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[DnD 5E Discussion] This is the way 5E ends. Not with a bang but a gnome mindflayer.
The sub classes do a really good job of differentiating characters. To the point that several of them blur the lines with other classes. I helped my friend make a melee ranger that was basically a fighter in his own right.
Thanks for the reassurance. I will talk with my wife about it tonight and my friend Saturday night. I think there is enough variety in gameplay that we can carve out two niches that make them both happy.
I'm reading and rereading Elemental Adept and I can't really with my player that it applies to sneak attack dice with booming blade
"Spells you cast ignore resistance to damage of the chosen type, and creatures with immunity to the chosen type are instead treated as having resistance to the damage your spell inflicts. In addition, when you roll damage for a spell you cast that deals damage of that type, you can treat any 1 on a damage die as a 2."
- Booming Blade is a spell that deals damage of that type (thunder)
- There is no differentiation between the damage dice of the spell that deal damage of that type and other damage types the spell might cause
I think this makes it a stealth not-terrible feat for certain builds, although I'm still going with my home rule that 1s can simply be rerolled, because the feat still isn't that good
It does not. The Attack does normal damage for booming blade and that damage is normal. Such the sneak attack damage is NOT thunder and NOT "damage die from the spell that deals damage of that type"
However if you have a magic weapon that converts your damage into, say, fire damage and use green flame blade and use that for your elemental affinity
The fire sword damage would still be immune "creatures with immunity to the chosen type are instead treated as having resistance to the damage your spell inflicts". Creatures are treated as having resistance to the damage the spell does. Not to the type of damage the spell does.
You would also not get to re-roll damage on the fire weapon attack as it is not a spell
The sub classes do a really good job of differentiating characters. To the point that several of them blur the lines with other classes. I helped my friend make a melee ranger that was basically a fighter in his own right.
I played in a short-lived campaign where everyone was level 4 from the start amd I joined a couple sessions late and one of the players was a Kensei Monk and I just assumed he was some kind of Fighter because of how he played the character.
I'm reading and rereading Elemental Adept and I can't really with my player that it applies to sneak attack dice with booming blade
"Spells you cast ignore resistance to damage of the chosen type, and creatures with immunity to the chosen type are instead treated as having resistance to the damage your spell inflicts. In addition, when you roll damage for a spell you cast that deals damage of that type, you can treat any 1 on a damage die as a 2."
- Booming Blade is a spell that deals damage of that type (thunder)
- There is no differentiation between the damage dice of the spell that deal damage of that type and other damage types the spell might cause
I think this makes it a stealth not-terrible feat for certain builds, although I'm still going with my home rule that 1s can simply be rerolled, because the feat still isn't that good
It does not. The Attack does normal damage for booming blade and that damage is normal. Such the sneak attack damage is NOT thunder and NOT "damage die from the spell that deals damage of that type"
I disagree, there is specific language for things like the tempest cleric's channel divinity referring to the damage dice being maximized as being thunder or lightning damage, so that's the way we're going to be running it
I believe the intent is that if you were to say, cast Meteor Swarm, all 40 d6's would be eligible even though 20 of them are bludgeoning. I consider the melee damage from Booming Blade to be part of the damage for the spell (the attack is literally part of the spell, the spell fails if the attack misses), as I understand it, if you crit with booming blade, the d8s from the initial damage also double
That's good enough for me. I'll acknowledge this is just a homebrew ruling if there's a sage advice saying so (the great weapon fighting style ruling would seem to lean that way, but given that the designers have disagreed over the years on THAT point, I don't think I'm completely off base with my interpretation anyway). Regardless, my players like this a lot so we're doing it
Sure would be nice if 5th Ed just outright stuck "for example/the intent is that you can apply this to X, Y and Z" when its rules are ambiguous (which is often), instead of always turning them into a pedant versus DM call.
I have a question for the thread, a little help if you please. I have a player who is currently playing a ranger, but who wants to change up her character. She wants to, and I quote, "be a cheeky and devious little liar, with archery for my combat, able to connive my way out of almost any situation." To me this sounds like a Bard with ranger multiclass. As of right now, level 4, she is 3 ranger/1 Bard although we haven't had a chance to play since she leveled up. What can I do to help her make a character she will really enjoy? I am going to her house this weekend and we are going to workshop a character. We are about to finish the lost mines and I think that makes a good break point for her to either reroll an entirely new character or change her current character up.
This all depends on how much flavour she wants and where she wants the emphasis to be.
Imo you should ask her if she wants to have to deal with gods in one way or another. If yes, a paladin, hexblade warlock or ranger would work.
If not, fighter, rogue.
If she wants to cast spells as well then bard is an option.
Is proficiency enough, or does she want expertise as well?
How awesome does she want to be in fights?
I'd outline the gameplay consequences for her and see what she responds to.
Sure would be nice if 5th Ed just outright stuck "for example/the intent is that you can apply this to X, Y and Z" when its rules are ambiguous (which is often), instead of always turning them into a pedant versus DM call.
Interesting. However, all the market research says that winning the game through NERD COMBAT (recalled trivia and motivated reasoning) feels like D&D. I'm afraid the team's top priority is that D&D should feel like D&D.
webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
We're probably a month or so away from wrapping up our storm kings thunder campaign, so we rolled our character stats last night, and I get to use the Dungeons and Doggies Rules! I'm a golden retriever wizard who is VERY well rounded. I'm playing a support wizard, so lots of walls, buffs, debuffs and things like that.
1) you can stun elementals
2) stunned creatures automatically fail dex saves.
3)decantur of endless water spews 30 gallons of water/round
4) get fucked fire elementals
+25
FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
I don't know if I mentioned it, but apparently dealing with all of the abyss leaks by burning a bridge and calling the power company to remove the damaged pylon and so on got us the attention of the local Vampires.
Who operate out of the assisted living community.
And we have now been told to "pick a side".
I don't know how many of us are getting out of this stupid town alive. We're certainly not getting the scroll back. Which the Vamps have.
+1
WACriminalDying Is Easy, Young ManLiving Is HarderRegistered Userregular
Progress update on that rotating-DM system I'm working on, I've got a "good-enough-for-1.0" random race generator for character creation:
Ended up not using everything I had added to my spreadsheet, but I think that's for the best. Moving on to the random class generator for now, though I'll probably end up coming back to add random Halfling variants and such. I also need to add a reference list for the sources I'm using. Some of them are obvious from the titles, but I do have a full list of authors as well. Just didn't take the time to add it to the PDF yet.
My friend, that I asked the thread about is going with a half elf, half merfolk Bard. She basically wants to play a siren and it's willing to lose out on the ranged combat options to do so. We whipped up a Homebrew race and gave her the college of Whispers from Xanathars guide. She will be starting at level five. Thanks everyone for the suggestions!
How do you guys handle item customization systems in your game? Do you use them at all? Do you have a list of pre-prepared options or do you encourage your players to design nearly-finished items that you tinker with or do you hand your nearly-finished items to your players and allow them small tinkerings to make them personal? How do you handle materials (dragon scale, adamantine, etc)?
They're gathered like wolves on the boardwalk below, howling for answers no wolves can know!
I did my first DMing in fifteen years this weekend!
The plan was for a group of five new adventurers to dip their toes in the starter set through Phandelver. Well, earlier in the week we lose two, a husband and wife, to a grandmother funeral ( :sad: ) and then on the day of we lose a third member to having to deal with her friend needing help moving out of a toxic relationship explosion. So, as a relaxing evening of role playing comes crashing down due to real life occurrences for 60% of the party, we are left with my wife, gnome wizard, and her friend/coworker, elf sorcerer, who this was basically a going away to college get together so she could finally play DnD as well. No worries, intrepid reader, I will definitely remember to scale the battles for this suddenly imbalanced group.
So, first encounter, goblins on the road surprise the party. Oh god, I forgot to scale this fight. That's okay, the elf sorcerer is only down to 1 HP before I decide to have any goblin that takes damage flee. They summarily kill/scare away all the goblins. Whew. Okay, let's lead the party on to do some investigations, yeah? Try as I might, no, these folks really just want to get to town before they get themselves killed. That's fine, there are built in hooks to get them back out to find the goblin-lair. No worries!
Get to town, get paid, get rested, all is well. Then, the RP takes over. Look, when real life refuses to give you what you want and you have an opportunity to live out your dreams in an actual fantasy world, then that's just what you gotta do. So, obviously, instead of going after the goblins for more info/loot/companions, our party has decided that this poor elf needs to get laid. Any eligible NPC will do. Okay, roll for Charisma Persuasion. Natural 1. Alright, they aren't interested, have to keep the shop open, sorry. "Ugggghhh, what do I have to do to make this work?" Well, maybe you can do something the shopkeep wants you to do to get on their good side. "Okay, okay, shopkeep, what have you for me." This is where I jump story a bit to what would probably have been second session stuff that I haven't read very much, but it's basically, there's a gang of baddies in town causing trouble, maybe you adventurers can teach them a lesson.
My pair of players accept this mission and set out down the road to the tavern where they can find the bad guys. I successfully scale this encounter this time by having them only have two bad guys to deal with this time. They try to weasel their way out of the fight but my bad guys are set on punishing anyone that gets near so the fight begins! The wizard one shots one of the baddies and the sorcerer quickly lays into the second baddie who then makes a hasty retreat. Success, so they decapitate the dead baddie, and drag the second back to the shopkeeper to prove they have done a good job of dealing with the baddies. Look here shopkeep, we've done what you asked, now for my payment. :winky:
I decide internally that the natural 1 would be still in effect for regular persuasion, so I deny the request but try to hint at there must be a way to get what you want here. After a moment of contemplation between the players, the characters decide to tell the shopkeep that they didn't just kill this one baddie, but rather the entire gang has been eliminated. Shopkeep says, "Really??" Roll for deception. Success. Shopkeep says, "We've got to tell everyone! This is wonderful news! Let's go to the inn and spread the word!" Now, I'm trying my best to lead this around to a fun, entertaining finish as our time is almost up, so I'm desperate for my novice players to pick up on every hint I've got going on here. The inn we are going to is the one they have a room at. I made sure they booked two nights previously, so that room is still available. We're getting there!
"Everyone, listen! The gang is dead! Our town is free from their tyranny! Round of drinks on me!" "HUZZAH!"
Sorcerer, "Now, wait wait, don't be going too crazy, what about my reward?"
"Of course, of course, the town will be glad to offer you sooooo much gold!"
This is where I have the players double check their previously unused spells. They both have it. CHARM PERSON!
Sorcerer gets excited, casts charm person........fails. Of course! Being the great wingman the gnome wizard obviously is, she casts charm person as well.....and success!
I remind them of the room they have and explain that the shopkeep will consider them both friendly acquaintances for the time being.
"How about that reward now?" I allow a new persuasion check. NATURAL 20, ya'll! It's like poetry, I swear.
I say, "With ale in hand, the shopkeeper takes your leading hand and follows you to your room upstairs. And fade to black."
It turned into a very fun evening of Dungeons and Dragons, thank god my players seemed to be having a good time even through skill check failures.
10/10 would get my players laid in-game when they have had romance troubles in real life again.
We had so much fun with our level 20 phandelin speedrun that when people cancelled again (common this time of year) we started a Curse of Strahd level 20
Status after 3 hours:
Missing girl, Gertruda: Mary was wailing in the village of Barovia, missing her daughter who had gone missing. Since the fighter had broken her door off to get into her house, I figured we'd give her something of value for it and used Detect Thoughts to extract some information about poor Gertruda, and True Polymorphed the door into a new daughter for her. In her maddened state she has accepted this. Quest complete!
The local shopkeeper was being a dick, the fighter knocked his store over
We spent 2 ingame days doing a survey of the village, forcefully dragged everyone out of town as it was rife with undead, the druid used Storm of Vengeance and Tsunami to wipe the village away. We spend all our 6th, 7th, 8th, and some 9th slots to fabricate up a fortified Inn complex with a chapel and stout walls, with an improbably deep chasm moat around it. Barovia secure! Ireena was complaining about this so she was Imprisoned in a gem. Can't get bitten by Strahd if you're 1 inch tall and inside a ruby.
On the way to Vallaki we ran into a windmill, being a fey the DM announced my fey sense was tingling. A divination revealed the source and etched a private sanctum around the windmill before knocking. The hags bamboozled us and we waited eating some snacks downstairs while they went and "made us some dream pastries". We rescued one 5 year old girl after finally succeeding at a perception check and obliterating the hags (who couldn't get away via the ethereal plane)
After that we did some debating and have settled on a plan: I'm going to Magic Jar Ireena, twin spell imprison my party members in earrings, and waltz up to castle ravenloft and offer to marry strahd. When the ceremony starts thats when we spring the trap! Session ended before doing that, because first we want to go drop this kid off in Vallaki and inform the burgermeister of barovia his town is... different now
The rules for this game have teleportation longer range than Dimension Door as nonfunctional, as well as travel spells like Wind Walk, and a numerous other small changes (no simulacrums for example) to make it still fun. Castle ravenloft was revealed to be protected by the dark powers so we cant just earthquake it. I look forward to finishing this
CoS recommends messing with spella to doesn't then for Barovia. Things like familiars looking skeletal, or wall spells having skulls embedded.
For familiar, i did that to the wizard in the group i was running by having it happen after he chose to sacrifice his familiar at the end if Death House.
I also interpreted all the divination type spells as intercepted by Strahd at will (was fun giving the party false info or straight up threatening them as Steahd).
And any teleportation spells would either fail to work or work inaccurately (only the low level ones like misty step worked), always caused some force damage to anyone teleporting in addition to whatever else they did, and the high level ones in addition to failing and causing force damage to anyone teleporting would also cause psychic damage to the caster. NO ESCAPE!
when I actually ran COS for real I would spend a lot of time praying to my divine guide with my aasimar, and would be fed fake answers from Strahd, it was wonderful
Right now I'm running an actual CoS game, but we're currently hundreds of years before the start of the campaign in a level 0-3 (they started as commoners!) 3-session prequel.
The warlock had a bunch of straight-out-of-a-romantic-comedy moments with Sergei, getting out of the tub to look out the window, rolling a 1 and falling out the window into his arms when he knocked on the door, begged him to take her shopping since he was going with them through the dark forest and had him and her fight off muggers, threw up on him at dinner with another 1 con save after downing a tankard of ale in an attempt to impress him. (Both of these are her doing, when players roll a 1 I typically ask them how they'd like it to go down)
Next session should have Sergei and Tatianna's wedding by the end, I think I'm going to have Sergei confess to warlock that he actually loves her and its meant to be, regardless of her answer, Strahd is going to harbor an eternal hatred of her for:
Reject Sergei: "If only you'd taken my brother's hand then Tatianna would have been mine!"
Accept Sergei: Tatianna runs away, grief stricken, and in her haste slips and falls to her death. "If only you had stayed away, my love Tatianna would still be alive!"
Plates are still up in the air and I hope I'm up to the task of doing a prequel to the module and allowing people to make massive changes to the timeline (the only assurance is that it will end in tragedy and misery)
I think I figured out a psionicist a while ago: Sorcerer subclass that uses INT and has permanent subtle spell and a specialized spell list, subtle spell wizard seems way too good and both the anti-spellcaster spell and the 2nd level incapacitate spell are way too good
I remember a tweet or line in an interview where the gist of it was that psionics would probably go forward as subclasses instead of a full class itself. This UA seems to back that up.
0
FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
TBH, these seem like a more balanced version of the UA Mystic from a couple of years ago.
The mystic was literally from earlier this year/late last yeat.
Can't be because i just finished DMing a campaign i started DMing in December 2017, which was when a friend's campaign wrapped up and i played a mystic in that one.
I remember a tweet or line in an interview where the gist of it was that psionics would probably go forward as subclasses instead of a full class itself. This UA seems to back that up.
Right so a massive fuck you to people who wanted psionics done well.
I remember a tweet or line in an interview where the gist of it was that psionics would probably go forward as subclasses instead of a full class itself. This UA seems to back that up.
Right so a massive fuck you to people who wanted psionics done well.
I mean, psionics that had unique mechanics that separated them from martial, arcane, divine, and primal classes is something that 4e did well, so we can't have THAT, now can we?
TBH, these seem like a more balanced version of the UA Mystic from a couple of years ago.
The mystic was literally from earlier this year/late last yeat.
Can't be because i just finished DMing a campaign i started DMing in December 2017, which was when a friend's campaign wrapped up and i played a mystic in that one.
Aye, Mystic was 2017.
I'm reading through my newly arrived Humblewood campaign book and maaaaaan I want to play all these races. Also, their new Bard college is great, it has them learn Tricks as they level, and these let them do extra fun stuff with bardic inspiration that play on the class' jack of all trades nature (give someone Rogue dodging when they need a DEX saving throw, temporarily give yourself variants of different combat feats, temporarily gain certain Monk or Barbarian features... yes please, more stuff that encourages Bards to do more than cast spells in combat).
But why would you want unique mechanics? Why can't we just have another method of accessing the same mechanics? I'd much rather not have another layer of rules/mechanics for a new class on top of the existing set of rules for everyone else.
I have no problem refluffing a magic spell, or a class ability or whatever as a psionic power. I don't care if its been studied relentlessly in school, accessed thru tapping into your draconic heritage, invoked by the power of rock and roll, or your will made manifest.... a fireball blows up and does 8d6 fire damage.
But why would you want unique mechanics? Why can't we just have another method of accessing the same mechanics? I'd much rather not have another layer of rules/mechanics for a new class on top of the existing set of rules for everyone else.
I have no problem refluffing a magic spell, or a class ability or whatever as a psionic power. I don't care if its been studied relentlessly in school, accessed thru tapping into your draconic heritage, invoked by the power of rock and roll, or your will made manifest.... a fireball blows up and does 8d6 fire damage.
Because D&D is a crunchy combat game. I'm fine with everything you mention but if all the differences are merely cosmetic then they don't really matter for a crunchy combat game.
But why would you want unique mechanics? Why can't we just have another method of accessing the same mechanics? I'd much rather not have another layer of rules/mechanics for a new class on top of the existing set of rules for everyone else.
I have no problem refluffing a magic spell, or a class ability or whatever as a psionic power. I don't care if its been studied relentlessly in school, accessed thru tapping into your draconic heritage, invoked by the power of rock and roll, or your will made manifest.... a fireball blows up and does 8d6 fire damage.
Because D&D is a crunchy combat game. I'm fine with everything you mention but if all the differences are merely cosmetic then they don't really matter for a crunchy combat game.
This is why Warlocks, Paladins, Druids, Wizards, and Sorcerers all have slightly overlapping spells, but also have a lot of unique ones they access.
If, if Reagan played disco He'd shoot it to shit You can't disco in Jackboots
But why would you want unique mechanics? Why can't we just have another method of accessing the same mechanics? I'd much rather not have another layer of rules/mechanics for a new class on top of the existing set of rules for everyone else.
I have no problem refluffing a magic spell, or a class ability or whatever as a psionic power. I don't care if its been studied relentlessly in school, accessed thru tapping into your draconic heritage, invoked by the power of rock and roll, or your will made manifest.... a fireball blows up and does 8d6 fire damage.
Because D&D is a crunchy combat game. I'm fine with everything you mention but if all the differences are merely cosmetic then they don't really matter for a crunchy combat game.
This is why Warlocks, Paladins, Druids, Wizards, and Sorcerers all have slightly overlapping spells, but also have a lot of unique ones they access.
Yeah. Unique spells, sure. But not unique mechanics.
Posts
PSN:Furlion
It does not. The Attack does normal damage for booming blade and that damage is normal. Such the sneak attack damage is NOT thunder and NOT "damage die from the spell that deals damage of that type"
@override367
The fire sword damage would still be immune "creatures with immunity to the chosen type are instead treated as having resistance to the damage your spell inflicts". Creatures are treated as having resistance to the damage the spell does. Not to the type of damage the spell does.
You would also not get to re-roll damage on the fire weapon attack as it is not a spell
I played in a short-lived campaign where everyone was level 4 from the start amd I joined a couple sessions late and one of the players was a Kensei Monk and I just assumed he was some kind of Fighter because of how he played the character.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
I disagree, there is specific language for things like the tempest cleric's channel divinity referring to the damage dice being maximized as being thunder or lightning damage, so that's the way we're going to be running it
I believe the intent is that if you were to say, cast Meteor Swarm, all 40 d6's would be eligible even though 20 of them are bludgeoning. I consider the melee damage from Booming Blade to be part of the damage for the spell (the attack is literally part of the spell, the spell fails if the attack misses), as I understand it, if you crit with booming blade, the d8s from the initial damage also double
That's good enough for me. I'll acknowledge this is just a homebrew ruling if there's a sage advice saying so (the great weapon fighting style ruling would seem to lean that way, but given that the designers have disagreed over the years on THAT point, I don't think I'm completely off base with my interpretation anyway). Regardless, my players like this a lot so we're doing it
This all depends on how much flavour she wants and where she wants the emphasis to be.
Imo you should ask her if she wants to have to deal with gods in one way or another. If yes, a paladin, hexblade warlock or ranger would work.
If not, fighter, rogue.
If she wants to cast spells as well then bard is an option.
Is proficiency enough, or does she want expertise as well?
How awesome does she want to be in fights?
I'd outline the gameplay consequences for her and see what she responds to.
Interesting. However, all the market research says that winning the game through NERD COMBAT (recalled trivia and motivated reasoning) feels like D&D. I'm afraid the team's top priority is that D&D should feel like D&D.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
1) you can stun elementals
2) stunned creatures automatically fail dex saves.
3)decantur of endless water spews 30 gallons of water/round
4) get fucked fire elementals
Who operate out of the assisted living community.
And we have now been told to "pick a side".
I don't know how many of us are getting out of this stupid town alive. We're certainly not getting the scroll back. Which the Vamps have.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ObX5I2F_NiarBn6YllMnZVnf4KXwTsHg/view?usp=sharing
Ended up not using everything I had added to my spreadsheet, but I think that's for the best. Moving on to the random class generator for now, though I'll probably end up coming back to add random Halfling variants and such. I also need to add a reference list for the sources I'm using. Some of them are obvious from the titles, but I do have a full list of authors as well. Just didn't take the time to add it to the PDF yet.
PSN:Furlion
This is what Gygax would have wanted
The plan was for a group of five new adventurers to dip their toes in the starter set through Phandelver. Well, earlier in the week we lose two, a husband and wife, to a grandmother funeral ( :sad: ) and then on the day of we lose a third member to having to deal with her friend needing help moving out of a toxic relationship explosion. So, as a relaxing evening of role playing comes crashing down due to real life occurrences for 60% of the party, we are left with my wife, gnome wizard, and her friend/coworker, elf sorcerer, who this was basically a going away to college get together so she could finally play DnD as well. No worries, intrepid reader, I will definitely remember to scale the battles for this suddenly imbalanced group.
So, first encounter, goblins on the road surprise the party. Oh god, I forgot to scale this fight. That's okay, the elf sorcerer is only down to 1 HP before I decide to have any goblin that takes damage flee. They summarily kill/scare away all the goblins. Whew. Okay, let's lead the party on to do some investigations, yeah? Try as I might, no, these folks really just want to get to town before they get themselves killed. That's fine, there are built in hooks to get them back out to find the goblin-lair. No worries!
Get to town, get paid, get rested, all is well. Then, the RP takes over. Look, when real life refuses to give you what you want and you have an opportunity to live out your dreams in an actual fantasy world, then that's just what you gotta do. So, obviously, instead of going after the goblins for more info/loot/companions, our party has decided that this poor elf needs to get laid. Any eligible NPC will do. Okay, roll for Charisma Persuasion. Natural 1. Alright, they aren't interested, have to keep the shop open, sorry. "Ugggghhh, what do I have to do to make this work?" Well, maybe you can do something the shopkeep wants you to do to get on their good side. "Okay, okay, shopkeep, what have you for me." This is where I jump story a bit to what would probably have been second session stuff that I haven't read very much, but it's basically, there's a gang of baddies in town causing trouble, maybe you adventurers can teach them a lesson.
My pair of players accept this mission and set out down the road to the tavern where they can find the bad guys. I successfully scale this encounter this time by having them only have two bad guys to deal with this time. They try to weasel their way out of the fight but my bad guys are set on punishing anyone that gets near so the fight begins! The wizard one shots one of the baddies and the sorcerer quickly lays into the second baddie who then makes a hasty retreat. Success, so they decapitate the dead baddie, and drag the second back to the shopkeeper to prove they have done a good job of dealing with the baddies. Look here shopkeep, we've done what you asked, now for my payment. :winky:
I decide internally that the natural 1 would be still in effect for regular persuasion, so I deny the request but try to hint at there must be a way to get what you want here. After a moment of contemplation between the players, the characters decide to tell the shopkeep that they didn't just kill this one baddie, but rather the entire gang has been eliminated. Shopkeep says, "Really??" Roll for deception. Success. Shopkeep says, "We've got to tell everyone! This is wonderful news! Let's go to the inn and spread the word!" Now, I'm trying my best to lead this around to a fun, entertaining finish as our time is almost up, so I'm desperate for my novice players to pick up on every hint I've got going on here. The inn we are going to is the one they have a room at. I made sure they booked two nights previously, so that room is still available. We're getting there!
"Everyone, listen! The gang is dead! Our town is free from their tyranny! Round of drinks on me!" "HUZZAH!"
Sorcerer, "Now, wait wait, don't be going too crazy, what about my reward?"
"Of course, of course, the town will be glad to offer you sooooo much gold!"
This is where I have the players double check their previously unused spells. They both have it. CHARM PERSON!
Sorcerer gets excited, casts charm person........fails. Of course! Being the great wingman the gnome wizard obviously is, she casts charm person as well.....and success!
I remind them of the room they have and explain that the shopkeep will consider them both friendly acquaintances for the time being.
"How about that reward now?" I allow a new persuasion check. NATURAL 20, ya'll! It's like poetry, I swear.
I say, "With ale in hand, the shopkeeper takes your leading hand and follows you to your room upstairs. And fade to black."
It turned into a very fun evening of Dungeons and Dragons, thank god my players seemed to be having a good time even through skill check failures.
10/10 would get my players laid in-game when they have had romance troubles in real life again.
Status after 3 hours:
After that we did some debating and have settled on a plan: I'm going to Magic Jar Ireena, twin spell imprison my party members in earrings, and waltz up to castle ravenloft and offer to marry strahd. When the ceremony starts thats when we spring the trap! Session ended before doing that, because first we want to go drop this kid off in Vallaki and inform the burgermeister of barovia his town is... different now
The rules for this game have teleportation longer range than Dimension Door as nonfunctional, as well as travel spells like Wind Walk, and a numerous other small changes (no simulacrums for example) to make it still fun. Castle ravenloft was revealed to be protected by the dark powers so we cant just earthquake it. I look forward to finishing this
For familiar, i did that to the wizard in the group i was running by having it happen after he chose to sacrifice his familiar at the end if Death House.
I also interpreted all the divination type spells as intercepted by Strahd at will (was fun giving the party false info or straight up threatening them as Steahd).
And any teleportation spells would either fail to work or work inaccurately (only the low level ones like misty step worked), always caused some force damage to anyone teleporting in addition to whatever else they did, and the high level ones in addition to failing and causing force damage to anyone teleporting would also cause psychic damage to the caster. NO ESCAPE!
Right now I'm running an actual CoS game, but we're currently hundreds of years before the start of the campaign in a level 0-3 (they started as commoners!) 3-session prequel.
The warlock had a bunch of straight-out-of-a-romantic-comedy moments with Sergei, getting out of the tub to look out the window, rolling a 1 and falling out the window into his arms when he knocked on the door, begged him to take her shopping since he was going with them through the dark forest and had him and her fight off muggers, threw up on him at dinner with another 1 con save after downing a tankard of ale in an attempt to impress him. (Both of these are her doing, when players roll a 1 I typically ask them how they'd like it to go down)
Next session should have Sergei and Tatianna's wedding by the end, I think I'm going to have Sergei confess to warlock that he actually loves her and its meant to be, regardless of her answer, Strahd is going to harbor an eternal hatred of her for:
Reject Sergei: "If only you'd taken my brother's hand then Tatianna would have been mine!"
Accept Sergei: Tatianna runs away, grief stricken, and in her haste slips and falls to her death. "If only you had stayed away, my love Tatianna would still be alive!"
Plates are still up in the air and I hope I'm up to the task of doing a prequel to the module and allowing people to make massive changes to the timeline (the only assurance is that it will end in tragedy and misery)
I think I figured out a psionicist a while ago: Sorcerer subclass that uses INT and has permanent subtle spell and a specialized spell list, subtle spell wizard seems way too good and both the anti-spellcaster spell and the 2nd level incapacitate spell are way too good
TBH, these seem like a more balanced version of the UA Mystic from a couple of years ago.
Race: (28,64,67) = Birdfolk > Luma, the pigeonfolk from Humblewood > Subrace: Sera
Class: (40,22) = Fighter > Martial Archetype: Cavalier
Rookie 2:
Race: (23,80,100) = Bigfolk > Yetifolk > Subrace: Yeti
Class: (67,18) = Rogue > Archetype: Inquisitive
Rookie 3:
Race: (80,88) = Bugfolk > Kumon, a type of spiderfolk, no subraces
Class: (55,27) = Paladin > Oath of Ascension
Rookie 4:
Race: (85,71) = Feyfolk > Sprite, no subraces
Class: (57,66) = Paladin > Oath of Truth
Rookie 5:
Race: (44,61,3) = Goblinfolk > Goblin > Subrace: Mountain Goblin
Class: (45,95) = Monk > Way of the Third Eye
This feels like it's working more-or-less as intended.
The mystic was literally from earlier this year/late last yeat.
Can't be because i just finished DMing a campaign i started DMing in December 2017, which was when a friend's campaign wrapped up and i played a mystic in that one.
Right so a massive fuck you to people who wanted psionics done well.
I mean, psionics that had unique mechanics that separated them from martial, arcane, divine, and primal classes is something that 4e did well, so we can't have THAT, now can we?
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
I'm reading through my newly arrived Humblewood campaign book and maaaaaan I want to play all these races. Also, their new Bard college is great, it has them learn Tricks as they level, and these let them do extra fun stuff with bardic inspiration that play on the class' jack of all trades nature (give someone Rogue dodging when they need a DEX saving throw, temporarily give yourself variants of different combat feats, temporarily gain certain Monk or Barbarian features... yes please, more stuff that encourages Bards to do more than cast spells in combat).
I have no problem refluffing a magic spell, or a class ability or whatever as a psionic power. I don't care if its been studied relentlessly in school, accessed thru tapping into your draconic heritage, invoked by the power of rock and roll, or your will made manifest.... a fireball blows up and does 8d6 fire damage.
Because D&D is a crunchy combat game. I'm fine with everything you mention but if all the differences are merely cosmetic then they don't really matter for a crunchy combat game.
This is why Warlocks, Paladins, Druids, Wizards, and Sorcerers all have slightly overlapping spells, but also have a lot of unique ones they access.
Yeah. Unique spells, sure. But not unique mechanics.