Kane Red RobeMaster of MagicArcanusRegistered Userregular
First session went really well, party ended up being my monk, a barbarian and two clerics. We headed down into a tomb in search of a lost sword that I guess someone thought would be down (trying not to hassle the 1st time DM too much about why exactly we need to go into the tomb he prepared for us). Ran into a couple issues with our lack of Rogue which I will be able to fix once we level, but for now we're letting the barbarian "pick locks", the handful of skeletons we've encountered have been no match and all around everyone seems to be having a good time.
1 rules question that came up: is my monk able to wield a staff or spear two handed and still get his bonus martial arts attack? We're not super sure how the requirements for martial arts work out.
OK so... you clearly don't want to let it slide. If you don't want to let it slide, don't let it slide. Deception is not a get out of jail free card.
Consider that you can always assign difficulty modifiers (the standard advantage to a passive roll is +5 which makes a goblins passive insight when they would have advantage on the check 14, and you can also give the player disadvantage on a roll if circumstances dictate. So if they're skeptical (advantage on the passive insight) and the player does something to make them have disadvantage on the check you go from a relatively easy check(deception vs 9) to a much harder one(disadvantage vs 14). Effectively granting you a +/- 10 leeway on the modifier for deception difficulty.
And you can always limit the amount of effect of a deception check too. A successful deception check might not convince the goblin that its the truth but it might convince the goblin that the player saying it believes it to be true. Then the question is whether or the goblin thinks the player character is competent rather than whether or not they think the player character is truthful.
I do and I don't.
It just feels incredibly cheap, tossing out a rock, on the other hand I would have totally been on board with it had the player done it differently (shown deference to the goblin, treated the rock with more respect, given the goblin another trinket from the party inventory that could have been easily replaced but had some value to it).
I think having the goblin accept the rock but throwing a different social interaction challenge at them is a fair compromise.
OK so... you clearly don't want to let it slide. If you don't want to let it slide, don't let it slide. Deception is not a get out of jail free card.
Consider that you can always assign difficulty modifiers (the standard advantage to a passive roll is +5 which makes a goblins passive insight when they would have advantage on the check 14, and you can also give the player disadvantage on a roll if circumstances dictate. So if they're skeptical (advantage on the passive insight) and the player does something to make them have disadvantage on the check you go from a relatively easy check(deception vs 9) to a much harder one(disadvantage vs 14). Effectively granting you a +/- 10 leeway on the modifier for deception difficulty.
And you can always limit the amount of effect of a deception check too. A successful deception check might not convince the goblin that its the truth but it might convince the goblin that the player saying it believes it to be true. Then the question is whether or the goblin thinks the player character is competent rather than whether or not they think the player character is truthful.
I do and I don't.
It just feels incredibly cheap, tossing out a rock, on the other hand I would have totally been on board with it had the player done it differently (shown deference to the goblin, treated the rock with more respect, given the goblin another trinket from the party inventory that could have been easily replaced but had some value to it).
I think having the goblin accept the rock but throwing a different social interaction challenge at them is a fair compromise.
These things you mention, like it feeling cheap, are the cause for modifiers to the roll. If the players deception is more difficult, because not only are they saying "this is the thing" but also saying "i care very little about the thing" means they should have disadvantage to the roll. And if the goblin is trusting or skeptical might impart disadvantage or advantage on their insight.
If you're going to roll dice to determine a thing then let the rolled dice determine the thing.
Anything else is just doing whatever you want, which is ultimately fine, but you should be open and honest about it.
I just am opposed to rolling the goblins insight. The player rolled and this should be all you need in order to resolve the situation. Rolling 2d20kL+deception vs 14 is not an easy check. And in this case the player would have failed. NPC's are as much a feature of the game as a wall is, and you do not roll opposed athletics for the wall to determine whether or not you succeed at climbing it. And similarly not every wall is the same. Some are harder to climb, and sometimes the player climbs them in ways that are more or less difficult. Having NPC roll in an opposed fashion can rob also some of the players of their agency. If you roll low and succeed or roll high and fail this can reduce the feeling that the players are having an impact
"letting the dice determine a thing" also does not mean that you must let the dice determine the thing in precisely the way the player wants. It does not matter how well you roll deception to convince a warlock that an object is magical when they have detect magic at will. They're just going to detect magic and know. But this doesn't mean you cannot convince a warlock that you think an object is magical.
First session went really well, party ended up being my monk, a barbarian and two clerics. We headed down into a tomb in search of a lost sword that I guess someone thought would be down (trying not to hassle the 1st time DM too much about why exactly we need to go into the tomb he prepared for us). Ran into a couple issues with our lack of Rogue which I will be able to fix once we level, but for now we're letting the barbarian "pick locks", the handful of skeletons we've encountered have been no match and all around everyone seems to be having a good time.
1 rules question that came up: is my monk able to wield a staff or spear two handed and still get his bonus martial arts attack? We're not super sure how the requirements for martial arts work out.
Yesterday two of my three players were unable attend the session (one had let me now that morning, while the other had something come up at the last minute and couldn't attend). Thankfully, the current circumstances in the campaign didn't make it too hard to run a shorter session for the remaining player, as the party was part of a larger expedition into a section of the Underdark. I simply decided that the missing party members and a few other members of the expedition were suddenly cut-off from the rest of the group by a strange, disappearing "ghost tunnel".
Earlier in the campaign I had introduced a group of grell called "The Consumers of the Willing" (which I got from the 4E Underdark sourcebook). The Consumers of the Willing, or "Kragg", believe it is only ethical to consume intelligent creatures that can consent to being eaten (they also don't have any qualms with using a Dominate Person ability they possess to make someone willing, though they prefer to persuade their captives into becoming willing with long-term indoctrination). The player and the few NPC sidekicks she had with her came upon a starving Kragg grell. She used Comprehend Languages to learn that the creature had been separated from its fellow "philosophers" and had starved to the point that it could no longer use its Dominate Person ability, or even fly. It feared dying and being consumed by myriad lesser life forms and requested that it be taken to a single "Great Eater", believing that its spirit would live on in the creature.
The player decided to honor this bizarre request (despite her NPC companions being inclined to either leave the grell to starve or kill it themselves). The grell was loaded and tied onto the back of the group's giant climbing lizard, and after a few other encounters managed to locate a bulette. The group cut the grell free from the back of the giant lizard and ran away as the bulette feasted upon the bizarrely grateful grell.
I had expected the party wouldn't honor the grell's strange request (and I have a feeling if the other two players had been there one of them would've probably just killed it), but the player who attended was determined to get that grell eaten alive (as it wanted), so I gave out my first inspiration point for the campaign.
deception and insight aren't magic skills, deception doesn't allow a player to piss on someone's face and tell them its raining, but they might be able to use deception to convince the person that they're touched in the head and thus not get beheaded for doing so
goblins know magic exists (and you can just set DCs for deception you don't have to tether it to a creature's insight check at all if you want) and there are goblin spellcasters
Ask yourself if you feel like these goblins would be the trust but verify sort or the "Take it on blind faith" sort. You can have him say something like "well, I'm not sure about this, lets go ask a Booyagh, come with me"
Chult is a super magical place and I don't think the Batiri would be tricked by a light cantrip'd rock myself
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Powerpuppiesdrinking coffee in themountain cabinRegistered Userregular
edited May 2021
If you're going to no sell it, maybe tell the player that his character would know that magic is common and enemies will have the possibility of a spell in mind when we wouldn't IRL. You want to effortfully avoid signaling to your players that they shouldn't bother being creative and shouldn't bother trying things not on their character sheets
If you're mostly annoyed at the lack of effort involved in the role playing, you can totally just say that OOC to the player. Also an interjected question along the lines of "Okay, wait, are you trying to sell it with facial expressions and fearful shouts and things, or literally just hucking the thing carelessly?" Would not be out of line at all.
I had a similar situation where i was a player in a new game and the DM allowed the wizard to try to distract a dangerous enemy with mage hand to impose disadvantage. On the one hand it ended up being really powerful, on the other hand I like playing with new players who try stunts and this is what that looks like sometimes 🤔
This conversation makes me think of the scene in Moana where Moana does exactly that, and it works for about as long as it takes the villain to get a good look at the rock in question, i.e., maybe 15 seconds. Which is just long enough for our heroes to escape with the real MacGuffin :biggrin:
This conversation makes me think of the scene in Moana where Moana does exactly that, and it works for about as long as it takes the villain to get a good look at the rock in question, i.e., maybe 15 seconds. Which is just long enough for our heroes to escape with the real MacGuffin :biggrin:
Yesterday was my party's encounter with Bonegrinder and thanks to the advice here, I didn't make it too much easier for them (I actually buffed up Morgantha with the Complete Hag). And they got their shit kicked in haha.
This session was only the bard, cleric, fighter/barbarian, and Ireena who I've buffed with the sidekick rules from Tasha's. They left the Vistani camp and decided to investigate the windmill when they saw it. They met "Granny" and recognized her as the sweet old woman who gave them free meat pies in Barovia. She invited them into the windmill and met Offalia and were told the other daughter, Bella, was upstairs working. The cleric started snooping around and discovered the kid bones in a rubbish bin. He tried to keep up a pokerface, but Morgantha realized what he discovered and decided to attack before the party could. She, Offalia, and Bella when she came downstairs effectively wiped the floor with the party. The fighter was paralyzed. Ireena was put to sleep and turned into a toad. The cleric got his teeth kicked in and fell unconscious. The bard finally got a spell off and turned invisible, tried to drag the fighter to their wagon and mage hand Ireena to the wagon as well, but then the hags turned one of the horses into a toad and knocked the bard out with magic missile.
After that, they woke up to Offalia playing with their horse's head as a puppet and Morgantha going through their gear. I had the party bound with manacles and chains to the bed and a hood over the fighter since he is an echo knight. Morgantha then explained to the party she planned to use them as drug mules to sell their pies in Vallaki to corrupt their souls enough for her to harvest. Of course, only one would be sent out at a time and the rest would stay at the windmill as insurance. I next planned on Morgantha taking a hand or an eye from one of the PCs (probably the bard cause he likes to talk so much and was pissing Morgantha off :P), but then the fighter/barbarian decided to rage and broke out of the manacles with a lucky roll and the bard got a lucky roll to slip out of his (this after they all were rolling sub-10 during the fight). Morgantha, annoyed, kinda just swatted the echo knight around asking what exactly his plan was. The bard suggested that they all sit down and talk the situation out, as willing mules would be more useful than slaves to the hags. So Morgantha told them to stay put and went downstairs to talk with her daughters about what to do with the party. The cleric and fighter started trying to knock a hole in the wall of the windmill and the bard started looking around for a way for them to escape. And that's when Strahd showed up. The party heard Strahd crash through the door, rip Bella's head off, and explain to the hags Tatyana and Tatyana's companions were off limits. He commanded the hags to release them and that Rahadin would be coming by soon to discuss what their duties as his subjects would be before flying away. The bard, who joined the game right before they left Barovia and hadn't heard much about Strahd yet, was pretty ecstatic and thought they had a guardian angel. The fighter and cleric almost pissed their pants. Morgantha then released the party and gave them the children they had captive.
The session ended with the party arriving at Vallaki, bloodied and beaten, but alive. They went through the initial security screenings from the guards, which included registration of their names and weapons, touching garlic to their skin to make sure they are not vampires, and overview of Vallaki's laws. At first the party was happy to find civilization, but now they are weirded out hardcore from how authoritarian Vallaki appears. Next session will be picking up at the gate with the missing party members catching up to them before they enter the city proper.
After the session, I got several text messages expressing their... "dislike" for the hag encounter. So all in all, I'd say it was a pretty successful session!
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webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
Who is ready for the first in person D&D session in like 15 months? This guy! Going to have a long session and start our Rime of the Frost Maiden campaign.
I still roll dice when both when I DM and play even though we use zoom/meet, dndbeyond and roll20... two out of three of those things having built in die rollers.
I do use the rollers for big damage dice rolls, but a good 75% of my rolls in a virtual session are still using real dice.
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webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
As much as I love being able to still play regularly, I really miss rolling physical dice.
I did so well with avoiding buying more dice since we aren't in person....until I backed that Pixel dice Kickstarter so probably evens out there.
Yea, digital table top is like living off of bread and water. You'll survive, but the real nourishment is in person play. At least in my opinion.
I think it helps if you have cameras with the VTT so you can see people reacting. Playing with static avatars and voice just isn't the same.
We just finally got cameras when I got not shit internet. It is certainly better, still not the same though.
In other news, check out this awesome display stand @Radiation made for me! A unique spot for each die and the mini, and the center is raised up by like a half inch or so so it's not hidden behind the dice. There are also little divots under each one to use a little blue tack to hold everything in place.
WearingglassesOf the friendly neighborhood varietyRegistered Userregular
Is a Battlemaster technique that allows another AoO only if you're out of reactions (w/ bonus to attack roll from the superiority dice) good? Too good? Too fiddly? Not actually that useful?
Not sure. Generally it would seem to violate action economy in a way you should avoid.
I would actually prefer a stronger version of that ability that granted battlemasters an extra reaction with no bonus in exchange for a die. Even that seems a little fiddly though.
As for good? Definitely too good not because it itself is that great but because battlemasters are already top tier fighters
Homebrew rule: the eldritch blast invocations can be used with another cantrip instead of eldritch blast, the effects double at 5, 11, and 17
the worst possible offender balance wise seems to be Booming Blade, but still tends to be inferior to extra attack, so not super unbalanced
thoughts?
So I'm super particular about my Warlocks, but I kind of feel like one of the main goals of the Warlock should be Hammer Philosophy. Instead of trying to give the warlock other tools, just give them ways to turn problems into nails.
Less oddly put, I'm an EB purist, I feel like Warlocks should be using EB as often as possible. I honestly don't even like that they have other cantrips.
When you go back to the OG Warlock from 3.x, that's basically all they did.
While playing in person is brilliant, I love the enforced sight lines and visibility that Roll20 makes possible
Seeing a character move round a corner and hearing their defeated "...oh shit" or getting a Familiar with dark vision and telepathy to sit on the character without dark vision's shoulder and steer have been highlights, plus this from my last session:
I'd like the fog of war better (but would still dislike it for the other reasons mentioned in that thread) if it only obscured enemy tokens, not terrain. "I'd like to move forward. And a bit more. And a bit more. Oh, so that's what the room looks like. I'd like to go one to the left. And one more. Oh, hm. Okay, I'll move back one. And I guess that's my move, and all it did was take a minute of everyone's time and be suboptimal because I couldn't plan ahead."
Turn based movement just doesn't work if you can't see where you're going.
Am I missing something, or is your token not seeing more than five feet ahead?
The settings that my GM uses includes Darkvision, so I can see 60 feet ahead in the absence of a light source to extend it, and once I've seen a room it stays on the map but any changes when I'm not there (such as monster movement) don't update until the room is back in my field of vision
In maps that have light sources, like outside, the vision range is effectively limitless, but blocked by solid objects so monsters can hide behind walls or trees
In the one game I was playing where dynamic lighting was used I found that trees/pillars, IMO, blocked WAY too much of the vision for my token. Also, if my token was behind in the marching order then the narrative being described to the group was based only on the sightlines of the lead token and I was left looking at blackness while rooms and positioning was being described. It took me out of game. Then, once I could see the room, it led to game delaying questions... "Where was that fireplace you described? And this *pings map* was the evil portal, yeah? And that round thingy *pings map* is that the fountain?"
Well, when you control a single vision token and have combat that largely takes place in narrow corridors and spread across several rooms then LOS blocking is a pretty big problem. I was playing a ranged healer and debuffer, which meant I a) had to stay as far away from the enemies as practical while b) keeping track of my allies and enemies so I could support.
Both of those are made difficult when your melee people charge into a room and vanish from your perception, you have no idea where the enemies they're fighting are and the only way to find out is to inch into the room, square by square (because you can't take movement back, so if you've run too far in you're committing to staying there) and hoping, once you see the situation, that you've enough movement left to not be in trouble.
Combat only takes 2-4 rounds, so if you need more than a couple of move actions to uncover the entire battlefield you'll likely not have a full overview of it until it's over, which I guess could be exciting for some people, but I just find frustrating. Ranged characters need to be aware of corners and available lines of sight and spending half the combat Mr. Magooing around isn't fun.
Oh god, and let's not mention the two poor party members that didn't have darkvision, who after the first two sessions both acquired gear to have the equivalent of darkvision so they could actually participate in combat. If vision types are mechanically required to participate then why even make them an option, everyone is forced to get them anyway.
Homebrew rule: the eldritch blast invocations can be used with another cantrip instead of eldritch blast, the effects double at 5, 11, and 17
the worst possible offender balance wise seems to be Booming Blade, but still tends to be inferior to extra attack, so not super unbalanced
thoughts?
So I'm super particular about my Warlocks, but I kind of feel like one of the main goals of the Warlock should be Hammer Philosophy. Instead of trying to give the warlock other tools, just give them ways to turn problems into nails.
Less oddly put, I'm an EB purist, I feel like Warlocks should be using EB as often as possible. I honestly don't even like that they have other cantrips.
When you go back to the OG Warlock from 3.x, that's basically all they did.
I mean my goal is literally so a player can pick warlock and NOT have to pick eldritch blast
like wizards kind of went this route with the celestial one but their sacred flame is still worse than eldritch blast in every way because it only gets 1x their modifier so by level 5 EB is vastly surpassing its damage
This is meant to be tongue in cheek, but demonstrates how I feel DMs see fog of war versus how it is to play with it.
That is incredibly accurate in my experience.
I set up fog of war in foundry with soft fog of war for objects within a room so they do obscure vision of creatures but they can see the terrain, so it looks like the top example
So a buddy of mine is angling to run a new campaign using talespire and after briefly considering a game as a rogue, I decided to take a run at playing a bit of an alt take on bard; Izel, a Yaun-ti spy who poses as a story teller in order to gather information mostly by listening to other peoples plots and plans while wall flowering it up. Vaguely curious how long I can run this character before they get outed as Evil and also a Yaun-ti.
The game i played a 5e warlock i got to push a baddie off a cliff once with Eldritch blast. Was the highlight of that campaign for me, TBH.
so my eldritch blast question is a back and forth with my Avernus DM (yes I'm giving it a chance, we're leaving elturel finally on saturday) he loves to co-design player features
basically his concern is that I can use my martial adept along with repelling blast to booming blade someone 35 feet away
my contention is that this would be super badass and once we hit tenth level, empower the graviturgist a bit by allowing me to create falls for creatures that he can use his reaction to empower, and he's sold on the idea, but wary
the fact that I have synergy with the party in mind seems to have won him over
I've gotten used to running my games remote, with very little map work (or in the one case hyper aggressive miniature usage that I take video and pictures of as we play out the combats), it can be difficult to keep engaging every player on the more skill based evenings which I am attempting to work on more, especially when it's a cameras off, I'm walking around town running game from my pocket, type of night.
The game i played a 5e warlock i got to push a baddie off a cliff once with Eldritch blast. Was the highlight of that campaign for me, TBH.
so my eldritch blast question is a back and forth with my Avernus DM (yes I'm giving it a chance, we're leaving elturel finally on saturday) he loves to co-design player features
basically his concern is that I can use my martial adept along with repelling blast to booming blade someone 35 feet away
my contention is that this would be super badass and once we hit tenth level, empower the graviturgist a bit by allowing me to create falls for creatures that he can use his reaction to empower, and he's sold on the idea, but wary
the fact that I have synergy with the party in mind seems to have won him over
A possible concession to offer up if booming blade is the one you indeed wish to focus: it is still cantrip unique. So instead of getting the invocation expanded to all cantrips, instead you focus the invocation building on your specific different cantrip that isn't eldritch bolt.
The game i played a 5e warlock i got to push a baddie off a cliff once with Eldritch blast. Was the highlight of that campaign for me, TBH.
so my eldritch blast question is a back and forth with my Avernus DM (yes I'm giving it a chance, we're leaving elturel finally on saturday) he loves to co-design player features
basically his concern is that I can use my martial adept along with repelling blast to booming blade someone 35 feet away
my contention is that this would be super badass and once we hit tenth level, empower the graviturgist a bit by allowing me to create falls for creatures that he can use his reaction to empower, and he's sold on the idea, but wary
the fact that I have synergy with the party in mind seems to have won him over
A possible concession to offer up if booming blade is the one you indeed wish to focus: it is still cantrip unique. So instead of getting the invocation expanded to all cantrips, instead you focus the invocation building on your specific different cantrip that isn't eldritch bolt.
Yeah I offered this and he said "nah my real concern was booming blade, I don't care if you want to viciously mock fus-ro-da enemies or whatever"
we both agree that might be broken as shit if it triggered the "booming" effect, so it wont, however he likes the graviturgist ability at level 10 triggering it so the wizard gets to roll more dice, since of all the players hes been the most down about his damage output
The party woke up the next morning with a fresh set of spells prepped and returned to the orphanage. The Cleric attempted to cast Lesser Restoration and the Paladin used some Lay on Hands to try to fix up Millivoj, to no avail. We then questioned the orphanage lady and she allowed us to attempt to try and heal Felix as well, only under her supervision. Well, as soon as the Cleric touched her Felix burst into crocodile tears and started screaming about how she was hurting him, which got us kicked out of the orphanage. Before we left, we confirmed that only Felix still had the nightmares after we'd removed all the runes, but we also noticed that the runes had been re-applied (and so we scratched them out yet again). So with no luck there, we set off with the two hunters to try and track down the children who ran away from the orphanage.
Their tracks only went a mile or so out of town before they met with wolf tracks, but there was no blood to indicate an attack, and there were signs of dragging. We followed the wolf tracks into the forest and got attacked by some sort of giant spiders. We handled them pretty well at first, until one managed to sneak by and get a crit on my Warlock which nearly downed him from full health. Then another one got a hit on one of the hunters and downed him, but we both got healed up a bit and took a short rest. We continued following the tracks, though we lost them at the bridge west of Vallaki. After some back-tracking across the several paths at that crossroads, we happened upon an abandoned camp, and when we investigated we were attacked by a wild person and some bramble monsters. The hunters explained that some people choose to eschew the life of civilization and go live in the woods in despair and turn feral. So that's probably something else we'll have to deal with down the road, fantastic. The only notable thing we found in the area was a bottle of ink that seems to have fallen off a wagon on the way to Krezk.
With that in mind, we continued on to Krezk and picked the tracks back up on the far side of the bridge. We followed them to a werewolf den northeast of Krezk. The hunters refused to stay, insisting that going any further was suicide, and told us they'd be heading to Krezk to spend the night. We figured the best thing to do was to confirm the children were inside, and then to notify Krezk so they could form up some sort of posse to wipe out the werewolves and save the children. But first we had to get inside.
I lamented internally at not having access to a familiar yet, which would be a low-risk means of exploring the den. Instead, my Warlock volunteered to go inside alone. Between using Prestidigitation to clean himself scrupulously so as to remove any possible scent, his Boots of Elvenkind, and the Bard's Invisibility spell, he was damn near untraceable. Unfortunately, I'm pretty notorious for rolling terribly on Stealth checks, and my Warlock isn't exactly some fearless, self-sacrificing hero. He got through a couple of rooms, but I figured he'd be unwilling to put more than a couple of werewolves between himself and the entrance. He wasn't able to spot the children but found a few werewolves and a handful of regular wolves to boot, so either way we know it's beyond our capability to handle alone. He left the cave and met back up with the party, and we set off for Krezk.
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1 rules question that came up: is my monk able to wield a staff or spear two handed and still get his bonus martial arts attack? We're not super sure how the requirements for martial arts work out.
I do and I don't.
It just feels incredibly cheap, tossing out a rock, on the other hand I would have totally been on board with it had the player done it differently (shown deference to the goblin, treated the rock with more respect, given the goblin another trinket from the party inventory that could have been easily replaced but had some value to it).
I think having the goblin accept the rock but throwing a different social interaction challenge at them is a fair compromise.
These things you mention, like it feeling cheap, are the cause for modifiers to the roll. If the players deception is more difficult, because not only are they saying "this is the thing" but also saying "i care very little about the thing" means they should have disadvantage to the roll. And if the goblin is trusting or skeptical might impart disadvantage or advantage on their insight.
I just am opposed to rolling the goblins insight. The player rolled and this should be all you need in order to resolve the situation. Rolling 2d20kL+deception vs 14 is not an easy check. And in this case the player would have failed. NPC's are as much a feature of the game as a wall is, and you do not roll opposed athletics for the wall to determine whether or not you succeed at climbing it. And similarly not every wall is the same. Some are harder to climb, and sometimes the player climbs them in ways that are more or less difficult. Having NPC roll in an opposed fashion can rob also some of the players of their agency. If you roll low and succeed or roll high and fail this can reduce the feeling that the players are having an impact
"letting the dice determine a thing" also does not mean that you must let the dice determine the thing in precisely the way the player wants. It does not matter how well you roll deception to convince a warlock that an object is magical when they have detect magic at will. They're just going to detect magic and know. But this doesn't mean you cannot convince a warlock that you think an object is magical.
@Kayne Red Robe
A monk is able to wield a staff or spear two handed and still get bonus martial arts attacks
Earlier in the campaign I had introduced a group of grell called "The Consumers of the Willing" (which I got from the 4E Underdark sourcebook). The Consumers of the Willing, or "Kragg", believe it is only ethical to consume intelligent creatures that can consent to being eaten (they also don't have any qualms with using a Dominate Person ability they possess to make someone willing, though they prefer to persuade their captives into becoming willing with long-term indoctrination). The player and the few NPC sidekicks she had with her came upon a starving Kragg grell. She used Comprehend Languages to learn that the creature had been separated from its fellow "philosophers" and had starved to the point that it could no longer use its Dominate Person ability, or even fly. It feared dying and being consumed by myriad lesser life forms and requested that it be taken to a single "Great Eater", believing that its spirit would live on in the creature.
The player decided to honor this bizarre request (despite her NPC companions being inclined to either leave the grell to starve or kill it themselves). The grell was loaded and tied onto the back of the group's giant climbing lizard, and after a few other encounters managed to locate a bulette. The group cut the grell free from the back of the giant lizard and ran away as the bulette feasted upon the bizarrely grateful grell.
I had expected the party wouldn't honor the grell's strange request (and I have a feeling if the other two players had been there one of them would've probably just killed it), but the player who attended was determined to get that grell eaten alive (as it wanted), so I gave out my first inspiration point for the campaign.
goblins know magic exists (and you can just set DCs for deception you don't have to tether it to a creature's insight check at all if you want) and there are goblin spellcasters
Ask yourself if you feel like these goblins would be the trust but verify sort or the "Take it on blind faith" sort. You can have him say something like "well, I'm not sure about this, lets go ask a Booyagh, come with me"
Chult is a super magical place and I don't think the Batiri would be tricked by a light cantrip'd rock myself
If you're mostly annoyed at the lack of effort involved in the role playing, you can totally just say that OOC to the player. Also an interjected question along the lines of "Okay, wait, are you trying to sell it with facial expressions and fearful shouts and things, or literally just hucking the thing carelessly?" Would not be out of line at all.
I had a similar situation where i was a player in a new game and the DM allowed the wizard to try to distract a dangerous enemy with mage hand to impose disadvantage. On the one hand it ended up being really powerful, on the other hand I like playing with new players who try stunts and this is what that looks like sometimes 🤔
Okay that would be really funny
I too have found a lot of adventure design inspiration from old star trek episodes.
This session was only the bard, cleric, fighter/barbarian, and Ireena who I've buffed with the sidekick rules from Tasha's. They left the Vistani camp and decided to investigate the windmill when they saw it. They met "Granny" and recognized her as the sweet old woman who gave them free meat pies in Barovia. She invited them into the windmill and met Offalia and were told the other daughter, Bella, was upstairs working. The cleric started snooping around and discovered the kid bones in a rubbish bin. He tried to keep up a pokerface, but Morgantha realized what he discovered and decided to attack before the party could. She, Offalia, and Bella when she came downstairs effectively wiped the floor with the party. The fighter was paralyzed. Ireena was put to sleep and turned into a toad. The cleric got his teeth kicked in and fell unconscious. The bard finally got a spell off and turned invisible, tried to drag the fighter to their wagon and mage hand Ireena to the wagon as well, but then the hags turned one of the horses into a toad and knocked the bard out with magic missile.
After that, they woke up to Offalia playing with their horse's head as a puppet and Morgantha going through their gear. I had the party bound with manacles and chains to the bed and a hood over the fighter since he is an echo knight. Morgantha then explained to the party she planned to use them as drug mules to sell their pies in Vallaki to corrupt their souls enough for her to harvest. Of course, only one would be sent out at a time and the rest would stay at the windmill as insurance. I next planned on Morgantha taking a hand or an eye from one of the PCs (probably the bard cause he likes to talk so much and was pissing Morgantha off :P), but then the fighter/barbarian decided to rage and broke out of the manacles with a lucky roll and the bard got a lucky roll to slip out of his (this after they all were rolling sub-10 during the fight). Morgantha, annoyed, kinda just swatted the echo knight around asking what exactly his plan was. The bard suggested that they all sit down and talk the situation out, as willing mules would be more useful than slaves to the hags. So Morgantha told them to stay put and went downstairs to talk with her daughters about what to do with the party. The cleric and fighter started trying to knock a hole in the wall of the windmill and the bard started looking around for a way for them to escape. And that's when Strahd showed up. The party heard Strahd crash through the door, rip Bella's head off, and explain to the hags Tatyana and Tatyana's companions were off limits. He commanded the hags to release them and that Rahadin would be coming by soon to discuss what their duties as his subjects would be before flying away. The bard, who joined the game right before they left Barovia and hadn't heard much about Strahd yet, was pretty ecstatic and thought they had a guardian angel. The fighter and cleric almost pissed their pants. Morgantha then released the party and gave them the children they had captive.
The session ended with the party arriving at Vallaki, bloodied and beaten, but alive. They went through the initial security screenings from the guards, which included registration of their names and weapons, touching garlic to their skin to make sure they are not vampires, and overview of Vallaki's laws. At first the party was happy to find civilization, but now they are weirded out hardcore from how authoritarian Vallaki appears. Next session will be picking up at the gate with the missing party members catching up to them before they enter the city proper.
After the session, I got several text messages expressing their... "dislike" for the hag encounter. So all in all, I'd say it was a pretty successful session!
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
I did so well with avoiding buying more dice since we aren't in person....until I backed that Pixel dice Kickstarter so probably evens out there.
Yea, digital table top is like living off of bread and water. You'll survive, but the real nourishment is in person play. At least in my opinion.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
I think it helps if you have cameras with the VTT so you can see people reacting. Playing with static avatars and voice just isn't the same.
I do use the rollers for big damage dice rolls, but a good 75% of my rolls in a virtual session are still using real dice.
We just finally got cameras when I got not shit internet. It is certainly better, still not the same though.
In other news, check out this awesome display stand @Radiation made for me! A unique spot for each die and the mini, and the center is raised up by like a half inch or so so it's not hidden behind the dice. There are also little divots under each one to use a little blue tack to hold everything in place.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
I would actually prefer a stronger version of that ability that granted battlemasters an extra reaction with no bonus in exchange for a die. Even that seems a little fiddly though.
As for good? Definitely too good not because it itself is that great but because battlemasters are already top tier fighters
the worst possible offender balance wise seems to be Booming Blade, but still tends to be inferior to extra attack, so not super unbalanced
thoughts?
So I'm super particular about my Warlocks, but I kind of feel like one of the main goals of the Warlock should be Hammer Philosophy. Instead of trying to give the warlock other tools, just give them ways to turn problems into nails.
Less oddly put, I'm an EB purist, I feel like Warlocks should be using EB as often as possible. I honestly don't even like that they have other cantrips.
When you go back to the OG Warlock from 3.x, that's basically all they did.
Seeing a character move round a corner and hearing their defeated "...oh shit" or getting a Familiar with dark vision and telepathy to sit on the character without dark vision's shoulder and steer have been highlights, plus this from my last session:
Turn based movement just doesn't work if you can't see where you're going.
The settings that my GM uses includes Darkvision, so I can see 60 feet ahead in the absence of a light source to extend it, and once I've seen a room it stays on the map but any changes when I'm not there (such as monster movement) don't update until the room is back in my field of vision
In maps that have light sources, like outside, the vision range is effectively limitless, but blocked by solid objects so monsters can hide behind walls or trees
Its a cool feature but, for me, was not ideal.
Both of those are made difficult when your melee people charge into a room and vanish from your perception, you have no idea where the enemies they're fighting are and the only way to find out is to inch into the room, square by square (because you can't take movement back, so if you've run too far in you're committing to staying there) and hoping, once you see the situation, that you've enough movement left to not be in trouble.
Combat only takes 2-4 rounds, so if you need more than a couple of move actions to uncover the entire battlefield you'll likely not have a full overview of it until it's over, which I guess could be exciting for some people, but I just find frustrating. Ranged characters need to be aware of corners and available lines of sight and spending half the combat Mr. Magooing around isn't fun.
Oh god, and let's not mention the two poor party members that didn't have darkvision, who after the first two sessions both acquired gear to have the equivalent of darkvision so they could actually participate in combat. If vision types are mechanically required to participate then why even make them an option, everyone is forced to get them anyway.
That is incredibly accurate in my experience.
I mean my goal is literally so a player can pick warlock and NOT have to pick eldritch blast
like wizards kind of went this route with the celestial one but their sacred flame is still worse than eldritch blast in every way because it only gets 1x their modifier so by level 5 EB is vastly surpassing its damage
I set up fog of war in foundry with soft fog of war for objects within a room so they do obscure vision of creatures but they can see the terrain, so it looks like the top example
so my eldritch blast question is a back and forth with my Avernus DM (yes I'm giving it a chance, we're leaving elturel finally on saturday) he loves to co-design player features
basically his concern is that I can use my martial adept along with repelling blast to booming blade someone 35 feet away
my contention is that this would be super badass and once we hit tenth level, empower the graviturgist a bit by allowing me to create falls for creatures that he can use his reaction to empower, and he's sold on the idea, but wary
the fact that I have synergy with the party in mind seems to have won him over
A possible concession to offer up if booming blade is the one you indeed wish to focus: it is still cantrip unique. So instead of getting the invocation expanded to all cantrips, instead you focus the invocation building on your specific different cantrip that isn't eldritch bolt.
Yeah I offered this and he said "nah my real concern was booming blade, I don't care if you want to viciously mock fus-ro-da enemies or whatever"
In my game BB does not trigger on forced movement. (Only things like “when a creature first enters an area” do)
Their tracks only went a mile or so out of town before they met with wolf tracks, but there was no blood to indicate an attack, and there were signs of dragging. We followed the wolf tracks into the forest and got attacked by some sort of giant spiders. We handled them pretty well at first, until one managed to sneak by and get a crit on my Warlock which nearly downed him from full health. Then another one got a hit on one of the hunters and downed him, but we both got healed up a bit and took a short rest. We continued following the tracks, though we lost them at the bridge west of Vallaki. After some back-tracking across the several paths at that crossroads, we happened upon an abandoned camp, and when we investigated we were attacked by a wild person and some bramble monsters. The hunters explained that some people choose to eschew the life of civilization and go live in the woods in despair and turn feral. So that's probably something else we'll have to deal with down the road, fantastic. The only notable thing we found in the area was a bottle of ink that seems to have fallen off a wagon on the way to Krezk.
With that in mind, we continued on to Krezk and picked the tracks back up on the far side of the bridge. We followed them to a werewolf den northeast of Krezk. The hunters refused to stay, insisting that going any further was suicide, and told us they'd be heading to Krezk to spend the night. We figured the best thing to do was to confirm the children were inside, and then to notify Krezk so they could form up some sort of posse to wipe out the werewolves and save the children. But first we had to get inside.
I lamented internally at not having access to a familiar yet, which would be a low-risk means of exploring the den. Instead, my Warlock volunteered to go inside alone. Between using Prestidigitation to clean himself scrupulously so as to remove any possible scent, his Boots of Elvenkind, and the Bard's Invisibility spell, he was damn near untraceable. Unfortunately, I'm pretty notorious for rolling terribly on Stealth checks, and my Warlock isn't exactly some fearless, self-sacrificing hero. He got through a couple of rooms, but I figured he'd be unwilling to put more than a couple of werewolves between himself and the entrance. He wasn't able to spot the children but found a few werewolves and a handful of regular wolves to boot, so either way we know it's beyond our capability to handle alone. He left the cave and met back up with the party, and we set off for Krezk.