ambush to wait for the enemy mage to lob fireball artillery ineffectively, and making them wait around with nothing to do in mind numbing boredom for hours on end while something like an acidic drip was felt in their stomachs; they’d clench and unclench their fists, think to themselves, “well this isn’t so bad,” when at that moment a volley of crossbow bolts would ring out and their nuts would feel like they flew into their throats?
The bards are coming up with some great songs, though. So that's something.
More realistic, though? You can wreck your quarterstaff slamming it into literal rocks. It does require a group that is OK with that idea and knows before they start that they will have a bad time if they build a character around a family heirloom.
Also, conversely: enemies will break their weapons and claws over the shield of the paladin. Which sounds pretty cool.
Not sure, the original idea was to have weapons lose durability on all Nat 1s, which would be a flat 5% chance, regardless of what the character would try to hit. By making -10 of target's AC it removes that automatic punishment and would be a lot more forgiving for smart players, but could be used as a way to set a scene with monsters breaking their weapons over the awesome shield of the paladin.
Or you know, just describe that as happening and don't bother with a rule to maintain consistently.
The example I gave had only one solution given, but I would include more than one in an actual session. For example, maybe there's an old ballista that could be fixed up to fire at the enemy from a great distance, or maybe there's a cache of poison to envenomate the party's weapons and kill it in an ambush, or maybe the enemy can be bribed to help kill other enemies. The "shove it off the balcony" solution was inspired by another desire of mine to add verticality to my next campaign.
My inspiration was a recent game where my 1st-level Fighter and a 1st-level Monk challenged a troll in the Sunless Citadel. The direct approach almost got the Monk killed, so we went back and recruited a wyrmling and kobold sorcerer with promises of treasure. There was also a spike pit nearby, so trying to shove the troll in might have helped.
I think Glal was asking about the Eberron art.
Ed: No, autocorrect, I did mean “Eberron,” not “Everton.”
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
That it wasn't particularly evocative of the setting.
The alternative collector's edition cover was much more well-received.
I mean, yeah there is a Warforged there. And the lady looks appropriately fantasy-chic as if shes a member of a Dragonmarked house.... but you wouldn't know that just from the art.
It's not a bad piece.... but they really could have done better.
Fuck that collectors edition is fuckin beautiful... and I steal so much from eberon...
but nothing like that happened nor did anything happen to her character at all, she's too upset to talk to me about whatever it was she was told so I don't even know what it is (from her roommate its definitely something that happened to her character - which was nothing, she didn't say or do anything while she was gone, her character was literally just "There" and didn't so much as be in the same room as a hostile creature - I don't like to control players' characters for them and have a rule that they basically have plot armor if they aren't there - and I sure as shit don't have player characters get raped good god)
shes been friends with problemdruid for like 10 years and I am getting some serious fucking squinty eyes right now
Even with that, "will your character serve as a reward for my warband," comment I told in the roleplaying thread I don't think my rude player would try to tell something like that.
I don't know if you want advice. I have had bad blood over RPGs and I hope it gets resolved.
it sucks but this guy has already started poisoning the well, and it sounds like he may turn this into “its them or me”
Yeah it's time to tell every one of your players that you're kicking that guy out of the group. Maybe tell the whole group, guy included, in a group text at once. Say you'd have preferred to tell the guy privately but then you found out that the guy was lying to other players about you doing bad things to their characters because he knew his time in the game was limited and if he can't play then he wants to ensure that no one else will want to play, either.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
It's like, hey everyone, we have this great magitech-steampunk-noir-pulp setting with ancient ruins, floating skyscrapers, lightning trains, elemental airships, dragons, sentient robots, and magic birthmarks that are an integral part of the setting. What are we gonna get for our cover art?
Standard edition: I don't know, an elf with like a little fox squirrel thing on their shoulder? I guess I can paste some warforged clipart in the corner.
Collector's edition: Well I have this unused Star Wars city I did for something else, and I can paste some airship clipart in the corner. Oh and I'll make everything brown.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
You mean this one?
Campaign hook idea: Sharn, Blade Runner edition. Someone with necromancy and/or illusion powers is applying living skins to Warforged. Problems ensue.
So at the start of my session, the party was effectively stranded on an island in the underdark with no posibility of escape from the aboleth that was circling in the waters below. Fortunately for them, I'm one of those GM's who takes into consideration the motivations of monsters, and at the moment the elder horror didn't want to murder the adventurers, it wanted minions to replace the ones the adventurers had slain, and was perfectly willing to let them go in return for one of their number offered up as tribute.
At this point there was some debate; my party (consisting of a rogue, a bard, a paladin) was being joined by some new arrivals (including another rogue and a monk pushed up through the sand by halaster) were rapidly made aware of the situation and were considering how screwed they were when one last player arrived late and before he could even start penning out the stats for his orcish warrior he was being directed to take a bath in the water by the other players where upon he was immediately pulled under by the aboleth.
Times like that I wish I had a straw so I could drink the salt directly from the players face :P
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
You mean the Dhakaani Empire? Love those guys. I have lifted their organization and culture almost whole cloth for the homebrew setting I'm working on. Except the ones on my setting have steam engine dirigibles
https://eberron.fandom.com/wiki/The_Dhakaani_Empire
None of it comes even close to "Look at my cookies, Gary" though
It looks like a really weird reboot of Fullmetal Alchemist.
Then like a The Office/Parks and Rec moment zooming in on the background then back to the speaker I realized he exactly based it off his cat wandering in front of us.
Nothing wrong with that, that cat is really friendly. So very much unlike his character.
Yeah but 4e Dark Sun had the best art
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar