So! I’m making a bunch of aliens for D&D 5e, and the first one I’ve started is ant-folk slave soldiers who are freed of their hivemind by fungal infection/psionic monks.
Miaji
In the mist thick canyon of a backwater planet a crew of miaji were holded up, their cruiser shattered against the moss carpeted rock. Their intel had been poor, as always, and most didn’t know nor care to know the name of their latest enemy. Slave soldiers for generations, their queens imprisoned by the Venge, they fought and died for another’s dominion.
But here, dormant, or perhaps merely waiting, the salvation of a spiritually dying people was found. The miaji were drawn to the rain carved monuments of the polyin, towering fungal canopies curiously aligned with the stars above. They saw new paths open to them those first nights. Peace, unity, liberation. When these miaji were retrieved their invisible, immaterial friends joined with this crew too, and steadily wove their way into the heads of every miaji alive. Due to their influence many miaji blossomed into new queens, or fertile hybrids that bridged the gap between soldier and queen. The polyin have persisted within every newborn grub since.
Deceptive Height
You are small sized. You count as two sizes larger when determining your carrying capacity and the weight you can push, drag, or lift.
Rending Bite
Your jagged mandibles are natural weapons, which you can use to make unarmed strikes. If you hit with it, you deal slashing damage equal to 1d4 + your Strength modifier, instead of the bludgeoning damage normal for an unarmed strike. Additionally, you can make an unarmed strike whilst grappling a target creature as a bonus action once per turn.
Double Take
You are mentally linked to a psionic entity known as a polyin, and this link cannot be severed. Your polyin has a separate personality, and may have opposing opinions, but considers your survival of utmost importance.
Choose 1 skill: Deception, Insight, Investigation, or Perception. You gain proficiency in this skill, and may roll at advantage with it once per short or long rest.
Vigilant Ally
While you are asleep your polyin remains active, and will alert you to oncoming danger within a 15 foot circle of your body, waking you instantly.
Disassociated
As an action, you can ignore pain, no matter the severity. This does not reduce any damage taken, but may allow you to move through something that would otherwise hold you back, such as a wall of fire.
Thoughts on it so far?
Edit: It’s very early, I could change it entirely. I’m trying to fit soulless warmachine, ant and psychic pal into it without making them particularly powerful.
as cool as that all sounds, Solar, that's the type the scenario better suited for a narrative RPG, as mentioned because you have handy tools like flashbacks
securing an ambush in 5e already comes with inherent benefits
and I'd much rather have more flexible class abilities rather than something that depends on advance notice of enemies approaching, and ten minutes to prepare for the encounter (which makes this suggested trap mechanic objectively worse than most rituals!)
ranger inflexibility is kinda one of the problems is has right now, to boot
Doobh on
Miss me? Find me on:
Twitch (I stream most days of the week) Twitter (mean leftist discourse)
in a campaign where you know what you're going to be fighting ranger can be very good, this is true. the problem becomes when you specced beasts and you're fighting monstrosities. whoops, there goes your main damage add.
some sub classes have some things to address this, but not enough.
I guess part of it depends on playstyle. I hear you when you're saying "we never prepare for combat" but in our group, we're always preparing for combat, and a prepatorial class would work really well
If you had a prepatorial character in your games, perhaps there'd be more situations where you'd recon and get info to plan out stuff beforehand, because of the benefits? There are benefits to ambush and such but no character classes really interact with that part of the game, the pre-combat phase, other than "let's cast our buffs first."
They are not prepared for combat though as a slight of hand from goblin thieves and they are without items or a number of other things can happen to leave them at a disadvantage
Man, poisons really have no support in the current 5e rules.
It's like they couldn't figure out how to balance them so didn't figure out the mechanics for applying them beyond that folks with proficiency with a poisoners kit can't hurt themselves when they do it. You pretty much have to house rule in a way anyone could hurt themselves while employing poison (I think I like the use it's con save as a dex based application DC houserule I've seen some places)
As well the basic poison seems to contradict the general poison rules in a way that Crawford wasn't even comfortable making a ruling on it. The issue being that unlike the poisons in the DMG there's no clear indication it is contact or injury poison, but given its need to be applied to a weapon we can assume it is an injury poison. However it is also the only poison with explicit potency rules. Those rules would seem to indicate that one 50 gp vial could possibly always last 10 rounds even if you hit multiple times with the poisoned item. (I'll note that I actually like the apply it and use it for 10 rounds model seeing as it is only a d4 of damage and ostensibly you've devoted some character resource to regularly employ poison)
it is hard to prepare for combat when you're constantly getting jumped by inter dimensional beings you didn't know existed until you saw them. or you got o have a meeting with a public figure but whoops turns out they're evil and just threw down some demons.
I guess you could show up to every town hall meeting with all your buffs ready and your weapons drawn, just in case. but then you're not much better than the person going to arby's with an AK.
+7
StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
Does D&D still think that using poison is an inherently evil act?
it is hard to prepare for combat when you're constantly getting jumped by inter dimensional beings you didn't know existed until you saw them. or you got o have a meeting with a public figure but whoops turns out they're evil and just threw down some demons.
I guess you could show up to every town hall meeting with all your buffs ready and your weapons drawn, just in case. but then you're not much better than the person going to arby's with an AK.
Is every combat a surprise though? If it is we're playing very different games
it is hard to prepare for combat when you're constantly getting jumped by inter dimensional beings you didn't know existed until you saw them. or you got o have a meeting with a public figure but whoops turns out they're evil and just threw down some demons.
I guess you could show up to every town hall meeting with all your buffs ready and your weapons drawn, just in case. but then you're not much better than the person going to arby's with an AK.
Is every combat a surprise though? If it is we're playing very different games
THE REACHING REALM IS COMING. THERE IS NO TIME LEFT, ONLY NOW.
Speaking of, when I'm done with this campaign I definitely want to write up The Reaching Realm as something other players can use. Maybe I'll drop it into the DM's Guild.
it is hard to prepare for combat when you're constantly getting jumped by inter dimensional beings you didn't know existed until you saw them. or you got o have a meeting with a public figure but whoops turns out they're evil and just threw down some demons.
I guess you could show up to every town hall meeting with all your buffs ready and your weapons drawn, just in case. but then you're not much better than the person going to arby's with an AK.
At least one of the nobles in my dragonborn game will never go anywhere without his musket nearby because of the one time he ended up having to fight a succubus at a dinner party with nothing but a dagger. If he maintained the decorum to not bring the gun inside he at the very least has it kept in the carriage he came here in, and his retainers are always set to run and grab it in the event shit should happen to pop off. Im betting more often than not, he'll just have his retainers carry it in among his personal effects.
it is hard to prepare for combat when you're constantly getting jumped by inter dimensional beings you didn't know existed until you saw them. or you got o have a meeting with a public figure but whoops turns out they're evil and just threw down some demons.
I guess you could show up to every town hall meeting with all your buffs ready and your weapons drawn, just in case. but then you're not much better than the person going to arby's with an AK.
Is every combat a surprise though? If it is we're playing very different games
Are you rolling initiative, or deciding within the party who gets to surprise attack first?
it is hard to prepare for combat when you're constantly getting jumped by inter dimensional beings you didn't know existed until you saw them. or you got o have a meeting with a public figure but whoops turns out they're evil and just threw down some demons.
I guess you could show up to every town hall meeting with all your buffs ready and your weapons drawn, just in case. but then you're not much better than the person going to arby's with an AK.
don't forget the adventuring party that ambushed us on the road
or the betrayal from our pirate "friend"
or the white dragon that swooped down on us that one time
or the fucking death construct I blocked off with a cast of wall of stone (instant wall construction has to rate somewhere even worse if quick traps are considered bad)
if you're ass deep in an enemy fortress, you usually don't get a chance to slap together a perfectly engineered plan
which is why it's a) extremely useful and b) immensely funny to me to give someone class abilities that imply they're canny or paranoid enough to have a quick tool ready for almost any situation
Miss me? Find me on:
Twitch (I stream most days of the week) Twitter (mean leftist discourse)
FWIW as someone whose not a huge fan of D&D I don't think the game really does a good job of being one about militaristic prep work. It tends to go against the more high fantasy tone most campaigns edge towards and the chunky HP conflicts undermine the need for sudden, decisive violence.
+9
StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
it is hard to prepare for combat when you're constantly getting jumped by inter dimensional beings you didn't know existed until you saw them. or you got o have a meeting with a public figure but whoops turns out they're evil and just threw down some demons.
I guess you could show up to every town hall meeting with all your buffs ready and your weapons drawn, just in case. but then you're not much better than the person going to arby's with an AK.
Is every combat a surprise though? If it is we're playing very different games
I think this is core to many of our conversations about D&D.
It's a game that has a lot of different permutations, I think partially because of its popularity and its frequent position as people's first RPG. Folks use it to play a lot of different games, and of course there is no wrong way to play, but the fact that we have all ended up playing different ways and are continually talking past one another in our conversations about it, to me, suggests that there is something wrong with the game at its core.
+1
Zonugal(He/Him) The Holiday ArmadilloI'm Santa's representative for all the southern states. And Mexico!Registered Userregular
In my current D&D game I'm a big fan of putting together plans, as I'm a mastermind rogue.
Sometimes I tell the party what the plan is, sometimes I keep it to myself, other times I tell the party a plan & then privately disregard it to do my own thing.
I have a character who never gives a name, and has a couple of pun pseudonyms based on that concept. Right now I have "Nunn" (as in "Surname?" "None") and Ennae (N/A).
I can't think of any more, am I missing anything obvious?
0
Donovan PuppyfuckerA dagger in the dark isworth a thousand swords in the morningRegistered Userregular
Blondie.
+1
StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
I have a character who never gives a name, and has a couple of pun pseudonyms based on that concept. Right now I have "Nunn" (as in "Surname?" "None") and Ennae (N/A).
I can't think of any more, am I missing anything obvious?
It's not as clean, but I like the idea of Knott
You could also do some stuff with Blank - Mr. Blank (or Ms. Blank) is a great pseudonym
I have a character who never gives a name, and has a couple of pun pseudonyms based on that concept. Right now I have "Nunn" (as in "Surname?" "None") and Ennae (N/A).
I can't think of any more, am I missing anything obvious?
it is hard to prepare for combat when you're constantly getting jumped by inter dimensional beings you didn't know existed until you saw them. or you got o have a meeting with a public figure but whoops turns out they're evil and just threw down some demons.
I guess you could show up to every town hall meeting with all your buffs ready and your weapons drawn, just in case. but then you're not much better than the person going to arby's with an AK.
Is every combat a surprise though? If it is we're playing very different games
I think this is core to many of our conversations about D&D.
It's a game that has a lot of different permutations, I think partially because of its popularity and its frequent position as people's first RPG. Folks use it to play a lot of different games, and of course there is no wrong way to play, but the fact that we have all ended up playing different ways and are continually talking past one another in our conversations about it, to me, suggests that there is something wrong with the game at its core.
I think the truth is many people are using dnd to play types of games that dnd is not good for, because dnd is dominant in the market.
+2
StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
Honestly, as cool as preparation might be for some systems, the last thing D&D needs is more fiddly math to do before a battle. There are other ways you can flavor a Ranger being good at finding weak points and laying traps and scouting the environment that can be used during battle instead of adding busy-work to a game that already involves a lot of busy-work.
Stilts on
0
StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
for example, as someone who has had very exciting and enjoyable sessions where we never had combat and "barely rolled dice", that had nothing to do with d&d. In fact, i think the game works against you in situations like that
I have a character who never gives a name, and has a couple of pun pseudonyms based on that concept. Right now I have "Nunn" (as in "Surname?" "None") and Ennae (N/A).
I can't think of any more, am I missing anything obvious?
for example, as someone who has had very exciting and enjoyable sessions where we never had combat and "barely rolled dice", that had nothing to do with d&d. In fact, i think the game works against you in situations like that
To me that's the absolute best part. That the systemized parts can get out of the way when I need or want them to and can come back into relevance when we feel it is necessary.
I have a character who never gives a name, and has a couple of pun pseudonyms based on that concept. Right now I have "Nunn" (as in "Surname?" "None") and Ennae (N/A).
I can't think of any more, am I missing anything obvious?
for example, as someone who has had very exciting and enjoyable sessions where we never had combat and "barely rolled dice", that had nothing to do with d&d. In fact, i think the game works against you in situations like that
To me that's the absolute best part. That the systemized parts can get out of the way when I need or want them to and can come back into relevance when we feel it is necessary.
You can ignore the rules in every single game, though. That's the absolute best part of tabletop rpgs, not just d&d
I played a Wood Elf Monk who was an orphan raised by Raven Queen Cultists who like super nihilist, so they never named me. I went by 'Nameless'. It was super edgy 8-)
StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
As someone who has a long history of building social and skill based characters, I actually tend to find those sessions where you barely roll any dice and just roleplay through it frustrating. To me that says that the DM (and the group) is not a fan of my character or interested in having them be a part of the game.
As someone who has a long history of building social and skill based characters, I actually tend to find those sessions where you barely roll any dice and just roleplay through it frustrating. To me that says that the DM (and the group) is not a fan of my character or interested in having them be a part of the game.
There's nothing more frustrating to me than coming up with an action, rolling on it and then having the DM find a way to have it not count. It makes it feel like I'm there to add flavour text to an existing story rather than collaborate with the DM and the other players.
I always try and have stuff fall-foward, so to speak, if a player wants to do something and rolls for it that might not work so well with a current situation or encounter
instead of just having it not count, it'll affect the outcome in some way while still not entirely avoiding something or changing it entirely
I have a character who never gives a name, and has a couple of pun pseudonyms based on that concept. Right now I have "Nunn" (as in "Surname?" "None") and Ennae (N/A).
I can't think of any more, am I missing anything obvious?
Posts
So! I’m making a bunch of aliens for D&D 5e, and the first one I’ve started is ant-folk slave soldiers who are freed of their hivemind by fungal infection/psionic monks.
Miaji
But here, dormant, or perhaps merely waiting, the salvation of a spiritually dying people was found. The miaji were drawn to the rain carved monuments of the polyin, towering fungal canopies curiously aligned with the stars above. They saw new paths open to them those first nights. Peace, unity, liberation. When these miaji were retrieved their invisible, immaterial friends joined with this crew too, and steadily wove their way into the heads of every miaji alive. Due to their influence many miaji blossomed into new queens, or fertile hybrids that bridged the gap between soldier and queen. The polyin have persisted within every newborn grub since.
Deceptive Height
You are small sized. You count as two sizes larger when determining your carrying capacity and the weight you can push, drag, or lift.
Rending Bite
Your jagged mandibles are natural weapons, which you can use to make unarmed strikes. If you hit with it, you deal slashing damage equal to 1d4 + your Strength modifier, instead of the bludgeoning damage normal for an unarmed strike. Additionally, you can make an unarmed strike whilst grappling a target creature as a bonus action once per turn.
Double Take
You are mentally linked to a psionic entity known as a polyin, and this link cannot be severed. Your polyin has a separate personality, and may have opposing opinions, but considers your survival of utmost importance.
Choose 1 skill: Deception, Insight, Investigation, or Perception. You gain proficiency in this skill, and may roll at advantage with it once per short or long rest.
Vigilant Ally
While you are asleep your polyin remains active, and will alert you to oncoming danger within a 15 foot circle of your body, waking you instantly.
Disassociated
As an action, you can ignore pain, no matter the severity. This does not reduce any damage taken, but may allow you to move through something that would otherwise hold you back, such as a wall of fire.
Thoughts on it so far?
Edit: It’s very early, I could change it entirely. I’m trying to fit soulless warmachine, ant and psychic pal into it without making them particularly powerful.
securing an ambush in 5e already comes with inherent benefits
and I'd much rather have more flexible class abilities rather than something that depends on advance notice of enemies approaching, and ten minutes to prepare for the encounter (which makes this suggested trap mechanic objectively worse than most rituals!)
ranger inflexibility is kinda one of the problems is has right now, to boot
Twitch (I stream most days of the week)
Twitter (mean leftist discourse)
some sub classes have some things to address this, but not enough.
If you had a prepatorial character in your games, perhaps there'd be more situations where you'd recon and get info to plan out stuff beforehand, because of the benefits? There are benefits to ambush and such but no character classes really interact with that part of the game, the pre-combat phase, other than "let's cast our buffs first."
It's like they couldn't figure out how to balance them so didn't figure out the mechanics for applying them beyond that folks with proficiency with a poisoners kit can't hurt themselves when they do it. You pretty much have to house rule in a way anyone could hurt themselves while employing poison (I think I like the use it's con save as a dex based application DC houserule I've seen some places)
As well the basic poison seems to contradict the general poison rules in a way that Crawford wasn't even comfortable making a ruling on it. The issue being that unlike the poisons in the DMG there's no clear indication it is contact or injury poison, but given its need to be applied to a weapon we can assume it is an injury poison. However it is also the only poison with explicit potency rules. Those rules would seem to indicate that one 50 gp vial could possibly always last 10 rounds even if you hit multiple times with the poisoned item. (I'll note that I actually like the apply it and use it for 10 rounds model seeing as it is only a d4 of damage and ostensibly you've devoted some character resource to regularly employ poison)
I guess you could show up to every town hall meeting with all your buffs ready and your weapons drawn, just in case. but then you're not much better than the person going to arby's with an AK.
Is every combat a surprise though? If it is we're playing very different games
THE REACHING REALM IS COMING. THERE IS NO TIME LEFT, ONLY NOW.
At least one of the nobles in my dragonborn game will never go anywhere without his musket nearby because of the one time he ended up having to fight a succubus at a dinner party with nothing but a dagger. If he maintained the decorum to not bring the gun inside he at the very least has it kept in the carriage he came here in, and his retainers are always set to run and grab it in the event shit should happen to pop off. Im betting more often than not, he'll just have his retainers carry it in among his personal effects.
Kinda yeah, at the very least it heavily advises that it be illegal, but more than half the shit parties do is illegal so wtf ever
Are you rolling initiative, or deciding within the party who gets to surprise attack first?
don't forget the adventuring party that ambushed us on the road
or the betrayal from our pirate "friend"
or the white dragon that swooped down on us that one time
or the fucking death construct I blocked off with a cast of wall of stone (instant wall construction has to rate somewhere even worse if quick traps are considered bad)
if you're ass deep in an enemy fortress, you usually don't get a chance to slap together a perfectly engineered plan
which is why it's a) extremely useful and b) immensely funny to me to give someone class abilities that imply they're canny or paranoid enough to have a quick tool ready for almost any situation
Twitch (I stream most days of the week)
Twitter (mean leftist discourse)
I think this is core to many of our conversations about D&D.
It's a game that has a lot of different permutations, I think partially because of its popularity and its frequent position as people's first RPG. Folks use it to play a lot of different games, and of course there is no wrong way to play, but the fact that we have all ended up playing different ways and are continually talking past one another in our conversations about it, to me, suggests that there is something wrong with the game at its core.
Sometimes I tell the party what the plan is, sometimes I keep it to myself, other times I tell the party a plan & then privately disregard it to do my own thing.
PLANS!!!
I have a character who never gives a name, and has a couple of pun pseudonyms based on that concept. Right now I have "Nunn" (as in "Surname?" "None") and Ennae (N/A).
I can't think of any more, am I missing anything obvious?
It's not as clean, but I like the idea of Knott
You could also do some stuff with Blank - Mr. Blank (or Ms. Blank) is a great pseudonym
Nonamé
I think the truth is many people are using dnd to play types of games that dnd is not good for, because dnd is dominant in the market.
Drew A. Blank?
To me that's the absolute best part. That the systemized parts can get out of the way when I need or want them to and can come back into relevance when we feel it is necessary.
Nonia, as in none a ya business
You can ignore the rules in every single game, though. That's the absolute best part of tabletop rpgs, not just d&d
I played a Wood Elf Monk who was an orphan raised by Raven Queen Cultists who like super nihilist, so they never named me. I went by 'Nameless'. It was super edgy 8-)
http://lexiconmegatherium.tumblr.com/
There's nothing more frustrating to me than coming up with an action, rolling on it and then having the DM find a way to have it not count. It makes it feel like I'm there to add flavour text to an existing story rather than collaborate with the DM and the other players.
instead of just having it not count, it'll affect the outcome in some way while still not entirely avoiding something or changing it entirely
Hugh Mann
Nill (short for Nillium)
Niel or Nils!
http://lexiconmegatherium.tumblr.com/