A big part of dming is realizing what a character can do. An 8th level rogue for example i wouldnt even make them roll to climb up and run across the rooftops on a starry night. Thats their bread and butter. Now if it was a torrential downpour with thunder and lightning? Sure, make that roll. Now a level 15 rogue? Probably no roll, or a roll to see if someone notices them.
Yeah. Like if your character has a swim speed or a climb speed? Fucking go nuts.
Example: The party needed to swim through a flooded cave area. Mellys, the party's merfolk rouge has a swim speed. So no check for her, this is easy. Everyone else got a check, because cave swiming aint the wisest of ideas. (and mellys was able to Help each of them, which meant that only the skeleton nearly drowned.)
PCs are, in general, competent. Therefore, treat them like they're competent.
The two-part D&D game I played in over the past couple of weeks ending up as an amusing clusterfuck. I played a Circle of Spores Druid with a reflavored version of the noble knight background, saying I had three loyal followers who were subtly brainwashed by the spores I emitted. My character was unaware of this, as well as the fact that his powers truly came from the demon lord Zuggtmoy.
We were employed to find a thieves guild and take down its leader. I left one of my followers in town and another at the entrance to the hideout. The only follower to accompany me the whole time was a gnome girl who just so happened to earn a charm of increased carrying capacity from a chwinga. My druid was mostly silent while the majority of my roleplaying was through the excitable gnome girl who, after we encountered a stairway where each step triggered a spike to shoot out from the wall that was always above her head, insisted on slowly walking down and examining all three of the other staircases we encountered first to make sure they were safe.
The player of the paladin in the first session didn't show up for the second, so, it ended up being a couple of rogues the DM has previously used as player characters fighting my druid, a sorcerer, and a rogue. The sorcerer ended up burning down the thieves' guild's ship using two fireballs and finishing off one of the enemy rogues, but ultimately we all were reduced to 0 hp and making saves to stabilize. All except the gnome girl, who was cruelly killed before the surviving enemy rogue carried his dead ally's body away. Luckily I rolled a natural 20 to regain consciousness with one hit point and dragged the party and the gnome's corpse to hide in a pit trap we had previously found. As an elf I was able to take a long rest in only four hours while the rogue took four hours to wake up from unconsciousness. We found we couldn't open the ceiling of the pit trap, but luckily I had chosen gaseous form as a spell and was able to escape to free the others (and raise my fallen gnome follower as a zombie).
In the end the thieves guild ended up escaping with a lot of the loot and causing a major prison break. The sorcerer decided to leave town on a horse while the rogue and I engaged in PvP in the tavern after he took offense to my offer to join me as a follower. I ended up killing him with moon beam and had my remaining follower carry the corpse out of the panicked town. Following another four hour rest I animated the rogue as a zombie and reestablished my control over the gnome zombie before hijacking a wagon so my single live follower and two zombies could ride off to parts unknown.
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webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
A big part of dming is realizing what a character can do. An 8th level rogue for example i wouldnt even make them roll to climb up and run across the rooftops on a starry night. Thats their bread and butter. Now if it was a torrential downpour with thunder and lightning? Sure, make that roll. Now a level 15 rogue? Probably no roll, or a roll to see if someone notices them.
Yeah. Like if your character has a swim speed or a climb speed? Fucking go nuts.
Example: The party needed to swim through a flooded cave area. Mellys, the party's merfolk rouge has a swim speed. So no check for her, this is easy. Everyone else got a check, because cave swiming aint the wisest of ideas. (and mellys was able to Help each of them, which meant that only the skeleton nearly drowned.)
PCs are, in general, competent. Therefore, treat them like they're competent.
Ok so I gotta ask, how did the Skeleton nearly drown? I feel that a Skeleton would be ideally suited to traversing an underwater environment.
A big part of dming is realizing what a character can do. An 8th level rogue for example i wouldnt even make them roll to climb up and run across the rooftops on a starry night. Thats their bread and butter. Now if it was a torrential downpour with thunder and lightning? Sure, make that roll. Now a level 15 rogue? Probably no roll, or a roll to see if someone notices them.
Yeah. Like if your character has a swim speed or a climb speed? Fucking go nuts.
Example: The party needed to swim through a flooded cave area. Mellys, the party's merfolk rouge has a swim speed. So no check for her, this is easy. Everyone else got a check, because cave swiming aint the wisest of ideas. (and mellys was able to Help each of them, which meant that only the skeleton nearly drowned.)
PCs are, in general, competent. Therefore, treat them like they're competent.
Ok so I gotta ask, how did the Skeleton nearly drown? I feel that a Skeleton would be ideally suited to traversing an underwater environment.
It was a mystery to everyone how the skeleton failed that badly. He had the help action!
Slightly more seriously: The Undead in terra incognita are animated by mystic plants in part. They might look like skeletons/ghostly people/mummified corpses, but life is very much a part of them, and they're still very much vulnerable to things like drowning, starvation, etcera. The flipside is they dont suffer from any of the usual undead maladies, and even benefit form stuff like sunlight.
Also, it was funnier if the skeleton nearly drowned because i play DnD 110% seriously.
A big part of dming is realizing what a character can do. An 8th level rogue for example i wouldnt even make them roll to climb up and run across the rooftops on a starry night. Thats their bread and butter. Now if it was a torrential downpour with thunder and lightning? Sure, make that roll. Now a level 15 rogue? Probably no roll, or a roll to see if someone notices them.
Yeah. Like if your character has a swim speed or a climb speed? Fucking go nuts.
Example: The party needed to swim through a flooded cave area. Mellys, the party's merfolk rouge has a swim speed. So no check for her, this is easy. Everyone else got a check, because cave swiming aint the wisest of ideas. (and mellys was able to Help each of them, which meant that only the skeleton nearly drowned.)
PCs are, in general, competent. Therefore, treat them like they're competent.
Ok so I gotta ask, how did the Skeleton nearly drown? I feel that a Skeleton would be ideally suited to traversing an underwater environment.
It was a mystery to everyone how the skeleton failed that badly. He had the help action!
Slightly more seriously: The Undead in terra incognita are animated by mystic plants in part. They might look like skeletons/ghostly people/mummified corpses, but life is very much a part of them, and they're still very much vulnerable to things like drowning, starvation, etcera. The flipside is they dont suffer from any of the usual undead maladies, and even benefit form stuff like sunlight.
Also, it was funnier if the skeleton nearly drowned because i play DnD 110% seriously.
That sounds super cool, and story wise the skeleton being the one to almost drown is super choice.
I feel failing forward is a decent way of handling when a character that's an expert at something fails their roll. They still succeed, but something else goes wrong; the previous example of a rogue successfully scaling the wall but getting spotted doing so is good.
Re: critical failures, our DM always has us roll another D20. Another 1 is an actual critical failure, a 20 will result in you succeeding, but suffering a penalty, and anything in between is just a whiff.
Examples that actually happened to that Rogue I was mentioning earlier, she got into the habit of doing drop attacks. On one of them she rolled a 1 and a 20 and shanked the hell out of someone, only for them to roll over on top of her and bury her under.
On another she got a 1 and a 1 and shanked the hell out of a party member.
I feel failing forward is a decent way of handling when a character that's an expert at something fails their roll. They still succeed, but something else goes wrong; the previous example of a rogue successfully scaling the wall but getting spotted doing so is good.
Re: critical failures, our DM always has us roll another D20. Another 1 is an actual critical failure, a 20 will result in you succeeding, but suffering a penalty, and anything in between is just a whiff.
Examples that actually happened to that Rogue I was mentioning earlier, she got into the habit of doing drop attacks. On one of them she rolled a 1 and a 20 and shanked the hell out of someone, only for them to roll over on top of her and bury her under.
On another she got a 1 and a 1 and shanked the hell out of a party member.
I just love the metnal image of doing the full on Assassin's creed diving assassination, only to realize you landed on bob the bold instead of brad the bastard
I feel failing forward is a decent way of handling when a character that's an expert at something fails their roll. They still succeed, but something else goes wrong; the previous example of a rogue successfully scaling the wall but getting spotted doing so is good.
Re: critical failures, our DM always has us roll another D20. Another 1 is an actual critical failure, a 20 will result in you succeeding, but suffering a penalty, and anything in between is just a whiff.
Examples that actually happened to that Rogue I was mentioning earlier, she got into the habit of doing drop attacks. On one of them she rolled a 1 and a 20 and shanked the hell out of someone, only for them to roll over on top of her and bury her under.
On another she got a 1 and a 1 and shanked the hell out of a party member.
I just love the metnal image of doing the full on Assassin's creed diving assassination, only to realize you landed on bob the bold instead of brad the bastard
Fuckin Bob had it comin, though.
So yesterday's morning one-shot was canceled because two players were on vacation out of state and another couldn't come because his daughter was having surgery on her knee (one of her sheep broke it!). I could have run the game with just two players but decided to cancel it to save on stress. The Spelljammer game seemed to go pretty well though, I thought! It started with the party in mid-dungeon, but I went ahead and skipped em to the end (it was the sidescrolling dungeon that I thought was cool in theory, but in practice wasn't that great). Boss fight! Two mages with some meatshields closer to the door, and as soon as I finished describing what the party sees, their wizard immediately says they cast Magnify Gravity (they're playing a Graviturgist from the Wildemount book). I said sure, fuck it, why not, The two thugs and two mages were hit, both mages lost their con saves of course and took nearly full damage while the thugs passed. After that the party beat up the meatshields while the wizard killed both mages singlehandedly (after nearly dying himself), and then the two surviving thugs surrendered and pleaded for mercy. Surprisingly the party gave it to them, in the form of being tied up and left for the local constabulary. They found some goodies and left. They went back to the inn they'd been staying at and the aasimar paladin had a dream from her celestial guide telling her she needed to find the murderer of her friend, the party's fighter (he's a hollow one from the Wildemount book). I had a lot of fun narrating the entire dream sequence, even though it was originally going to be myself and the paladin reading her parts of the script together (she chickened out last second). So she wakes everyone up and says they need to go, they do some last minute shopping on the Rock of Bral and pay a taxispelljammer ship captain they had done some minor work for before to take them to the planet Toril, specifically Waterdeep. Once they got there the captain got shot in the face by an unknown assassin, but since no further attacks came the party figured it was aimed for one of them (I guess so, but mostly it was an excuse for me to get rid of the captain and now the ship has now owner! Oh no, I wonder who will inherit the magical space boat now? 🤔) They eventually decided to check out the scene of the fighter's murder but find nothing there that was helpful, so they check out their previous place of employment (sort of like cops, but mercs). They get some info from their old boss, meet an old coworker, head off for clues. That's basically where I ended it since I didn't have much else planned.
I'm thinking give em a small handful of places to check out, and wherever they go first they'll spot someone that obviously recognizes the paladin and fighter and runs, so chase sequence! Dunno if it'll be the assassin or someone linked to em, but they'll point them towards one of the other two places to check, where the party finds a fight and some info about a cult of necromancers trying to raise an army. The third place will be said cult and a boss fight with a guy that looks like Soulblighter from Myth 2, because a dude that cuts his own lips and nose off and removes his heart in a dark ritual for power is pretty fuckin metal. Once the boss dies, the fighter will die for real this time since the power animating him is gone. His player already has another character lined up because he wasn't real thrilled with that one, and I'll have the party meet him somehow. Hell, maybe they'll help in the investigation, we'll see.
Do people prefer tailored failure or just 'you failed?'
Getting clever with what a bad roll means based on the character's competence in that area makes everything feel a lot better imo, but it does often involve the DM either making small character decisions or retconning the challenge on the fly to explain a failure.
If a character screws up something not exceptionally challenging in an area of proficiency, or especially in an area of expertise, I don't think it works well for it just to be 'you did it bad because you had a brain fart', unless that's something in-character or there's a good excuse in the scene for an unforced error.
Some relatively unpredictable complication (the lock was actually damaged and now you've jammed it, that 'tell' was just an implausible coincidental personal tic), a mistake tied directly to character flaw, etc.
Oh, and my players have already decided if they acquire the spelljammer (of course they are!) that they're going to rename it "Seaduction" because of fucking course they are :rotate:
It's a real nice spelljamming vessel though, a hammership!
Speaking of failure, I may have erred a bit last night in the Storm Kings Thunder game I DM...
So, as per the module's options, early on the party became Harper adjacent in order to access the network of Teleportation Circles. Adventure continues and the party also accepts the free ride the Cult of the Dragon provides in the form of an airship. Of course they're leery about accepting rides from the followers of the Ancient might Red Dragon Klauth, but hey, Airship! Adventure continues, party bounces from Burial Mound to Burial Mound uncovering giant relics stolen by the barbarians many moons ago. In the process the airship gets damaged and puts down a days walk from Yartar for repairs. According to the book, to repair 1hp takes a day of work by the airships dragon cultist crew. So that is 40 in game days to fully repair the ship. Party does some stuff in and around Yartar, takes a sidequest to Chult, comes back collects their reward, does another local Burial Mound and then reingages with the Harpers in Yartar to access the Circle. They bounce back to Everlund (on their way to the Grandfather Tree) and decide to pop upstairs in Moonbeam Tower to confer with the Archmage about what they've been doing so far and any advice he has to give, (Answer: "You've spoken to the Oracle???!!! One, tell me everything and two, Do what she tells you to!") and for information about Klauth. I give the spiel that they mostly already know about he's the biggest bad this side of the Mississippi etc. (They haven't met Iymrith yet) and so on so forth. Everything seems fine!
Then the arcane trickster player, who explicitly calls out his low wisdom as motivation, says, "So...what does it mean that we're travelling around with the Cult of the Dragon in one of their airships." All the air deflates in the room. The Archmage sends his flying cats out the room and soon the booted footsteps of knights and other Harper guards can be heard. All jovialness and scholarly interest is gone as the party bluntly reveals, while standing in the secret hideout of the Harpers and having vital knowledge of their secret teleportation network, they the fools standing right in front of him are worked with the enemy. The Bard player (who was three beers in) starts some spiel to try and salvage the situation and challenges the archmage on his right to make judgement calls on the party. Now, after the fact, I realize that the player didn't intend the challenge but wanted to draw a comparison that they're not full Harpers and their not full Cultists either. But instead it came out more like, "who are you to tell me who I can't see?". So, yeah, the archmage was pissed and kicked the party out of the tower and locked them out of the Network.
My players were flabbergasted. They did not see that coming. At the end of the session, which otherwise went well, we had a bit of a pow-wow and I reminded them of the very contentious relationship between Harpers and Cultists. Like an arch enemy kind of thing. One works to foster freedom amongst the goodly peoples, the other works to bring those same people until the tyrannical heel of the dragons. They had no idea of the conflict between the two groups. Now, I explicitly told them them this both in the Phandelver portion of the campaign and when we started SKT. Maybe they glossed over it, maybe they forgot. They're mostly new-ish players who clearly don't have the same grasp on the background relations between the factions. I regret now going nova on the situation and probably would have been better served with a classic DM line: "Are you sure you want to say that?" and reminded them how the factions relate.
I wonder how I can walk this back without directly reconning it? I was thinikng to have the archmage be so upset because he lost someone dear to him and maybe have another high ranking Harper scry on the party for a while, discern their true allegiances and motivations, and make another approach. Should I even bother, or just let them stew in their consequences? I dunno...
A big part of dming is realizing what a character can do. An 8th level rogue for example i wouldnt even make them roll to climb up and run across the rooftops on a starry night. Thats their bread and butter. Now if it was a torrential downpour with thunder and lightning? Sure, make that roll. Now a level 15 rogue? Probably no roll, or a roll to see if someone notices them.
Yeah. Like if your character has a swim speed or a climb speed? Fucking go nuts.
Example: The party needed to swim through a flooded cave area. Mellys, the party's merfolk rouge has a swim speed. So no check for her, this is easy. Everyone else got a check, because cave swiming aint the wisest of ideas. (and mellys was able to Help each of them, which meant that only the skeleton nearly drowned.)
PCs are, in general, competent. Therefore, treat them like they're competent.
Ok so I gotta ask, how did the Skeleton nearly drown? I feel that a Skeleton would be ideally suited to traversing an underwater environment.
It was a mystery to everyone how the skeleton failed that badly. He had the help action!
Slightly more seriously: The Undead in terra incognita are animated by mystic plants in part. They might look like skeletons/ghostly people/mummified corpses, but life is very much a part of them, and they're still very much vulnerable to things like drowning, starvation, etcera. The flipside is they dont suffer from any of the usual undead maladies, and even benefit form stuff like sunlight.
Also, it was funnier if the skeleton nearly drowned because i play DnD 110% seriously.
That sounds super cool, and story wise the skeleton being the one to almost drown is super choice.
The skeleton in question, in case you're curious (crosspost from SE thread):
In our session last night the players needed to get into a manor house. So they had two of the party start knocking on the doors into the manor grounds while the rest snuck around the back and climbed over the wall.
The front wall had two doors separated by about 50 feet of stone wall. So the cleric of tyr went to one, while the artificer who worships Gond went to the other. When a set of guards opened each door, they had different approaches. The artificer announced that they were collecting tithes for Gond and needed a thousand gold pieces in order to return to the temple, while the cleric of Tyr announced he was just here to chat and spread the word of Tyr.
So they rolled persuasion checks. The cleric of Tyr got over a twenty, the Artificer of Gond rolled a five. They shut the gate on the artificer, who started loudly shouting over the wall. (Meanwhile the group in the back has scaled the wall, snuck into the back door of the manor house, encountered the Butler and the Maid, tied them up and started interrogating them).
One of the guards leans out and says "Hey! Shut up that racket!" then looking at the cleric "Some people, am I right?"
The cleric then says "Wanna go beat him up?"
Roll for initiative! The guards charge forward. The artificer with his steel guardian start to fend the guards off, while the cleric starts walking up behind the guards and murderizing them. He did 15 damage with an inflict wounds spell which made that guard melt like he saw the ark of the covenant.
Then, while the group inside has progressed into the kitchen and is convincing the cook that no really it's okay they're just here to deliver some goods (the barbarian literally has a keg he carries around as his totem and the sorcerer used to own a bakery so she had a big bundle of muffins), the two outside the wall hide the bodies in some bushes and then repeat that trick two more times to completely clean out the patrolling guards.
In our session last night the players needed to get into a manor house. So they had two of the party start knocking on the doors into the manor grounds while the rest snuck around the back and climbed over the wall.
The front wall had two doors separated by about 50 feet of stone wall. So the cleric of tyr went to one, while the artificer who worships Gond went to the other. When a set of guards opened each door, they had different approaches. The artificer announced that they were collecting tithes for Gond and needed a thousand gold pieces in order to return to the temple, while the cleric of Tyr announced he was just here to chat and spread the word of Tyr.
So they rolled persuasion checks. The cleric of Tyr got over a twenty, the Artificer of Gond rolled a five. They shut the gate on the artificer, who started loudly shouting over the wall. (Meanwhile the group in the back has scaled the wall, snuck into the back door of the manor house, encountered the Butler and the Maid, tied them up and started interrogating them).
One of the guards leans out and says "Hey! Shut up that racket!" then looking at the cleric "Some people, am I right?"
The cleric then says "Wanna go beat him up?"
Roll for initiative! The guards charge forward. The artificer with his steel guardian start to fend the guards off, while the cleric starts walking up behind the guards and murderizing them. He did 15 damage with an inflict wounds spell which made that guard melt like he saw the ark of the covenant.
Then, while the group inside has progressed into the kitchen and is convincing the cook that no really it's okay they're just here to deliver some goods (the barbarian literally has a keg he carries around as his totem and the sorcerer used to own a bakery so she had a big bundle of muffins), the two outside the wall hide the bodies in some bushes and then repeat that trick two more times to completely clean out the patrolling guards.
We were laughing in horrified awe.
We did that in a one-shot once. Took out all the guards outside with bows, then pretended to be the guards and called for backup from inside, yelling about being attacked. Inside guards run out to help us, we bonk them to death, and repeat. Killed like 6 guards this way before they caught on inside the manor house. It was all for naught though, one of my characters and one of the other player's characters died trying to stop the demon summoning, while my other character was knocked unconscious and the other player's other character ran away. Demon got summoned and assumed my unconscious character was one of hiss followers, and the cultists didn't bother correcting him. It was a good game, and now that player is playing that character's son looking for vengeance against evil demon worshipping cults in one of our campaigns lol
Speaking of failure, I may have erred a bit last night in the Storm Kings Thunder game I DM...
So, as per the module's options, early on the party became Harper adjacent in order to access the network of Teleportation Circles. Adventure continues and the party also accepts the free ride the Cult of the Dragon provides in the form of an airship. Of course they're leery about accepting rides from the followers of the Ancient might Red Dragon Klauth, but hey, Airship! Adventure continues, party bounces from Burial Mound to Burial Mound uncovering giant relics stolen by the barbarians many moons ago. In the process the airship gets damaged and puts down a days walk from Yartar for repairs. According to the book, to repair 1hp takes a day of work by the airships dragon cultist crew. So that is 40 in game days to fully repair the ship. Party does some stuff in and around Yartar, takes a sidequest to Chult, comes back collects their reward, does another local Burial Mound and then reingages with the Harpers in Yartar to access the Circle. They bounce back to Everlund (on their way to the Grandfather Tree) and decide to pop upstairs in Moonbeam Tower to confer with the Archmage about what they've been doing so far and any advice he has to give, (Answer: "You've spoken to the Oracle???!!! One, tell me everything and two, Do what she tells you to!") and for information about Klauth. I give the spiel that they mostly already know about he's the biggest bad this side of the Mississippi etc. (They haven't met Iymrith yet) and so on so forth. Everything seems fine!
Then the arcane trickster player, who explicitly calls out his low wisdom as motivation, says, "So...what does it mean that we're travelling around with the Cult of the Dragon in one of their airships." All the air deflates in the room. The Archmage sends his flying cats out the room and soon the booted footsteps of knights and other Harper guards can be heard. All jovialness and scholarly interest is gone as the party bluntly reveals, while standing in the secret hideout of the Harpers and having vital knowledge of their secret teleportation network, they the fools standing right in front of him are worked with the enemy. The Bard player (who was three beers in) starts some spiel to try and salvage the situation and challenges the archmage on his right to make judgement calls on the party. Now, after the fact, I realize that the player didn't intend the challenge but wanted to draw a comparison that they're not full Harpers and their not full Cultists either. But instead it came out more like, "who are you to tell me who I can't see?". So, yeah, the archmage was pissed and kicked the party out of the tower and locked them out of the Network.
My players were flabbergasted. They did not see that coming. At the end of the session, which otherwise went well, we had a bit of a pow-wow and I reminded them of the very contentious relationship between Harpers and Cultists. Like an arch enemy kind of thing. One works to foster freedom amongst the goodly peoples, the other works to bring those same people until the tyrannical heel of the dragons. They had no idea of the conflict between the two groups. Now, I explicitly told them them this both in the Phandelver portion of the campaign and when we started SKT. Maybe they glossed over it, maybe they forgot. They're mostly new-ish players who clearly don't have the same grasp on the background relations between the factions. I regret now going nova on the situation and probably would have been better served with a classic DM line: "Are you sure you want to say that?" and reminded them how the factions relate.
I wonder how I can walk this back without directly reconning it? I was thinikng to have the archmage be so upset because he lost someone dear to him and maybe have another high ranking Harper scry on the party for a while, discern their true allegiances and motivations, and make another approach. Should I even bother, or just let them stew in their consequences? I dunno...
I mean the Harper's are a secretive organization and the Dragon Cultists even more so. A random adventurer is as likely as not to know about they're relationship. Lean into it, I say. Now they have to save people who hate and fear them, like x men.
Speaking of failure, I may have erred a bit last night in the Storm Kings Thunder game I DM...
So, as per the module's options, early on the party became Harper adjacent in order to access the network of Teleportation Circles. Adventure continues and the party also accepts the free ride the Cult of the Dragon provides in the form of an airship. Of course they're leery about accepting rides from the followers of the Ancient might Red Dragon Klauth, but hey, Airship! Adventure continues, party bounces from Burial Mound to Burial Mound uncovering giant relics stolen by the barbarians many moons ago. In the process the airship gets damaged and puts down a days walk from Yartar for repairs. According to the book, to repair 1hp takes a day of work by the airships dragon cultist crew. So that is 40 in game days to fully repair the ship. Party does some stuff in and around Yartar, takes a sidequest to Chult, comes back collects their reward, does another local Burial Mound and then reingages with the Harpers in Yartar to access the Circle. They bounce back to Everlund (on their way to the Grandfather Tree) and decide to pop upstairs in Moonbeam Tower to confer with the Archmage about what they've been doing so far and any advice he has to give, (Answer: "You've spoken to the Oracle???!!! One, tell me everything and two, Do what she tells you to!") and for information about Klauth. I give the spiel that they mostly already know about he's the biggest bad this side of the Mississippi etc. (They haven't met Iymrith yet) and so on so forth. Everything seems fine!
Then the arcane trickster player, who explicitly calls out his low wisdom as motivation, says, "So...what does it mean that we're travelling around with the Cult of the Dragon in one of their airships." All the air deflates in the room. The Archmage sends his flying cats out the room and soon the booted footsteps of knights and other Harper guards can be heard. All jovialness and scholarly interest is gone as the party bluntly reveals, while standing in the secret hideout of the Harpers and having vital knowledge of their secret teleportation network, they the fools standing right in front of him are worked with the enemy. The Bard player (who was three beers in) starts some spiel to try and salvage the situation and challenges the archmage on his right to make judgement calls on the party. Now, after the fact, I realize that the player didn't intend the challenge but wanted to draw a comparison that they're not full Harpers and their not full Cultists either. But instead it came out more like, "who are you to tell me who I can't see?". So, yeah, the archmage was pissed and kicked the party out of the tower and locked them out of the Network.
My players were flabbergasted. They did not see that coming. At the end of the session, which otherwise went well, we had a bit of a pow-wow and I reminded them of the very contentious relationship between Harpers and Cultists. Like an arch enemy kind of thing. One works to foster freedom amongst the goodly peoples, the other works to bring those same people until the tyrannical heel of the dragons. They had no idea of the conflict between the two groups. Now, I explicitly told them them this both in the Phandelver portion of the campaign and when we started SKT. Maybe they glossed over it, maybe they forgot. They're mostly new-ish players who clearly don't have the same grasp on the background relations between the factions. I regret now going nova on the situation and probably would have been better served with a classic DM line: "Are you sure you want to say that?" and reminded them how the factions relate.
I wonder how I can walk this back without directly reconning it? I was thinikng to have the archmage be so upset because he lost someone dear to him and maybe have another high ranking Harper scry on the party for a while, discern their true allegiances and motivations, and make another approach. Should I even bother, or just let them stew in their consequences? I dunno...
I mean the Harper's are a secretive organization and the Dragon Cultists even more so. A random adventurer is as likely as not to know about they're relationship. Lean into it, I say. Now they have to save people who hate and fear them, like x men.
Cool. Because I was kind of OK with it too after the session....but the players looked like I kicked their dog on the zoom screens, and this morning I felt bad.
wait are you saying you're NOT sustained by player suffering? if they look like you kicked their puppy then you've got them hooked.
now you have a bunch of options, for example you could audible the archmage into a new recurring villain if you want and have other harpers try to stop em, or have other cultists show up to help them and trigger additional misunderstandings, or something like that.
The harpers have a lot of dealings with mercenaries, even distasteful ones, I would say your post-game feeling that going nova was bad is probably the correct one
The party's alignment seems to more closely align with the Harpers. Did you have the mage explain what the cult of dragon is? I think if your party knew that their end goal was the destruction of mortal civilization at the hands of the living catastrophe that is Tiamat they probably would be like "oh yeah, well, we don't want that"
I would not cast the harpers as enemies to your party unless you want the campaign sliding into murder hoboville, the most common cause of murderhobodom is the "good guys" being unreasonable assholes. Were I in the party's position, and playing an appropriate archetype, I might be liable (in character) to say "fuck the harpers, we're trying to save the goddamned world and they're opposing us? I guess those zealots are on our shit list"
Edit: Here's an idea, have the harpers give them a chance to prove that they are only working with the cult of the dragon out of convenience, but are not aligned with them. Maybe a mission to dig some dirt on them. I stole the Cult of the Dragon fortress of Skyreach for my Stormkings thunder game, maybe you could do something similar by tying an existing storm kings thunder quest into a Cult of the Dragon interest and let your players (covertly) thwart their plans to prove their good intentions to the Harpers. A side mission without their airship (so the cult doesn't know) to kill a dragon is always fun
1. dungeon
2. dragon
3. loot
4. 2 scoops of dead cultists
Oh also I don't have much experience with the spell "Suggestion" but I ambushed my D&D players in a park last night. Imp attacked the cleric, three robed figures drew knives and a woman tore off a big frilly dress to reveal scary plate armor underneath. She taunted the cleric, who she sees as her rival, and for his first turn he cast suggestion on her and told her "Go get the city watch." She failed her save miserably and was like "Ha ha, fuck you! You're in for it now!" and then turned and ran away to go fetch the city watch.
She was really the only difficult creature so they mopped up the guys with the knives and the imp pretty damn fast. I was extremely impressed and also a little miffed that she never even got a turn.
Yeah, it might not look like it but suggestion has long been a save or suck spell that just flat out removes you from combat on a failed save.
Depends on the DM.
If that was a cleric of Tempus, for example, no fucking way is she running to taddle to the city watch.
In that situation, given that the cleric and her friends were out for blood, a simple "go get the city watch" wouldn't have done it for me.
I'd want a rationale for someone to drop what they're doing and do the polar opposite.
I mean one of the things suggestion can do is make a knight go give up her warhorse to some random person as far as how reasonable the suggestions actually need to be
Yeah, it might not look like it but suggestion has long been a save or suck spell that just flat out removes you from combat on a failed save.
Depends on the DM.
If that was a cleric of Tempus, for example, no fucking way is she running to taddle to the city watch.
In that situation, given that the cleric and her friends were out for blood, a simple "go get the city watch" wouldn't have done it for me.
I'd want a rationale for someone to drop what they're doing and do the polar opposite.
Lady wasn't a cleric, she was a rival lawyer! The party's cleric is also a lawyer and they were trying to get paid after dropping someone's decapitated head into a tree. They thought they were coming back to pick up the gold, so I figured it made sense that aside from just stabbing them to death, a reasonable course of action was "I'll go get the city watch and show them these MURDERERS in this park, and as a respected lawyer, they'll believe me and help kill them!"
Plus now I get to have that lady show back up and be all "NOT THIS TIME"
If they KNEW that it was acid they wouldn't do it in 5e, because it can't be obviously harmful or suicidal, but the fact that you can get a knight off your ass by telling her to find a beggar to give a warhorse to (even a truly beloved warhorse) as a textual example indicates the power of the spell - in such a circumstance if no beggars were to be found the knight would simply wander for 8 hours
but you can totally suggest someone give up adventuring and go become a farmer and for the next 8 hours they're out of your life, unless you lose concentration. You can actually suggest that a Cleric give up worshipping their god and they'll do it, until the spell ends, and then be *very upset*
I mean charm person is a level 1 spell that isn't concentration and makes you totally incapable of taking hostile action against the caster, save or suck spells are ... well, really sucky to be hit with
So I made a fairly extensive write-up of Seven-Pillared Hall from 4E's Thunderspire Labyrinth and NPCs in it for my new campaign, thinking it would be the base of operations for the party. The same adventure establishes that the Hall is built into the top most section of the ruins of a minotaur civilization and that the lower reaches came to be known as the Well of Demons, and I figured I'd say that was true here, too, but that the Well of Demons had been pretty much cleared out years ago.
Now one of my players wants to start a mine and build a headquarters outside the Seven-Pillared Hall. There's a dwarven company that funds prospectors, as well as a rival clan of duergar. I've decided that both will propose that the party find a section of the Well of Demons to start their mine in. It will be much cheaper and less time consuming to build their headquarters/mine in the Well of Demons as there are already existing chambers they can renovate, and plenty of poor squatters in the ruins who might be interested in employment. Plus the miners might uncover lost treasures from the ancient minotaur civilization (that eventually fell prey to the Madness of Baphomet and summoned demons into their domain, the spirits of which might still lie in wait in said lost treasures).
The dwarves didn't do this themselves because they're from Kraghammer, the very conservative center of mountain dwarf culture on the continent that doesn't much care for anyone who isn't a dwarf (or possibly a rock gnome). They'd rather proxies work man the mine. The duergar will fund the mine but will secretly try to sabotage the players' efforts at paying what they owe so that they can justify taking direct control of the mine and treating the workers as harsh as they can without provoking the outrage of the nearby Hall's dwarven company (who are themselves mostly hypocrites who use indentured servants that only get to see their families one day a month, as well as the labor of prisoners; one of the priests in the Hall is effectively an expatriate of Kraghammer who is appalled by her home city and its culture).
If you can't tell I'm really trying to sell that the resident dwarves aren't "good" just because they aren't duergar. I decided on that after reading the write-up on Kraghammer in the Tal'Dorei setting guide and being frankly shocked at what bastards the city's nobles are. Members of two of the noble houses even once collaborated to incinerate a peaceful myconid colony just because one of the noble houses wanted to mine in that cavern. I'm considering that the long term goal of the duergar is to seize control of the Underdark below Kraghammer and eventually convince the wealthy of the dwarven capital, who ostensibly revere the Lawful Good deity Moradin, that they've abandoned their god and might as well turn to worshiping devils like the duergar do.
If they KNEW that it was acid they wouldn't do it in 5e, because it can't be obviously harmful or suicidal, but the fact that you can get a knight off your ass by telling her to find a beggar to give a warhorse to (even a truly beloved warhorse) as a textual example indicates the power of the spell - in such a circumstance if no beggars were to be found the knight would simply wander for 8 hours
but you can totally suggest someone give up adventuring and go become a farmer and for the next 8 hours they're out of your life, unless you lose concentration. You can actually suggest that a Cleric give up worshipping their god and they'll do it, until the spell ends, and then be *very upset*
I mean charm person is a level 1 spell that isn't concentration and makes you totally incapable of taking hostile action against the caster, save or suck spells are ... well, really sucky to be hit with
I'm planning to run a yuan-ti centric campaign one day. They all get Suggestion, so before I run a campaign full of creatures that can cast it I'm throwing a small group of them in the Underdark campaign I'm running now to see how that goes.
There was a long-ish thread over on ENWorld about Suggestion in which a new DM expressed annoyance that one of their players ended a combat with an aboleth by casting Suggestion to command it to "fuck off". This sparked a lot of debate, with some people saying "yeah, sometimes players can ruin your plans". My first comment was "I wouldn't have allowed the command 'fuck off' to work for the spell in the first place, and even if I did I'd have the aboleth move away until it couldn't see the caster anymore, at which point I'd rule the suggestion fulfilled and have it come right back."
After a long period of debate, this is the gist of what I came up with for how I think Suggestion should be handled:
My take on Suggestion specifically is colored by my desire to feature yuan-ti heavily in a campaign, creatures that can all cast Suggestion. In looking online for how other DMs have handled this I've actually seen advice to remove the Suggestion spell from the yuan-ti and replace it with something else to keep game sessions from being bogged down by arguments over what is "reasonable". I don't want to go that far, but I do want a clear and consistent ruling on what the yuan-ti could force PCs to do with Suggestion.
Let's take a look at related spells:
Command: One word, wis save, first level, one round, many possible options.
Charm Person: Charm effect, wis save (with advantage in combat), first level, one hour, considers the caster a trusted friend, breaks if attacked.
Dominate Person: Wis save same as charm person and effectively complete telepathic control, one minute, but can be upcast to last up to 8 hours. Target makes a new save when they take damage.
Now on to Suggestion.
Suggestion: One or two sentences to describe a course of activity. It does not charm, although if you're immune to charm, you're immune to suggestion. Wis save, concentration 8 hours, must sound reasonable, breaks if attacked.
Like Command, the spell is very open-ended in what compulsion the caster can place. Unlike Charm Person, it does not specify that the affected creature would do anything a friend who trusts you would be willing to do. Unlike Dominate Person, you cannot give new commands (note, though, that Dominate Person at 5th-level lasts one minute and takes a casting at 8th-level to last the same eight hour duration that the 2nd-level Suggestion does).
Suggestion is most like an 8th-level casting of Dominate Person where the caster for whatever reason only uses it to issue one long-term command. The only limit to Suggestion is that it must sound "reasonable". If a fighter is in combat with a yuan-ti malison that is clearly another sword stroke away from death, would a Suggestion from it to "run away as far as you can" be "reasonable"?
To go back to the scenario presented in the OP, would an aboleth in combat find the extremely vague Suggestion to "fuck off" "reasonable"?
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After thinking on it for a bit, it'd probably be best put to use in an intrigue-style campaign where the party keeps tabs on different NPCs. A caster with Suggestion should know some details about their intended target and tailor Suggestions to that target.
For example, "Seek refuge all night in your home, it's not safe to be out tonight" would be reasonable to someone who lives nearby but unreasonable to someone whose home is several villages over. For the latter individual the Suggestion "Seek refuge all night wherever you can find it" would be better. Even in these situations it might be necessary to convince the target before casting that it really is unsafe to be out (the primary benefit of the Suggestion spell being that it can ensure the affected doesn't change their mind later for some reason and go outside after all).
In combat, the spell's effectiveness will often depend on whether the intended target believes it can win.
I realize this makes Suggestion little better than various Charisma checks, but I guess Suggestion is to Persuasion as Knock is to using Thieves' Tools.
A reasonable suggestion is one you might possibly convince the target to do without using magic, even if it's extremely unlikely. An unreasonable suggestion is one that there's no way the target would ever do without magic.
BTW, this surprisingly appropriate Monty Python clip was posted for the "fuck off" suggestion:
If they KNEW that it was acid they wouldn't do it in 5e, because it can't be obviously harmful or suicidal, but the fact that you can get a knight off your ass by telling her to find a beggar to give a warhorse to (even a truly beloved warhorse) as a textual example indicates the power of the spell - in such a circumstance if no beggars were to be found the knight would simply wander for 8 hours
but you can totally suggest someone give up adventuring and go become a farmer and for the next 8 hours they're out of your life, unless you lose concentration. You can actually suggest that a Cleric give up worshipping their god and they'll do it, until the spell ends, and then be *very upset*
I mean charm person is a level 1 spell that isn't concentration and makes you totally incapable of taking hostile action against the caster, save or suck spells are ... well, really sucky to be hit with
The salient point about the knight and the warhouse paragraph is that suggestion can be triggered by a specific event; it needn't be something the target must do now or actively search out.
Which isn't say you can't persuade a knight to give away his/her warhorse, it's just that you're going to need a really good argument to make that course of action seem reasonable to the knight. Props to any player with a great imagination.
If they KNEW that it was acid they wouldn't do it in 5e, because it can't be obviously harmful or suicidal, but the fact that you can get a knight off your ass by telling her to find a beggar to give a warhorse to (even a truly beloved warhorse) as a textual example indicates the power of the spell - in such a circumstance if no beggars were to be found the knight would simply wander for 8 hours
but you can totally suggest someone give up adventuring and go become a farmer and for the next 8 hours they're out of your life, unless you lose concentration. You can actually suggest that a Cleric give up worshipping their god and they'll do it, until the spell ends, and then be *very upset*
I mean charm person is a level 1 spell that isn't concentration and makes you totally incapable of taking hostile action against the caster, save or suck spells are ... well, really sucky to be hit with
The salient point about the knight and the warhouse paragraph is that suggestion can be triggered by a specific event; it needn't be something the target must do now or actively search out.
Which isn't say you can't persuade a knight to give away his/her warhorse, it's just that you're going to need a really good argument to make that course of action seem reasonable to the knight. Props to any player with a great imagination.
But the spell is limited to a sentence or two. You don't have time to make a good argument to the knight, that's why it's magic!
If they KNEW that it was acid they wouldn't do it in 5e, because it can't be obviously harmful or suicidal, but the fact that you can get a knight off your ass by telling her to find a beggar to give a warhorse to (even a truly beloved warhorse) as a textual example indicates the power of the spell - in such a circumstance if no beggars were to be found the knight would simply wander for 8 hours
but you can totally suggest someone give up adventuring and go become a farmer and for the next 8 hours they're out of your life, unless you lose concentration. You can actually suggest that a Cleric give up worshipping their god and they'll do it, until the spell ends, and then be *very upset*
I mean charm person is a level 1 spell that isn't concentration and makes you totally incapable of taking hostile action against the caster, save or suck spells are ... well, really sucky to be hit with
The salient point about the knight and the warhouse paragraph is that suggestion can be triggered by a specific event; it needn't be something the target must do now or actively search out.
Which isn't say you can't persuade a knight to give away his/her warhorse, it's just that you're going to need a really good argument to make that course of action seem reasonable to the knight. Props to any player with a great imagination.
But the spell is limited to a sentence or two. You don't have time to make a good argument to the knight, that's why it's magic!
Eh.
You don't need an essay. For the knight you could appeal to his sense of chivalry. The lawyer you mentioned previously is fine, I can see someone in that line of work wanting to ruin an opponent via legal means.
Casting the suggestion "run away, it's what you're best at!" on Doom'or, Flayer of Elves as Legolith, Pranciest of Elves just isn't good enough for me but hey I'm a bit of a stickler mee-seeks.
I'd also say Suggestion should be a bit more than "Give your horse to this man.", perhaps "This man's wife is pregnant. Lend him your horse, so he can be with her." and it would depend if the knight in question is a good alligned person or not.
Difference between Suggestion and regular Persuasion is that with suggestion his reaction would be "This man needs my help. I'll give him my horse." and he won't get those other thoughts that you get with regular persuasion like "Hang on, can you even ride a warhorse like this?" or "Waitaminute, how pregnant are we talking here?"
Eh.
You don't need an essay. For the knight you could appeal to his sense of chivalry. The lawyer you mentioned previously is fine, I can see someone in that line of work wanting to ruin an opponent via legal means.
Casting the suggestion "run away, it's what you're best at!" on Doom'or, Flayer of Elves as Legolith, Pranciest of Elves just isn't good enough for me but hey I'm a bit of a stickler mee-seeks.
You don't have to appeal to anything, the suggestion doesn't actually need to be reasonable, it just needs to sound reasonable
Like "you look tired, why don't you go take a nap?" is a reasonable sounding suggestion, it wouldn't *be* reasonable for a royal guard to follow it, but if they fail your save, they will
That sure sounds good, but if you're in the middle of combat? I mean an argument could be made that it was just as harmful as a suggestion as throwing yourself into a spear, and it would fail, because it doesn't alter their attitude towards anyone and if they think turning their back is going to get a crossbow bolt in it that wouldn't really apply
I'd also say Suggestion should be a bit more than "Give your horse to this man.", perhaps "This man's wife is pregnant. Lend him your horse, so he can be with her." and it would depend if the knight in question is a good alligned person or not.
Difference between Suggestion and regular Persuasion is that with suggestion his reaction would be "This man needs my help. I'll give him my horse." and he won't get those other thoughts that you get with regular persuasion like "Hang on, can you even ride a warhorse like this?" or "Waitaminute, how pregnant are we talking here?"
You can homebrew it that way, but the spell explicitly says you can suggest a knight give her warhorse to the first beggar she meets
In 4 years of running games I have never had anything ruined by suggestion, it's a concentration spell that works like charm and they're supposed to be powerful. Heat Metal is the same level and it's just a "kill armored target" button. Enemies abound is one level higher and you can use it to make a loyal retainer stab their lord in the face.
I do mostly have suggestion be ineffective in combat, clear and present danger "course of action that would be obviously harmful" overrides it, unless you're Suggesting an opponent flee
The harpers have a lot of dealings with mercenaries, even distasteful ones, I would say your post-game feeling that going nova was bad is probably the correct one
The party's alignment seems to more closely align with the Harpers. Did you have the mage explain what the cult of dragon is? I think if your party knew that their end goal was the destruction of mortal civilization at the hands of the living catastrophe that is Tiamat they probably would be like "oh yeah, well, we don't want that"
I would not cast the harpers as enemies to your party unless you want the campaign sliding into murder hoboville, the most common cause of murderhobodom is the "good guys" being unreasonable assholes. Were I in the party's position, and playing an appropriate archetype, I might be liable (in character) to say "fuck the harpers, we're trying to save the goddamned world and they're opposing us? I guess those zealots are on our shit list"
Edit: Here's an idea, have the harpers give them a chance to prove that they are only working with the cult of the dragon out of convenience, but are not aligned with them. Maybe a mission to dig some dirt on them. I stole the Cult of the Dragon fortress of Skyreach for my Stormkings thunder game, maybe you could do something similar by tying an existing storm kings thunder quest into a Cult of the Dragon interest and let your players (covertly) thwart their plans to prove their good intentions to the Harpers. A side mission without their airship (so the cult doesn't know) to kill a dragon is always fun
1. dungeon
2. dragon
3. loot
4. 2 scoops of dead cultists
I reacted under the impression that the party did indeed know...because I explained it to them at the outset of the campaign when discussing the various factions of the North, and are often reminded this airship crew works for an EVIL dragon. Clearly they forgot or underestimated the severity. A lot of the NPC anger, from my point of view, is that the party was shown the secrets. Allowed into HQ, given the keys to the teleport network, etc. I acted as if it was a betrayal of his trust.
And while I DO sometime savour the tears of my players... thats usually with my other, longtime group. With this group I should have eased them into it first.
I did replace the Great Wyrm Cavern burial Mound encounter with a white dragon resting after eating the encounter that should have taken place as per the module. I was wondering how the party was going to handle that one vis a vis the cultists.
And I've been thinking all day about having that other female Harper mentioned in the Everlund/Harper section approach the party AFTER either that encounter or after the Iymrith encounter with an olive branch. With plenty of scrying in between, of course, to determine the party true allegiance
I don't like the Citadel Felbarr situation. Maybe the Harpers need to meddle in that situation!
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Descent into Avernus spoilers
So we’re entering the end game, probably be done by thanksgiving, and my character just signed a deal with asmodeus to become a high ranking devil and basically overhaul the recruitment process. Instead of just grabbing whole cities and turning the citizens into mindless fighters, instead ill work on making better deals with mortals to get high skilled talent into the demon wars. Im pretty much going to 5S hell.
I got some sweet ability score improvements from it! Also tireless servitude in an endless war.
The more I think about it the more irritated I am that Dragon Heist doesn't suggest anywhere in it that you can get a shit ton more information about what's going on in Waterdeep by reading Death Masks
It had so much information about the state of Waterdeep after the Second Sundering and how fucked everything is, and how much better off it is by 1491 when the module takes place. Omin Drahn is even in it, which I appreciated as an Acq Inc fan. Also, every hooker in the docks knows the Xanathar is a beholder, and a particularly crafty one at that. Xanathar used to have a bunch of Death Tyrants slaved to him before Laeral went down and blasted them all to pieces as well (and this is only a few years before the module)
also Laeral, that's not her body! Elminster changed into her so she could be in two places at once, and then she got blown the hell up by the #2 of the watchful order. Elminster dipped from the body so she could take it over, and ended up taking over an Illithid victim.
So Laeral is just running around in Elminster's body (and as she noted with some annoyance, more shapely version than her original, unsurprising given that Elminster is just the slightest bit of a lech), a particularly powerful dispel magic could pop her into being an old man at any time
I feel the same way about COS and I, Strahd, although there are many more significant changes there. (the biggest change in Death Masks is that like, King Hecaton and his wife have different names, as do the Cloud Giant scholars that pop over the city - yeah the same Waterdeep event from SKT because it's happening during the book, which also makes it REALLY CLEAR why it was hard to get any help from against the giants, Waterdeep's masked lords are being assassinated left and right!)
Anyone else play artificer here? If so, what do you think of the Infusion system?
I have opinions on it, but i'm curious what other people think before i start a side project of hacking it apart and rebuilding it to not annoy me so much.
I like infusions, I dislike "replicate magic item". My gaming group has decided that artificers can examine an item to get its infusion (determined by rarity vs artificer level), so instead of "replicate magic item" giving you a list, it just gives you the ability to replicate magic items (you can pick it if you want an item on the list though)
This leads to a lot of artificer getting in the faces of NPCs and asking them a billion questions about their magic sword or whatever, so it's a mechanic that directly leads into fantastic roleplay
Anyone else play artificer here? If so, what do you think of the Infusion system?
I have opinions on it, but i'm curious what other people think before i start a side project of hacking it apart and rebuilding it to not annoy me so much.
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mark summarizes what the game actually LOOKS like without going into rules and shit
Yeah. Like if your character has a swim speed or a climb speed? Fucking go nuts.
Example: The party needed to swim through a flooded cave area. Mellys, the party's merfolk rouge has a swim speed. So no check for her, this is easy. Everyone else got a check, because cave swiming aint the wisest of ideas. (and mellys was able to Help each of them, which meant that only the skeleton nearly drowned.)
PCs are, in general, competent. Therefore, treat them like they're competent.
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We were employed to find a thieves guild and take down its leader. I left one of my followers in town and another at the entrance to the hideout. The only follower to accompany me the whole time was a gnome girl who just so happened to earn a charm of increased carrying capacity from a chwinga. My druid was mostly silent while the majority of my roleplaying was through the excitable gnome girl who, after we encountered a stairway where each step triggered a spike to shoot out from the wall that was always above her head, insisted on slowly walking down and examining all three of the other staircases we encountered first to make sure they were safe.
The player of the paladin in the first session didn't show up for the second, so, it ended up being a couple of rogues the DM has previously used as player characters fighting my druid, a sorcerer, and a rogue. The sorcerer ended up burning down the thieves' guild's ship using two fireballs and finishing off one of the enemy rogues, but ultimately we all were reduced to 0 hp and making saves to stabilize. All except the gnome girl, who was cruelly killed before the surviving enemy rogue carried his dead ally's body away. Luckily I rolled a natural 20 to regain consciousness with one hit point and dragged the party and the gnome's corpse to hide in a pit trap we had previously found. As an elf I was able to take a long rest in only four hours while the rogue took four hours to wake up from unconsciousness. We found we couldn't open the ceiling of the pit trap, but luckily I had chosen gaseous form as a spell and was able to escape to free the others (and raise my fallen gnome follower as a zombie).
In the end the thieves guild ended up escaping with a lot of the loot and causing a major prison break. The sorcerer decided to leave town on a horse while the rogue and I engaged in PvP in the tavern after he took offense to my offer to join me as a follower. I ended up killing him with moon beam and had my remaining follower carry the corpse out of the panicked town. Following another four hour rest I animated the rogue as a zombie and reestablished my control over the gnome zombie before hijacking a wagon so my single live follower and two zombies could ride off to parts unknown.
Ok so I gotta ask, how did the Skeleton nearly drown? I feel that a Skeleton would be ideally suited to traversing an underwater environment.
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It was a mystery to everyone how the skeleton failed that badly. He had the help action!
Slightly more seriously: The Undead in terra incognita are animated by mystic plants in part. They might look like skeletons/ghostly people/mummified corpses, but life is very much a part of them, and they're still very much vulnerable to things like drowning, starvation, etcera. The flipside is they dont suffer from any of the usual undead maladies, and even benefit form stuff like sunlight.
Also, it was funnier if the skeleton nearly drowned because i play DnD 110% seriously.
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That sounds super cool, and story wise the skeleton being the one to almost drown is super choice.
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Re: critical failures, our DM always has us roll another D20. Another 1 is an actual critical failure, a 20 will result in you succeeding, but suffering a penalty, and anything in between is just a whiff.
Examples that actually happened to that Rogue I was mentioning earlier, she got into the habit of doing drop attacks. On one of them she rolled a 1 and a 20 and shanked the hell out of someone, only for them to roll over on top of her and bury her under.
On another she got a 1 and a 1 and shanked the hell out of a party member.
I just love the metnal image of doing the full on Assassin's creed diving assassination, only to realize you landed on bob the bold instead of brad the bastard
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Fuckin Bob had it comin, though.
So yesterday's morning one-shot was canceled because two players were on vacation out of state and another couldn't come because his daughter was having surgery on her knee (one of her sheep broke it!). I could have run the game with just two players but decided to cancel it to save on stress. The Spelljammer game seemed to go pretty well though, I thought! It started with the party in mid-dungeon, but I went ahead and skipped em to the end (it was the sidescrolling dungeon that I thought was cool in theory, but in practice wasn't that great). Boss fight! Two mages with some meatshields closer to the door, and as soon as I finished describing what the party sees, their wizard immediately says they cast Magnify Gravity (they're playing a Graviturgist from the Wildemount book). I said sure, fuck it, why not, The two thugs and two mages were hit, both mages lost their con saves of course and took nearly full damage while the thugs passed. After that the party beat up the meatshields while the wizard killed both mages singlehandedly (after nearly dying himself), and then the two surviving thugs surrendered and pleaded for mercy. Surprisingly the party gave it to them, in the form of being tied up and left for the local constabulary. They found some goodies and left. They went back to the inn they'd been staying at and the aasimar paladin had a dream from her celestial guide telling her she needed to find the murderer of her friend, the party's fighter (he's a hollow one from the Wildemount book). I had a lot of fun narrating the entire dream sequence, even though it was originally going to be myself and the paladin reading her parts of the script together (she chickened out last second). So she wakes everyone up and says they need to go, they do some last minute shopping on the Rock of Bral and pay a taxispelljammer ship captain they had done some minor work for before to take them to the planet Toril, specifically Waterdeep. Once they got there the captain got shot in the face by an unknown assassin, but since no further attacks came the party figured it was aimed for one of them (I guess so, but mostly it was an excuse for me to get rid of the captain and now the ship has now owner! Oh no, I wonder who will inherit the magical space boat now? 🤔) They eventually decided to check out the scene of the fighter's murder but find nothing there that was helpful, so they check out their previous place of employment (sort of like cops, but mercs). They get some info from their old boss, meet an old coworker, head off for clues. That's basically where I ended it since I didn't have much else planned.
I'm thinking give em a small handful of places to check out, and wherever they go first they'll spot someone that obviously recognizes the paladin and fighter and runs, so chase sequence! Dunno if it'll be the assassin or someone linked to em, but they'll point them towards one of the other two places to check, where the party finds a fight and some info about a cult of necromancers trying to raise an army. The third place will be said cult and a boss fight with a guy that looks like Soulblighter from Myth 2, because a dude that cuts his own lips and nose off and removes his heart in a dark ritual for power is pretty fuckin metal. Once the boss dies, the fighter will die for real this time since the power animating him is gone. His player already has another character lined up because he wasn't real thrilled with that one, and I'll have the party meet him somehow. Hell, maybe they'll help in the investigation, we'll see.
Getting clever with what a bad roll means based on the character's competence in that area makes everything feel a lot better imo, but it does often involve the DM either making small character decisions or retconning the challenge on the fly to explain a failure.
If a character screws up something not exceptionally challenging in an area of proficiency, or especially in an area of expertise, I don't think it works well for it just to be 'you did it bad because you had a brain fart', unless that's something in-character or there's a good excuse in the scene for an unforced error.
Some relatively unpredictable complication (the lock was actually damaged and now you've jammed it, that 'tell' was just an implausible coincidental personal tic), a mistake tied directly to character flaw, etc.
It's a real nice spelljamming vessel though, a hammership!
So, as per the module's options, early on the party became Harper adjacent in order to access the network of Teleportation Circles. Adventure continues and the party also accepts the free ride the Cult of the Dragon provides in the form of an airship. Of course they're leery about accepting rides from the followers of the Ancient might Red Dragon Klauth, but hey, Airship! Adventure continues, party bounces from Burial Mound to Burial Mound uncovering giant relics stolen by the barbarians many moons ago. In the process the airship gets damaged and puts down a days walk from Yartar for repairs. According to the book, to repair 1hp takes a day of work by the airships dragon cultist crew. So that is 40 in game days to fully repair the ship. Party does some stuff in and around Yartar, takes a sidequest to Chult, comes back collects their reward, does another local Burial Mound and then reingages with the Harpers in Yartar to access the Circle. They bounce back to Everlund (on their way to the Grandfather Tree) and decide to pop upstairs in Moonbeam Tower to confer with the Archmage about what they've been doing so far and any advice he has to give, (Answer: "You've spoken to the Oracle???!!! One, tell me everything and two, Do what she tells you to!") and for information about Klauth. I give the spiel that they mostly already know about he's the biggest bad this side of the Mississippi etc. (They haven't met Iymrith yet) and so on so forth. Everything seems fine!
Then the arcane trickster player, who explicitly calls out his low wisdom as motivation, says, "So...what does it mean that we're travelling around with the Cult of the Dragon in one of their airships." All the air deflates in the room. The Archmage sends his flying cats out the room and soon the booted footsteps of knights and other Harper guards can be heard. All jovialness and scholarly interest is gone as the party bluntly reveals, while standing in the secret hideout of the Harpers and having vital knowledge of their secret teleportation network, they the fools standing right in front of him are worked with the enemy. The Bard player (who was three beers in) starts some spiel to try and salvage the situation and challenges the archmage on his right to make judgement calls on the party. Now, after the fact, I realize that the player didn't intend the challenge but wanted to draw a comparison that they're not full Harpers and their not full Cultists either. But instead it came out more like, "who are you to tell me who I can't see?". So, yeah, the archmage was pissed and kicked the party out of the tower and locked them out of the Network.
My players were flabbergasted. They did not see that coming. At the end of the session, which otherwise went well, we had a bit of a pow-wow and I reminded them of the very contentious relationship between Harpers and Cultists. Like an arch enemy kind of thing. One works to foster freedom amongst the goodly peoples, the other works to bring those same people until the tyrannical heel of the dragons. They had no idea of the conflict between the two groups. Now, I explicitly told them them this both in the Phandelver portion of the campaign and when we started SKT. Maybe they glossed over it, maybe they forgot. They're mostly new-ish players who clearly don't have the same grasp on the background relations between the factions. I regret now going nova on the situation and probably would have been better served with a classic DM line: "Are you sure you want to say that?" and reminded them how the factions relate.
I wonder how I can walk this back without directly reconning it? I was thinikng to have the archmage be so upset because he lost someone dear to him and maybe have another high ranking Harper scry on the party for a while, discern their true allegiances and motivations, and make another approach. Should I even bother, or just let them stew in their consequences? I dunno...
The skeleton in question, in case you're curious (crosspost from SE thread):
The front wall had two doors separated by about 50 feet of stone wall. So the cleric of tyr went to one, while the artificer who worships Gond went to the other. When a set of guards opened each door, they had different approaches. The artificer announced that they were collecting tithes for Gond and needed a thousand gold pieces in order to return to the temple, while the cleric of Tyr announced he was just here to chat and spread the word of Tyr.
So they rolled persuasion checks. The cleric of Tyr got over a twenty, the Artificer of Gond rolled a five. They shut the gate on the artificer, who started loudly shouting over the wall. (Meanwhile the group in the back has scaled the wall, snuck into the back door of the manor house, encountered the Butler and the Maid, tied them up and started interrogating them).
One of the guards leans out and says "Hey! Shut up that racket!" then looking at the cleric "Some people, am I right?"
The cleric then says "Wanna go beat him up?"
Roll for initiative! The guards charge forward. The artificer with his steel guardian start to fend the guards off, while the cleric starts walking up behind the guards and murderizing them. He did 15 damage with an inflict wounds spell which made that guard melt like he saw the ark of the covenant.
Then, while the group inside has progressed into the kitchen and is convincing the cook that no really it's okay they're just here to deliver some goods (the barbarian literally has a keg he carries around as his totem and the sorcerer used to own a bakery so she had a big bundle of muffins), the two outside the wall hide the bodies in some bushes and then repeat that trick two more times to completely clean out the patrolling guards.
We were laughing in horrified awe.
We did that in a one-shot once. Took out all the guards outside with bows, then pretended to be the guards and called for backup from inside, yelling about being attacked. Inside guards run out to help us, we bonk them to death, and repeat. Killed like 6 guards this way before they caught on inside the manor house. It was all for naught though, one of my characters and one of the other player's characters died trying to stop the demon summoning, while my other character was knocked unconscious and the other player's other character ran away. Demon got summoned and assumed my unconscious character was one of hiss followers, and the cultists didn't bother correcting him. It was a good game, and now that player is playing that character's son looking for vengeance against evil demon worshipping cults in one of our campaigns lol
I mean the Harper's are a secretive organization and the Dragon Cultists even more so. A random adventurer is as likely as not to know about they're relationship. Lean into it, I say. Now they have to save people who hate and fear them, like x men.
Cool. Because I was kind of OK with it too after the session....but the players looked like I kicked their dog on the zoom screens, and this morning I felt bad.
now you have a bunch of options, for example you could audible the archmage into a new recurring villain if you want and have other harpers try to stop em, or have other cultists show up to help them and trigger additional misunderstandings, or something like that.
The party's alignment seems to more closely align with the Harpers. Did you have the mage explain what the cult of dragon is? I think if your party knew that their end goal was the destruction of mortal civilization at the hands of the living catastrophe that is Tiamat they probably would be like "oh yeah, well, we don't want that"
I would not cast the harpers as enemies to your party unless you want the campaign sliding into murder hoboville, the most common cause of murderhobodom is the "good guys" being unreasonable assholes. Were I in the party's position, and playing an appropriate archetype, I might be liable (in character) to say "fuck the harpers, we're trying to save the goddamned world and they're opposing us? I guess those zealots are on our shit list"
Edit: Here's an idea, have the harpers give them a chance to prove that they are only working with the cult of the dragon out of convenience, but are not aligned with them. Maybe a mission to dig some dirt on them. I stole the Cult of the Dragon fortress of Skyreach for my Stormkings thunder game, maybe you could do something similar by tying an existing storm kings thunder quest into a Cult of the Dragon interest and let your players (covertly) thwart their plans to prove their good intentions to the Harpers. A side mission without their airship (so the cult doesn't know) to kill a dragon is always fun
1. dungeon
2. dragon
3. loot
4. 2 scoops of dead cultists
She was really the only difficult creature so they mopped up the guys with the knives and the imp pretty damn fast. I was extremely impressed and also a little miffed that she never even got a turn.
Depends on the DM.
If that was a cleric of Tempus, for example, no fucking way is she running to taddle to the city watch.
In that situation, given that the cleric and her friends were out for blood, a simple "go get the city watch" wouldn't have done it for me.
I'd want a rationale for someone to drop what they're doing and do the polar opposite.
Lady wasn't a cleric, she was a rival lawyer! The party's cleric is also a lawyer and they were trying to get paid after dropping someone's decapitated head into a tree. They thought they were coming back to pick up the gold, so I figured it made sense that aside from just stabbing them to death, a reasonable course of action was "I'll go get the city watch and show them these MURDERERS in this park, and as a respected lawyer, they'll believe me and help kill them!"
Plus now I get to have that lady show back up and be all "NOT THIS TIME"
The spell traditionally gave the example you could tell folks that pools of acid are actually water and they'd enjoy a quick dip.
It just has to sound reasonable.
but you can totally suggest someone give up adventuring and go become a farmer and for the next 8 hours they're out of your life, unless you lose concentration. You can actually suggest that a Cleric give up worshipping their god and they'll do it, until the spell ends, and then be *very upset*
I mean charm person is a level 1 spell that isn't concentration and makes you totally incapable of taking hostile action against the caster, save or suck spells are ... well, really sucky to be hit with
Now one of my players wants to start a mine and build a headquarters outside the Seven-Pillared Hall. There's a dwarven company that funds prospectors, as well as a rival clan of duergar. I've decided that both will propose that the party find a section of the Well of Demons to start their mine in. It will be much cheaper and less time consuming to build their headquarters/mine in the Well of Demons as there are already existing chambers they can renovate, and plenty of poor squatters in the ruins who might be interested in employment. Plus the miners might uncover lost treasures from the ancient minotaur civilization (that eventually fell prey to the Madness of Baphomet and summoned demons into their domain, the spirits of which might still lie in wait in said lost treasures).
The dwarves didn't do this themselves because they're from Kraghammer, the very conservative center of mountain dwarf culture on the continent that doesn't much care for anyone who isn't a dwarf (or possibly a rock gnome). They'd rather proxies work man the mine. The duergar will fund the mine but will secretly try to sabotage the players' efforts at paying what they owe so that they can justify taking direct control of the mine and treating the workers as harsh as they can without provoking the outrage of the nearby Hall's dwarven company (who are themselves mostly hypocrites who use indentured servants that only get to see their families one day a month, as well as the labor of prisoners; one of the priests in the Hall is effectively an expatriate of Kraghammer who is appalled by her home city and its culture).
If you can't tell I'm really trying to sell that the resident dwarves aren't "good" just because they aren't duergar. I decided on that after reading the write-up on Kraghammer in the Tal'Dorei setting guide and being frankly shocked at what bastards the city's nobles are. Members of two of the noble houses even once collaborated to incinerate a peaceful myconid colony just because one of the noble houses wanted to mine in that cavern. I'm considering that the long term goal of the duergar is to seize control of the Underdark below Kraghammer and eventually convince the wealthy of the dwarven capital, who ostensibly revere the Lawful Good deity Moradin, that they've abandoned their god and might as well turn to worshiping devils like the duergar do.
I'm planning to run a yuan-ti centric campaign one day. They all get Suggestion, so before I run a campaign full of creatures that can cast it I'm throwing a small group of them in the Underdark campaign I'm running now to see how that goes.
There was a long-ish thread over on ENWorld about Suggestion in which a new DM expressed annoyance that one of their players ended a combat with an aboleth by casting Suggestion to command it to "fuck off". This sparked a lot of debate, with some people saying "yeah, sometimes players can ruin your plans". My first comment was "I wouldn't have allowed the command 'fuck off' to work for the spell in the first place, and even if I did I'd have the aboleth move away until it couldn't see the caster anymore, at which point I'd rule the suggestion fulfilled and have it come right back."
After a long period of debate, this is the gist of what I came up with for how I think Suggestion should be handled:
Someone else posted this guideline:
BTW, this surprisingly appropriate Monty Python clip was posted for the "fuck off" suggestion:
The salient point about the knight and the warhouse paragraph is that suggestion can be triggered by a specific event; it needn't be something the target must do now or actively search out.
Which isn't say you can't persuade a knight to give away his/her warhorse, it's just that you're going to need a really good argument to make that course of action seem reasonable to the knight. Props to any player with a great imagination.
But the spell is limited to a sentence or two. You don't have time to make a good argument to the knight, that's why it's magic!
Eh.
You don't need an essay. For the knight you could appeal to his sense of chivalry. The lawyer you mentioned previously is fine, I can see someone in that line of work wanting to ruin an opponent via legal means.
Casting the suggestion "run away, it's what you're best at!" on Doom'or, Flayer of Elves as Legolith, Pranciest of Elves just isn't good enough for me but hey I'm a bit of a stickler mee-seeks.
Difference between Suggestion and regular Persuasion is that with suggestion his reaction would be "This man needs my help. I'll give him my horse." and he won't get those other thoughts that you get with regular persuasion like "Hang on, can you even ride a warhorse like this?" or "Waitaminute, how pregnant are we talking here?"
You don't have to appeal to anything, the suggestion doesn't actually need to be reasonable, it just needs to sound reasonable
Like "you look tired, why don't you go take a nap?" is a reasonable sounding suggestion, it wouldn't *be* reasonable for a royal guard to follow it, but if they fail your save, they will
That sure sounds good, but if you're in the middle of combat? I mean an argument could be made that it was just as harmful as a suggestion as throwing yourself into a spear, and it would fail, because it doesn't alter their attitude towards anyone and if they think turning their back is going to get a crossbow bolt in it that wouldn't really apply
You can homebrew it that way, but the spell explicitly says you can suggest a knight give her warhorse to the first beggar she meets
In 4 years of running games I have never had anything ruined by suggestion, it's a concentration spell that works like charm and they're supposed to be powerful. Heat Metal is the same level and it's just a "kill armored target" button. Enemies abound is one level higher and you can use it to make a loyal retainer stab their lord in the face.
I do mostly have suggestion be ineffective in combat, clear and present danger "course of action that would be obviously harmful" overrides it, unless you're Suggesting an opponent flee
I reacted under the impression that the party did indeed know...because I explained it to them at the outset of the campaign when discussing the various factions of the North, and are often reminded this airship crew works for an EVIL dragon. Clearly they forgot or underestimated the severity. A lot of the NPC anger, from my point of view, is that the party was shown the secrets. Allowed into HQ, given the keys to the teleport network, etc. I acted as if it was a betrayal of his trust.
And while I DO sometime savour the tears of my players... thats usually with my other, longtime group. With this group I should have eased them into it first.
I did replace the Great Wyrm Cavern burial Mound encounter with a white dragon resting after eating the encounter that should have taken place as per the module. I was wondering how the party was going to handle that one vis a vis the cultists.
And I've been thinking all day about having that other female Harper mentioned in the Everlund/Harper section approach the party AFTER either that encounter or after the Iymrith encounter with an olive branch. With plenty of scrying in between, of course, to determine the party true allegiance
I don't like the Citadel Felbarr situation. Maybe the Harpers need to meddle in that situation!
I got some sweet ability score improvements from it! Also tireless servitude in an endless war.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
It had so much information about the state of Waterdeep after the Second Sundering and how fucked everything is, and how much better off it is by 1491 when the module takes place. Omin Drahn is even in it, which I appreciated as an Acq Inc fan. Also, every hooker in the docks knows the Xanathar is a beholder, and a particularly crafty one at that. Xanathar used to have a bunch of Death Tyrants slaved to him before Laeral went down and blasted them all to pieces as well (and this is only a few years before the module)
also Laeral, that's not her body! Elminster changed into her so she could be in two places at once, and then she got blown the hell up by the #2 of the watchful order. Elminster dipped from the body so she could take it over, and ended up taking over an Illithid victim.
So Laeral is just running around in Elminster's body (and as she noted with some annoyance, more shapely version than her original, unsurprising given that Elminster is just the slightest bit of a lech), a particularly powerful dispel magic could pop her into being an old man at any time
I feel the same way about COS and I, Strahd, although there are many more significant changes there. (the biggest change in Death Masks is that like, King Hecaton and his wife have different names, as do the Cloud Giant scholars that pop over the city - yeah the same Waterdeep event from SKT because it's happening during the book, which also makes it REALLY CLEAR why it was hard to get any help from against the giants, Waterdeep's masked lords are being assassinated left and right!)
Anyone else play artificer here? If so, what do you think of the Infusion system?
I have opinions on it, but i'm curious what other people think before i start a side project of hacking it apart and rebuilding it to not annoy me so much.
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This leads to a lot of artificer getting in the faces of NPCs and asking them a billion questions about their magic sword or whatever, so it's a mechanic that directly leads into fantastic roleplay
I loved Artificer in 3.5!
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Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]