Me and my friends are kinda like this, also met ages ago and are now in our forties *shudder*. We are lucky that we can usually still meet up once a month to do a proper full days worth of pen and paper rpg's but we have also recently started to try out things like roll20.net for that quick fix. We try to do one or two small sessions of perhaps 2 hours online per month. We went with Dungeons and Dragons for the online games since we had never tried it and it appeared to be the best supported game and we have a separate campaign in a different game.. or well multiple games tbh... that we play when we meet up. The most fun is ofc had when we all meet up.
This is my group. I'm 41. We play a monthly game in person where I've known 4 of the 5 people there since High School. I've known 1 of them since middle school. We do a full day game that day and I'm usually home past 2am.
Then we do a weekly game on discord/roll20. The group is mostly the same but a few people are different. It's fun, but no where near as good as the in person game.
Back to the upcoming Curse of Strahd game, apparently we're making normal Sword Coast characters that end up in Ravenloft. My Tiefling bard is going to be all Devil Horns and Lute Rock, the only dirges will be power dirges.
I was thumbing through the rogue entries in Xanathar's the other day, as one does, and noticed the Mastermind's Master of Tactics feature. Am I reading it right, that letting you Help as a bonus action at 30 feet means you're handing out free advantage to an ally every round? That seems pretty cool, though balanced out by the fact that burning your bonus on helping means you can't use it to hide again. Still. Kinda neat.
I was thumbing through the rogue entries in Xanathar's the other day, as one does, and noticed the Mastermind's Master of Tactics feature. Am I reading it right, that letting you Help as a bonus action at 30 feet means you're handing out free advantage to an ally every round? That seems pretty cool, though balanced out by the fact that burning your bonus on helping means you can't use it to hide again. Still. Kinda neat.
Yeah, rogues have a lot of uses of their bonus action but that one isn't bad if you've already hit that round so have minimal reason to TWF or whatever.
I was thumbing through the rogue entries in Xanathar's the other day, as one does, and noticed the Mastermind's Master of Tactics feature. Am I reading it right, that letting you Help as a bonus action at 30 feet means you're handing out free advantage to an ally every round? That seems pretty cool, though balanced out by the fact that burning your bonus on helping means you can't use it to hide again. Still. Kinda neat.
Yeah, rogues have a lot of uses of their bonus action but that one isn't bad if you've already hit that round so have minimal reason to TWF or whatever.
Indeed. I think it jumped out to me because the character I was playing in Steelhawk's game had a couple cool utility tricks (the Inspiring Leader feat and a couple maneuvers) to help out allies, and I really enjoyed those features. Kinda fun to be able to give an ally a bonus other than healing.
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silence1186Character shields down!As a wingmanRegistered Userregular
My weekly online game is taking a break from ETU and we're going to start the Curse of Strahd. So I spent the morning looking over character options. I'm super excited for it.
I've been very exited about Curse of Strahd for a long time now, but have yet to have the opportunity to play it. I really, really want to one day.
However! My IRL group is having a weekend dork-bender coming up at the end of the month and we'll be starting Tomb of Annihilation! Yay!
I've just started DMing Tomb of Annihilation on Roll 20 and the module there is amazing. Nearly everything you need is set up ahead of time, out of the box, for easy play and DMing. I've just needed to add a few maps for random encounters, but most of the story maps are included (with things like dynamic lighting all set up already). It's an amazing campaign and though we've only scratched the surface, I'm super excited for each week.
My one complaint would be having to use the default character sheets, instead of the custom ones we had, because uploading the custom character sheet would break all the monster sheets that are fully filled out, functional, and ready to go. The default character sheets aren't even that bad, so it's mostly a minor gripe.
A friend of mine also thought up a great gimmick, which I'm curious to hear folks' opinions on:
So we told our players I would solo DMing. However, my friend is the one who found the module, and came up with the idea that his character and a party NPC would accidentally bump into a magic object in the first session, and be magically merged into one body. So one character is in play at a given time, and the other is watching through the character's eyes (and occasionally retorting with the character's mouth). The NPC is really my PC, and my friend and I trade off, with one DMing, while the other pilots half of the PC (and does background support for the active DM). My friend and I have different things prepped, and swap PCs and the DM role as is appropriate.
Our only self-imposed rule is the DM-run PC can't help with puzzles, since we know all the answers. The PCs can ask our DM character to perform tasks (one is a grizzled, veteran Spy Bard, the other is a naive, pyromaniac Urchin Sorcerer). There's no guarantee the right PC will be available at any given time though (such as the Bard having Thieves' Tools and the ability to pick locks or disable traps).
Practically speaking we did it for a few reasons. One was the novelty factor, since we've never done anything like this in past campaigns, and my friend and I thought it was interesting and would shake things up. Two was to split the work, since Tomb of Annihilation starts out as a bit of a sandbox, so we can more easily adapt to what the players actually encounter/what direction they choose to go in, if one of us can actively DM while the other pulls out the relevant maps and tokens to what the PCs are approaching.
How much time did you spend in Port Nyanzaru before leaving for the jungle?
I sold my group the module based on dinosaur racing, so I'll need to highlight that a fair bit (Whee!). But after the initial introduction to the city, my group in particular would rather move on as there isn't really anything vital to do in the city, aside from fleshing it out. Is that correct?
How much time did you spend in Port Nyanzaru before leaving for the jungle?
I sold my group the module based on dinosaur racing, so I'll need to highlight that a fair bit (Whee!). But after the initial introduction to the city, my group in particular would rather move on as there isn't really anything vital to do in the city, aside from fleshing it out. Is that correct?
Are they not worried about running out of supplies? Maybe try to impress upon them the importance of hiring a gude.
How much time did you spend in Port Nyanzaru before leaving for the jungle?
I sold my group the module based on dinosaur racing, so I'll need to highlight that a fair bit (Whee!). But after the initial introduction to the city, my group in particular would rather move on as there isn't really anything vital to do in the city, aside from fleshing it out. Is that correct?
Are they not worried about running out of supplies? Maybe try to impress upon them the importance of hiring a gude.
Sorry... aside from the guides, I should have mentioned. In my mind, that was obvious. But knowing my players, the city would ONLY be a place to restock on supplies. If they choose to explore then the module provides plenty for them to lean into.
I was more asking if there was anything substantial that I would be missing if I glossed over the rest of the city.
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silence1186Character shields down!As a wingmanRegistered Userregular
How much time did you spend in Port Nyanzaru before leaving for the jungle?
I sold my group the module based on dinosaur racing, so I'll need to highlight that a fair bit (Whee!). But after the initial introduction to the city, my group in particular would rather move on as there isn't really anything vital to do in the city, aside from fleshing it out. Is that correct?
My group has done two 2.5 hour sessions in Port Nyanzaru. I've impressed the need for a large amount of supplies on them, and they're almost convinced they need a guide. I'm not sure how much longer they will stay in town though. I'd like to give them a breadth of options, and see what they run with.
The city has a fair amount of side quests that act as hooks for things you can run into in the jungle. You can just have the players stumble upon those things in the wild with no foreshadowing, if that's more your speed, though.
The main things to do are Dinosaur Racing, which is super fun, and then stock up on supplies for a multi-month journey, hire a guide (which they could theoretically do without), and gather information so they have an inkling of where to look for the main quest, or what to look for in the jungle. The PCs don't really start with a lot of info besides "find the cause of the death curse. It's in the jungle." "Yes, that enormous jungle." "No, I don't know where, or where you would even start looking."
My current character's gimmick is that, instead of worshiping any major gods, he instead has a book of prayers to many obscure deities. This paid off when I decided to offer a prayer to the Lord of Bats while the party was camped in front of a cave; a bat swarm appeared and attacked everyone but me! I guess I need to come up with a list of deities of very specific things.
- Darfella, the Whale Mother
- Neifon, the Lord of Bats
- Canetar, the Master of Swords
- Fekre, the Queen of Poxes
- The Primal Beast, First of All Hunters
- Stone Brother, the Oldest Ally
- Telesm, the Fortune Crafter
- Jvelto, the Supreme Sailor
- Payanel, the Tormented-Yet-Untamed
- Kronata, the Patient Wrath
- Charisis, She Who Closes Death's Door
- Ashtar, Keeper of the Supreme Salve
- Nesumnee, the Redeemed Fiend
- The Great Crab
- Selephra, the Bramble Queen
- Koliada, the Winter Witch
- Zorthos, God of Unbelievers
- Vezzuvu, the Burning Mountain
- Haemnathuun, the Lord of Blood
- Chitteruk, He Who Walks on 10,000 Legs
- Urdlen, the Earth Eater
- Thunder of Hooves
- Nahua, Emperor of the Cloud Court
- Relvetun, the Dog with A Thousand Teeth
EDIT: Chitteruk, He Who Walks on 10,000 Legs, is a centipede god. I just found out centipedes are in the order "myriapoda", which is derived from "myriad". Apparently in classical history the word "myriad" referred to 10,000. What a coincidence!
EDIT 2: While I drew the others from throughout D&D history, the last one is new. The title "Dog with a Thousand Teeth" is an It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia reference.
How much time did you spend in Port Nyanzaru before leaving for the jungle?
I sold my group the module based on dinosaur racing, so I'll need to highlight that a fair bit (Whee!). But after the initial introduction to the city, my group in particular would rather move on as there isn't really anything vital to do in the city, aside from fleshing it out. Is that correct?
My group has done two 2.5 hour sessions in Port Nyanzaru. I've impressed the need for a large amount of supplies on them, and they're almost convinced they need a guide. I'm not sure how much longer they will stay in town though. I'd like to give them a breadth of options, and see what they run with.
The city has a fair amount of side quests that act as hooks for things you can run into in the jungle. You can just have the players stumble upon those things in the wild with no foreshadowing, if that's more your speed, though.
This is kinda what I am getting at. I haven't given this part of the module a solid read quite yet. Aside from dropping background about the Yaun Ti big bad/why the jungle is filled with undead... are there any bits of foreshdowing that is reccomended that I should make sure my players know?
I've had the best time recently with my party doing cool things at a tournament that I'd love to tell you guys about, but for the moment I'm going to avoid doing that so that instead I can talk about the fun we've been having with one player and her quest for vengeance against those who obliterated her herd of sheep.
The one thing she has to go on, is a coat of arms that the player drew up way back in the day so that the rest of us out of character would know what it looked like and given that they're a bit of an artist it looked really good!
And this would have been just a quiet background thing, but I'm kind of a dick and decided it would be fun to have the character draw what the crest looks like with the catch being that the further below twenty the player rolls on an intelligence check to remember the pattern, the worse it looked as drawn by the player; this has led to some pretty ammusing results that I fully intend to upload a bit later when I have time and access to the digital images.
In a follow up session, One of my players wound up running into a previous character of hers and because she wanted to talk to her about some important matters at hand I ~again being a bit of a dick~ elected to have the player RP both characters out loud (it was easy to tell which was which because her current character is kind of a hick); an instance which led Ashley to describe the situation as Ashlerbation. This led to amongst other things the previous character getting into a screaming match with a bugbear chef (who had a french accent and a heart condition) so feirece he actually keeled over from a heart attack.
Like, I'd love to tell you guys about the intrigue surrounding tournament and how the palidin they had aligned themselves with was having matches skewed in his favor or how they resolved the situation to come out on top, but Ashley's presence just crushed it and is just about the only thing that comes to mind.
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silence1186Character shields down!As a wingmanRegistered Userregular
How much time did you spend in Port Nyanzaru before leaving for the jungle?
I sold my group the module based on dinosaur racing, so I'll need to highlight that a fair bit (Whee!). But after the initial introduction to the city, my group in particular would rather move on as there isn't really anything vital to do in the city, aside from fleshing it out. Is that correct?
My group has done two 2.5 hour sessions in Port Nyanzaru. I've impressed the need for a large amount of supplies on them, and they're almost convinced they need a guide. I'm not sure how much longer they will stay in town though. I'd like to give them a breadth of options, and see what they run with.
The city has a fair amount of side quests that act as hooks for things you can run into in the jungle. You can just have the players stumble upon those things in the wild with no foreshadowing, if that's more your speed, though.
This is kinda what I am getting at. I haven't given this part of the module a solid read quite yet. Aside from dropping background about the Yaun Ti big bad/why the jungle is filled with undead... are there any bits of foreshdowing that is reccomended that I should make sure my players know?
Yes. I recommend starting to tease the character Artus Cimber, because there's a lot of foreshadowing for him, and the way he's written almost guarantees an epic entrance for him. There's one side quest in Port Nyanzaru (Xandala iirc) that mentions him, but the long and short of it:
He's looking for his wife, and is immortal because of a relic he possesses. Almost every faction and person of note on the continent is looking for him, because of the relic he possesses. He's definitely the B-plot to the death curse's A-plot. If the PCs have met him, or know of his relic, it will change their interactions with most characters they run into.
He has a couple of entries of the random encounter table. The PCs encountering the jungle converted to a winter wonderland, or from atop a high vantage point, seeing a stampede of <insert something> chasing after him and his loyal cohort.
The book is pretty up front that the random encounter table has stuff for all levels, such that the PCs might die if they draw the wrong card (zombie spewing T-rex zombie, for example). Artus Cimber can show up and save the PCs like a Big Damn Hero. Or show up with a horde of zombies in tow, and be like "hey nice to meet you sorry about this but you guys should seriously run now bye (in one breath, without missing a step)."
How much time did you spend in Port Nyanzaru before leaving for the jungle?
I sold my group the module based on dinosaur racing, so I'll need to highlight that a fair bit (Whee!). But after the initial introduction to the city, my group in particular would rather move on as there isn't really anything vital to do in the city, aside from fleshing it out. Is that correct?
My group has done two 2.5 hour sessions in Port Nyanzaru. I've impressed the need for a large amount of supplies on them, and they're almost convinced they need a guide. I'm not sure how much longer they will stay in town though. I'd like to give them a breadth of options, and see what they run with.
The city has a fair amount of side quests that act as hooks for things you can run into in the jungle. You can just have the players stumble upon those things in the wild with no foreshadowing, if that's more your speed, though.
This is kinda what I am getting at. I haven't given this part of the module a solid read quite yet. Aside from dropping background about the Yaun Ti big bad/why the jungle is filled with undead... are there any bits of foreshdowing that is reccomended that I should make sure my players know?
Yes. I recommend starting to tease the character Artus Cimber, because there's a lot of foreshadowing for him, and the way he's written almost guarantees an epic entrance for him. There's one side quest in Port Nyanzaru (Xandala iirc) that mentions him, but the long and short of it:
He's looking for his wife, and is immortal because of a relic he possesses. Almost every faction and person of note on the continent is looking for him, because of the relic he possesses. He's definitely the B-plot to the death curse's A-plot. If the PCs have met him, or know of his relic, it will change their interactions with most characters they run into.
He has a couple of entries of the random encounter table. The PCs encountering the jungle converted to a winter wonderland, or from atop a high vantage point, seeing a stampede of <insert something> chasing after him and his loyal cohort.
The book is pretty up front that the random encounter table has stuff for all levels, such that the PCs might die if they draw the wrong card (zombie spewing T-rex zombie, for example). Artus Cimber can show up and save the PCs like a Big Damn Hero. Or show up with a horde of zombies in tow, and be like "hey nice to meet you sorry about this but you guys should seriously run now bye (in one breath, without missing a step)."
Thanks for the info! I need to start prepping my encounters and the flow of the game session and this has been helpful.
I fully expect dinosaur racing to play a huge part in the beginning. Mainly because I want to trample someone with a raging triceratops who has thrown its rider.
Is Artus Cinder and his plot are there, yes, but are they really applicable to the main adventure though? It seems like he's just there, hanging out, on the run from giants, just in case you want to include him. I must be missing something.
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silence1186Character shields down!As a wingmanRegistered Userregular
Is Artus Cinder and his plot are there, yes, but are they really applicable to the main adventure though? It seems like he's just there, hanging out, on the run from giants, just in case you want to include him. I must be missing something.
I don't have the book in front of me but I believe he has beef with the Yuan-ti.
I thought some here might be interested in knowing Pathfinder 2E was announced yesterday: Pathfinder 2E Playtest
Watch it be a 5E clone.
EDIT: They've apparently decided to replace the term "race" with "ancestry". I understand the idea behind it, but it still seems odd. Also, they totally stole the proficiency bonus from 5E.
I was scratching my head trying to figure out who y'all were talking about, and then I remembered my DM saying he was gonna be injecting some of his own juice into Tomb of Annihilation. So whenever I get to posting my session logs, look out, because a lot of NPCs and factions might not be the same as the book.
Yeah I'm interested to see what 5.25E looks like. I like the flavor of some of the Pathfinder stuff, and the system being freely available is really nice, but I am not a fan of actually playing Pathfinder.
Wait is Pathfinder 2 still going to be open content? Or is that one of the reasons for the new edition?
Wait is Pathfinder 2 still going to be open content? Or is that one of the reasons for the new edition?
I sorta doubt they have the choice. If they're still publishing based on the OGL from 3rd then that limits their ability to be closed content.
It would be a weird move to try and close off their content. It's a big part of their brand identity and there may be enough legal wiggle room to let Hasbro lawyers kick up a fuss.
How much time did you spend in Port Nyanzaru before leaving for the jungle?
I sold my group the module based on dinosaur racing, so I'll need to highlight that a fair bit (Whee!). But after the initial introduction to the city, my group in particular would rather move on as there isn't really anything vital to do in the city, aside from fleshing it out. Is that correct?
My group has done two 2.5 hour sessions in Port Nyanzaru. I've impressed the need for a large amount of supplies on them, and they're almost convinced they need a guide. I'm not sure how much longer they will stay in town though. I'd like to give them a breadth of options, and see what they run with.
The city has a fair amount of side quests that act as hooks for things you can run into in the jungle. You can just have the players stumble upon those things in the wild with no foreshadowing, if that's more your speed, though.
This is kinda what I am getting at. I haven't given this part of the module a solid read quite yet. Aside from dropping background about the Yaun Ti big bad/why the jungle is filled with undead... are there any bits of foreshdowing that is reccomended that I should make sure my players know?
Yes. I recommend starting to tease the character Artus Cimber, because there's a lot of foreshadowing for him, and the way he's written almost guarantees an epic entrance for him. There's one side quest in Port Nyanzaru (Xandala iirc) that mentions him, but the long and short of it:
He's looking for his wife, and is immortal because of a relic he possesses. Almost every faction and person of note on the continent is looking for him, because of the relic he possesses. He's definitely the B-plot to the death curse's A-plot. If the PCs have met him, or know of his relic, it will change their interactions with most characters they run into.
He has a couple of entries of the random encounter table. The PCs encountering the jungle converted to a winter wonderland, or from atop a high vantage point, seeing a stampede of <insert something> chasing after him and his loyal cohort.
The book is pretty up front that the random encounter table has stuff for all levels, such that the PCs might die if they draw the wrong card (zombie spewing T-rex zombie, for example). Artus Cimber can show up and save the PCs like a Big Damn Hero. Or show up with a horde of zombies in tow, and be like "hey nice to meet you sorry about this but you guys should seriously run now bye (in one breath, without missing a step)."
Thanks for the info! I need to start prepping my encounters and the flow of the game session and this has been helpful.
I fully expect dinosaur racing to play a huge part in the beginning. Mainly because I want to trample someone with a raging triceratops who has thrown its rider.
I hope you chime in from time to time how your campaign goes; I'm interested to compare notes.
How much time did you spend in Port Nyanzaru before leaving for the jungle?
I sold my group the module based on dinosaur racing, so I'll need to highlight that a fair bit (Whee!). But after the initial introduction to the city, my group in particular would rather move on as there isn't really anything vital to do in the city, aside from fleshing it out. Is that correct?
My group has done two 2.5 hour sessions in Port Nyanzaru. I've impressed the need for a large amount of supplies on them, and they're almost convinced they need a guide. I'm not sure how much longer they will stay in town though. I'd like to give them a breadth of options, and see what they run with.
The city has a fair amount of side quests that act as hooks for things you can run into in the jungle. You can just have the players stumble upon those things in the wild with no foreshadowing, if that's more your speed, though.
This is kinda what I am getting at. I haven't given this part of the module a solid read quite yet. Aside from dropping background about the Yaun Ti big bad/why the jungle is filled with undead... are there any bits of foreshdowing that is reccomended that I should make sure my players know?
Yes. I recommend starting to tease the character Artus Cimber, because there's a lot of foreshadowing for him, and the way he's written almost guarantees an epic entrance for him. There's one side quest in Port Nyanzaru (Xandala iirc) that mentions him, but the long and short of it:
He's looking for his wife, and is immortal because of a relic he possesses. Almost every faction and person of note on the continent is looking for him, because of the relic he possesses. He's definitely the B-plot to the death curse's A-plot. If the PCs have met him, or know of his relic, it will change their interactions with most characters they run into.
He has a couple of entries of the random encounter table. The PCs encountering the jungle converted to a winter wonderland, or from atop a high vantage point, seeing a stampede of <insert something> chasing after him and his loyal cohort.
The book is pretty up front that the random encounter table has stuff for all levels, such that the PCs might die if they draw the wrong card (zombie spewing T-rex zombie, for example). Artus Cimber can show up and save the PCs like a Big Damn Hero. Or show up with a horde of zombies in tow, and be like "hey nice to meet you sorry about this but you guys should seriously run now bye (in one breath, without missing a step)."
Thanks for the info! I need to start prepping my encounters and the flow of the game session and this has been helpful.
I fully expect dinosaur racing to play a huge part in the beginning. Mainly because I want to trample someone with a raging triceratops who has thrown its rider.
I hope you chime in from time to time how your campaign goes; I'm interested to compare notes.
I see what I can do to keep decent notes! Sometimes the consumables of the weekend take their toll.
Anybody have a good playlist (preferably downloadable) for D&D sessions to recommend?
I've been listening to a lot of Critical Role lately, and their use of background music throughout the whole session is great. Even though its only 2 or 3 tracks looped, its very effective. Somewher around ep 60 Matt's Ipad went out and they dropped the music and boy was its absence notable. Usually we have like funky jazz or something else ambient just playing in the background. This time I was thinking to put in something more appropriate as background music.
Anybody have a good playlist (preferably downloadable) for D&D sessions to recommend?
I've been listening to a lot of Critical Role lately, and their use of background music throughout the whole session is great. Even though its only 2 or 3 tracks looped, its very effective. Somewher around ep 60 Matt's Ipad went out and they dropped the music and boy was its absence notable. Usually we have like funky jazz or something else ambient just playing in the background. This time I was thinking to put in something more appropriate as background music.
Skyrim soundtrack, Oblivion soundtrack, Icewind Dale soundtrack, Ori and the Blind Forest soundtrack.... Etc.
Oblivion is a good idea, thanks! I had already thought about Skyrim, but its so well known to my friends and I that they would instantly peg it and then go off on Skyrim tangents. But Oblivion would work.
Oblivion is a good idea, thanks! I had already thought about Skyrim, but its so well known to my friends and I that they would instantly peg it and then go off on Skyrim tangents. But Oblivion would work.
I'll follow that link later and see what its got.
Oblivion is a lot more cookie-cutter fantasy, so usually works pretty well with Forgotten Realms shit, just like most of the old crpg's from the Infinity Engine era. Same goes for Dragon Age, Divinity, Fable, Gothic and Dungeon Siege. They all have elaborate and long fantasy soundtracks and I would be hard-pressed to remember a single theme from them.
(and they're on Youtube, so as long as you're not streaming you can just plop it on in the background and you're done)
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
Paizo have found out what Wizards already knew: That you need to eventually get a new edition to revitalize sales. I'm also sure they've noticed how much 5E has "Taken back" DnD in general mindshare/market and that this is a response to that. I'm not surprised at all it is becoming more 5E like.
I find it terribly Ironic that Paizo ~having ridden 3.5 to vast sums of money~ are trying the same thing with 5e.
When what they should be doing if I may be so bold as to offer a suggestion to successful RPG developers, is to cut down on the size of their god damn rule book; the thing is practically a phone book for christ's sake and just packed with a shit ton of rules that could probably be shuffled off into secondary products and thereby reducing the cost of their core rule book for player consumption.
Wednesday night we made our Curse of Strahd characters. It's going to be an interesting game we somehow ended up not having a Rogue or a dedicated Healer.
Tiefling Bard (College of Glamour)
Human Hexblade
Dragonborn Vengance Paladin
Dwarf Monk (Sun Soul)
Goliath Stone Sorcerer
I'm playing the Bard, I plan on getting the group into so much trouble.
Reading some of their blog post stuff, they are cutting down on complexity, or at least trying to. They’ve boiled everything down to three actions and a reaction for every character a round. Everything costs at least one action to take, and you can do multiple actions. Want to move three times in one round? Go ahead. Want to stack three times, that’s cool as well. Draw a weapon, move, and attack, that’s three actions as well. Most spells will take two actions to use.
And while I have many critiques I could make about Pathfinder, the size of its core rule book is not one of them. You get all of the player rules, gm rules, and magic items in one book instead of two compared to DND selling you two books for that info.
The big problem is that say, attacking multiple times incurs a penalty for each one after the first. Maybe not a problem... until you realize trying to Grapple is considered an attack in this case, along with a few other things.
The big problem is that say, attacking multiple times incurs a penalty for each one after the first. Maybe not a problem... until you realize trying to Grapple is considered an attack in this case, along with a few other things.
It also leans hard into one of my assorted issues with 3rd: that non-caster classes are penalized for doing their thing.
But honestly, this whole move by Paizo just makes me annoyed more then anything else, since it has it's roots in being a D&D clone (not neccesarily a bad thing mind you, many RPG's have their roots in being clones) and rather then try and develop a more distinct game that moves further away from what Wizards is doing, they've decided to simply try and raid it for 5th and 4th edition mechanics.
And If I wanted to play 4th I'd get my friends together, give them a quick rundown on character generation and go for it, and If I want to play 5th I can go to my local comic book shop on tuesdays and play the shit out of that. Best of all, I get to do it without dealing with Pathfinders rules bloat or inane setting.
Best of all, I get to do it without dealing with Pathfinders rules bloat or inane setting.
After reading this I went and looked up a summary of the Pathfinder Campaign Setting, Golarion. Man, every country has its genre.
Some of the gods are cool, though!
- Achaekek: A god of assassins who is also a giant mantis! He was created by a god to assassinate mortals who try to become gods themselves, but no one knows what god created him.
- Cayden Cailean: Adventurer who became a god by passing "The Test of the Starstone" while blackout drunk in an effort to impress Calistria, the elven goddess of lust and vengeance.
- Droskar: Evil dwarvish god that commands his followers to work ceaselessly. The first module that mentions him also features the skeleton of a priest of his lying on a machine with its skull crushed beneath a piston. Nearby is the last thing the priest wrote: "Forgive me, my lord. My toils will never be enough."
- Lamashtu: Former demon lord who became the goddess of monsters. The first Pathfinder Adventure Path module villain, Nualia, was an aasimar who became a cleric of Lamashtu after giving birth to a monster.
- Urgathoa: This one's my favorite! Formerly a queen who lived a life of unbridled hedonism, after death she was so distraught at the thought of giving up worldly pleasure that she rose as the first of the undead, introducing undeath to creation and becoming its goddess.
pathfinder's setting is your standard kitchen sink setting, you can generally find a where when and how for almost any scenario. Though in my short experience it has less elminster or drizt like legacy characters walking around.
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This is my group. I'm 41. We play a monthly game in person where I've known 4 of the 5 people there since High School. I've known 1 of them since middle school. We do a full day game that day and I'm usually home past 2am.
Then we do a weekly game on discord/roll20. The group is mostly the same but a few people are different. It's fun, but no where near as good as the in person game.
Back to the upcoming Curse of Strahd game, apparently we're making normal Sword Coast characters that end up in Ravenloft. My Tiefling bard is going to be all Devil Horns and Lute Rock, the only dirges will be power dirges.
Comics, Games, Booze
Yeah, rogues have a lot of uses of their bonus action but that one isn't bad if you've already hit that round so have minimal reason to TWF or whatever.
I've just started DMing Tomb of Annihilation on Roll 20 and the module there is amazing. Nearly everything you need is set up ahead of time, out of the box, for easy play and DMing. I've just needed to add a few maps for random encounters, but most of the story maps are included (with things like dynamic lighting all set up already). It's an amazing campaign and though we've only scratched the surface, I'm super excited for each week.
My one complaint would be having to use the default character sheets, instead of the custom ones we had, because uploading the custom character sheet would break all the monster sheets that are fully filled out, functional, and ready to go. The default character sheets aren't even that bad, so it's mostly a minor gripe.
A friend of mine also thought up a great gimmick, which I'm curious to hear folks' opinions on:
Our only self-imposed rule is the DM-run PC can't help with puzzles, since we know all the answers. The PCs can ask our DM character to perform tasks (one is a grizzled, veteran Spy Bard, the other is a naive, pyromaniac Urchin Sorcerer). There's no guarantee the right PC will be available at any given time though (such as the Bard having Thieves' Tools and the ability to pick locks or disable traps).
Practically speaking we did it for a few reasons. One was the novelty factor, since we've never done anything like this in past campaigns, and my friend and I thought it was interesting and would shake things up. Two was to split the work, since Tomb of Annihilation starts out as a bit of a sandbox, so we can more easily adapt to what the players actually encounter/what direction they choose to go in, if one of us can actively DM while the other pulls out the relevant maps and tokens to what the PCs are approaching.
Crazy? Or just crazy enough to work?
I sold my group the module based on dinosaur racing, so I'll need to highlight that a fair bit (Whee!). But after the initial introduction to the city, my group in particular would rather move on as there isn't really anything vital to do in the city, aside from fleshing it out. Is that correct?
Are they not worried about running out of supplies? Maybe try to impress upon them the importance of hiring a gude.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Sorry... aside from the guides, I should have mentioned. In my mind, that was obvious.
I was more asking if there was anything substantial that I would be missing if I glossed over the rest of the city.
My group has done two 2.5 hour sessions in Port Nyanzaru. I've impressed the need for a large amount of supplies on them, and they're almost convinced they need a guide. I'm not sure how much longer they will stay in town though. I'd like to give them a breadth of options, and see what they run with.
The city has a fair amount of side quests that act as hooks for things you can run into in the jungle. You can just have the players stumble upon those things in the wild with no foreshadowing, if that's more your speed, though.
The main things to do are Dinosaur Racing, which is super fun, and then stock up on supplies for a multi-month journey, hire a guide (which they could theoretically do without), and gather information so they have an inkling of where to look for the main quest, or what to look for in the jungle. The PCs don't really start with a lot of info besides "find the cause of the death curse. It's in the jungle." "Yes, that enormous jungle." "No, I don't know where, or where you would even start looking."
- Darfella, the Whale Mother
- Neifon, the Lord of Bats
- Canetar, the Master of Swords
- Fekre, the Queen of Poxes
- The Primal Beast, First of All Hunters
- Stone Brother, the Oldest Ally
- Telesm, the Fortune Crafter
- Jvelto, the Supreme Sailor
- Payanel, the Tormented-Yet-Untamed
- Kronata, the Patient Wrath
- Charisis, She Who Closes Death's Door
- Ashtar, Keeper of the Supreme Salve
- Nesumnee, the Redeemed Fiend
- The Great Crab
- Selephra, the Bramble Queen
- Koliada, the Winter Witch
- Zorthos, God of Unbelievers
- Vezzuvu, the Burning Mountain
- Haemnathuun, the Lord of Blood
- Chitteruk, He Who Walks on 10,000 Legs
- Urdlen, the Earth Eater
- Thunder of Hooves
- Nahua, Emperor of the Cloud Court
- Relvetun, the Dog with A Thousand Teeth
EDIT: Chitteruk, He Who Walks on 10,000 Legs, is a centipede god. I just found out centipedes are in the order "myriapoda", which is derived from "myriad". Apparently in classical history the word "myriad" referred to 10,000. What a coincidence!
EDIT 2: While I drew the others from throughout D&D history, the last one is new. The title "Dog with a Thousand Teeth" is an It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia reference.
This is kinda what I am getting at. I haven't given this part of the module a solid read quite yet. Aside from dropping background about the Yaun Ti big bad/why the jungle is filled with undead... are there any bits of foreshdowing that is reccomended that I should make sure my players know?
The one thing she has to go on, is a coat of arms that the player drew up way back in the day so that the rest of us out of character would know what it looked like and given that they're a bit of an artist it looked really good!
And this would have been just a quiet background thing, but I'm kind of a dick and decided it would be fun to have the character draw what the crest looks like with the catch being that the further below twenty the player rolls on an intelligence check to remember the pattern, the worse it looked as drawn by the player; this has led to some pretty ammusing results that I fully intend to upload a bit later when I have time and access to the digital images.
In a follow up session, One of my players wound up running into a previous character of hers and because she wanted to talk to her about some important matters at hand I ~again being a bit of a dick~ elected to have the player RP both characters out loud (it was easy to tell which was which because her current character is kind of a hick); an instance which led Ashley to describe the situation as Ashlerbation. This led to amongst other things the previous character getting into a screaming match with a bugbear chef (who had a french accent and a heart condition) so feirece he actually keeled over from a heart attack.
Like, I'd love to tell you guys about the intrigue surrounding tournament and how the palidin they had aligned themselves with was having matches skewed in his favor or how they resolved the situation to come out on top, but Ashley's presence just crushed it and is just about the only thing that comes to mind.
@steelhawk
Yes. I recommend starting to tease the character Artus Cimber, because there's a lot of foreshadowing for him, and the way he's written almost guarantees an epic entrance for him. There's one side quest in Port Nyanzaru (Xandala iirc) that mentions him, but the long and short of it:
He has a couple of entries of the random encounter table. The PCs encountering the jungle converted to a winter wonderland, or from atop a high vantage point, seeing a stampede of <insert something> chasing after him and his loyal cohort.
The book is pretty up front that the random encounter table has stuff for all levels, such that the PCs might die if they draw the wrong card (zombie spewing T-rex zombie, for example). Artus Cimber can show up and save the PCs like a Big Damn Hero. Or show up with a horde of zombies in tow, and be like "hey nice to meet you sorry about this but you guys should seriously run now bye (in one breath, without missing a step)."
Thanks for the info! I need to start prepping my encounters and the flow of the game session and this has been helpful.
I fully expect dinosaur racing to play a huge part in the beginning. Mainly because I want to trample someone with a raging triceratops who has thrown its rider.
Also, we didn't get to see his companion at all because the GM thought (rightly) that we had way too many characters.
I don't have the book in front of me but I believe he has beef with the Yuan-ti.
Watch it be a 5E clone.
EDIT: They've apparently decided to replace the term "race" with "ancestry". I understand the idea behind it, but it still seems odd. Also, they totally stole the proficiency bonus from 5E.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Wait is Pathfinder 2 still going to be open content? Or is that one of the reasons for the new edition?
I sorta doubt they have the choice. If they're still publishing based on the OGL from 3rd then that limits their ability to be closed content.
It would be a weird move to try and close off their content. It's a big part of their brand identity and there may be enough legal wiggle room to let Hasbro lawyers kick up a fuss.
I hope you chime in from time to time how your campaign goes; I'm interested to compare notes.
I see what I can do to keep decent notes! Sometimes the consumables of the weekend take their toll.
I've been listening to a lot of Critical Role lately, and their use of background music throughout the whole session is great. Even though its only 2 or 3 tracks looped, its very effective. Somewher around ep 60 Matt's Ipad went out and they dropped the music and boy was its absence notable. Usually we have like funky jazz or something else ambient just playing in the background. This time I was thinking to put in something more appropriate as background music.
Skyrim soundtrack, Oblivion soundtrack, Icewind Dale soundtrack, Ori and the Blind Forest soundtrack.... Etc.
But I also enjoy this guy his fantastic work; https://tabletopaudio.com
I'll follow that link later and see what its got.
Oblivion is a lot more cookie-cutter fantasy, so usually works pretty well with Forgotten Realms shit, just like most of the old crpg's from the Infinity Engine era. Same goes for Dragon Age, Divinity, Fable, Gothic and Dungeon Siege. They all have elaborate and long fantasy soundtracks and I would be hard-pressed to remember a single theme from them.
(and they're on Youtube, so as long as you're not streaming you can just plop it on in the background and you're done)
When what they should be doing if I may be so bold as to offer a suggestion to successful RPG developers, is to cut down on the size of their god damn rule book; the thing is practically a phone book for christ's sake and just packed with a shit ton of rules that could probably be shuffled off into secondary products and thereby reducing the cost of their core rule book for player consumption.
Tiefling Bard (College of Glamour)
Human Hexblade
Dragonborn Vengance Paladin
Dwarf Monk (Sun Soul)
Goliath Stone Sorcerer
I'm playing the Bard, I plan on getting the group into so much trouble.
Comics, Games, Booze
And while I have many critiques I could make about Pathfinder, the size of its core rule book is not one of them. You get all of the player rules, gm rules, and magic items in one book instead of two compared to DND selling you two books for that info.
It also leans hard into one of my assorted issues with 3rd: that non-caster classes are penalized for doing their thing.
But honestly, this whole move by Paizo just makes me annoyed more then anything else, since it has it's roots in being a D&D clone (not neccesarily a bad thing mind you, many RPG's have their roots in being clones) and rather then try and develop a more distinct game that moves further away from what Wizards is doing, they've decided to simply try and raid it for 5th and 4th edition mechanics.
And If I wanted to play 4th I'd get my friends together, give them a quick rundown on character generation and go for it, and If I want to play 5th I can go to my local comic book shop on tuesdays and play the shit out of that. Best of all, I get to do it without dealing with Pathfinders rules bloat or inane setting.
After reading this I went and looked up a summary of the Pathfinder Campaign Setting, Golarion. Man, every country has its genre.
Some of the gods are cool, though!
- Achaekek: A god of assassins who is also a giant mantis! He was created by a god to assassinate mortals who try to become gods themselves, but no one knows what god created him.
- Cayden Cailean: Adventurer who became a god by passing "The Test of the Starstone" while blackout drunk in an effort to impress Calistria, the elven goddess of lust and vengeance.
- Droskar: Evil dwarvish god that commands his followers to work ceaselessly. The first module that mentions him also features the skeleton of a priest of his lying on a machine with its skull crushed beneath a piston. Nearby is the last thing the priest wrote: "Forgive me, my lord. My toils will never be enough."
- Lamashtu: Former demon lord who became the goddess of monsters. The first Pathfinder Adventure Path module villain, Nualia, was an aasimar who became a cleric of Lamashtu after giving birth to a monster.
- Urgathoa: This one's my favorite! Formerly a queen who lived a life of unbridled hedonism, after death she was so distraught at the thought of giving up worldly pleasure that she rose as the first of the undead, introducing undeath to creation and becoming its goddess.