Active checks are for when the players announce that their character is doing something AND it's a dramatic situation (combat is going on or there is some other consequence for failure). Passive checks are for when characters are just assumed to be doing something and/or it's a low-stakes situation. Passive checks are happening all the time, it's just that you don't usually think about it because the DC is so low that nobody fails it. Walking up an inclined road is Passive Climbing with a DC of 0, so nobody fails. Climbing a rope up to a treehouse might have a DC of 10, so most characters do it fine and maybe someone has to give the weakling with 8 STR an assist because their Passive Climbing is only 9.
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Zonugal(He/Him) The Holiday ArmadilloI'm Santa's representative for all the southern states. And Mexico!Registered Userregular
edited April 2018
So if I was interested in reading up on the Forgotten Realms as a campaign setting, as it seems to be the official setting for 5E, what would be the best books for me to pick up?
I'm more focused on learning about the campaign setting, so any hard rules (prestige classes, feats, ect...) don't matter to me. I'm just in it for the lore.
I figure the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting book from 3.5 would be a good first choice?
Speaking of crits I was thinking a fun house rule would be if a damage spell requires a save and the target rolls a one then it counts a crit. Could be fun. Fireball could be ridiculous.
That is a pretty nice damage boost all around, so if you use this, plan accordingly.
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webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
Speaking of crits I was thinking a fun house rule would be if a damage spell requires a save and the target rolls a one then it counts a crit. Could be fun. Fireball could be ridiculous.
That is a pretty nice damage boost all around, so if you use this, plan accordingly.
I think one balance is that the big damage save spells are cast rarely due to their high level, so there are far fewer d20 being rolled compared to a fighter making multiple attacks with advantage each round.
That makes the spell-crit rarer, but it doesn't change the size of the boost it provides. (And it's likely offset some by the fact that if you fireball five creatures you get five chances to crit)
Keep in mind that a lot of the damage from melee attacks comes from static ability mods etc, which aren't affected by crits - applying crits to an attack whose damage is exclusively composed of dice is going to be a larger bonus, percentage-wise, than what you see when someone crits on an attack that deals 1d8+5. Plus, weapon dice for individual attacks are generally pretty small, and when someone does manage to stack a bunch of dice on one with sneak attack or smite and crit, they end up rolling 8d6 or 10d8 or whatever and those are the crits that make people take significant notice because they end up landing for ~45-50 damage and obliterating something.
A fireball crit is going to start close to that range and then get doubled. If you're cool with that, rock on, but definitely expect it to be swingy and have a plan for when they eventually instagib the boss in a set-piece fight with an unexpected 90-damage fireball crit to the face or whatever.
So if I was interested in reading up on the Forgotten Realms as a campaign setting, as it seems to be the official setting for 5E, what would be the best books for me to pick up?
I'm more focused on learning about the campaign setting, so any hard rules (prestige classes, feats, ect...) don't matter to me. I'm just in it for the lore.
I figure the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting book from 3.5 would be a good first choice?
I recently did this research and had the same question. If you're planning on being set in the Sword Coast, the 5e Sword Coast Adventuring Guide has a good overview of the big picture in the area, gods, factions, some history, things like that. But strangely I found that reading through the module Storm King's Thunder was a huge huge help for me, they have a much more detailed map than wotc put out on their website, and at least a blurb about every location on the map included. For practical purposes SKT is like 75% campaign setting and I love it for that.
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KadokenGiving Ends to my Friends and it Feels StupendousRegistered Userregular
So if I was interested in reading up on the Forgotten Realms as a campaign setting, as it seems to be the official setting for 5E, what would be the best books for me to pick up?
I'm more focused on learning about the campaign setting, so any hard rules (prestige classes, feats, ect...) don't matter to me. I'm just in it for the lore.
I figure the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting book from 3.5 would be a good first choice?
I recently did this research and had the same question. If you're planning on being set in the Sword Coast, the 5e Sword Coast Adventuring Guide has a good overview of the big picture in the area, gods, factions, some history, things like that. But strangely I found that reading through the module Storm King's Thunder was a huge huge help for me, they have a much more detailed map than wotc put out on their website, and at least a blurb about every location on the map included. For practical purposes SKT is like 75% campaign setting and I love it for that.
So if I was interested in reading up on the Forgotten Realms as a campaign setting, as it seems to be the official setting for 5E, what would be the best books for me to pick up?
I'm more focused on learning about the campaign setting, so any hard rules (prestige classes, feats, ect...) don't matter to me. I'm just in it for the lore.
I figure the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting book from 3.5 would be a good first choice?
I recently did this research and had the same question. If you're planning on being set in the Sword Coast, the 5e Sword Coast Adventuring Guide has a good overview of the big picture in the area, gods, factions, some history, things like that. But strangely I found that reading through the module Storm King's Thunder was a huge huge help for me, they have a much more detailed map than wotc put out on their website, and at least a blurb about every location on the map included. For practical purposes SKT is like 75% campaign setting and I love it for that.
Terrific!
And is Storm King's Thunder a good/fun module?
Yes, but it's very sandboxy and the party can get in over their heads depending where they choose to go. And if they choose to go to all the places they can and you award loot that it says to award they will be loaded with magic items. Good story though.
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KadokenGiving Ends to my Friends and it Feels StupendousRegistered Userregular
As a player, I find the thrust of Storm King’s story unrelatable and uninteresting, the rebuilding of a caste system a dissatisfying goal, the threat posed by antagonists unclear, and the culture it is set around rote and boring.
I was fully enjoying it until the fire giant mining pit encounter when I had to ask the question, “why do I care?” about the digging efforts for a relic that could hurt dragons when every other dragon is a bully.
Saving villages and towns from goblins, orcs, and giants was cool though because the stakes were actually clear and the goal was noble. Saving halflings from slavery was cool, as was diving into ghost infested crypts.
I disagree that it has a good story. The sandbox parts were okay for a while, though.
As a player, I find the thrust of Storm King’s story unrelatable and uninteresting, the rebuilding of a caste system a dissatisfying goal, the threat posed by antagonists unclear, and the culture it is set around rote and boring.
I was fully enjoying it until the fire giant mining pit encounter when I had to ask the question, “why do I care?” about the digging efforts for a relic that could hurt dragons when every other dragon is a bully.
Saving villages and towns from goblins, orcs, and giants was cool though because the stakes were actually clear and the goal was noble. Saving halflings from slavery was cool, as was diving into ghost infested crypts.
I disagree that it has a good story. The sandbox parts were okay for a while, though.
Well the sandbox means the fire giant stuff only happens if the players go there.
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KadokenGiving Ends to my Friends and it Feels StupendousRegistered Userregular
edited April 2018
That’s probably a GM problem because we didn’t want to do the fire giant pit but he kind of guilted us into doing it by saying we shouldn’t avoid things just because they look dangerous.
We even decided to try to go back with some Order of the Gauntlet knights, who are tremendously boring boyscouts by the way, and he just said they would pay us to deal with the problem. I do not care about Neverwinter, you help your city!
He also hews just too closely to the book. I never get to do my social rogue stuff even in situations where I can find good reasons to do it in. I also get interrupted before I can sneak about the place or scout anything. I have a grappling hook and I have been able to use it all of once because there’s always some reason I can’t use it.
E: even acknowledging it is partly a GM problem, Faerun is generally uninteresting.
In so much as Storm King's Thunder is a module it is good. I have played only the intro (the DM i had was super bad and I did not return after a few sessions) and was not impressed.
Strictly it has a number of problems
1) Its in Faerun and...
Faerun is super boring
Faerun is "filled in" which leaves no little for mystery or wonder
Faerun has loads of players who know about it... which makes it hard to both DM or to add personal touches as a player. There is a lot of meta knowledge that you're both expected to have and that no one will tell you about (especially if your DM is bad)
There is no reason to do fucking anything in Faerun*
2) Its kind of themeless and structure less. There
3) It does not plug and play. Most of the other modules can plug and play (Besides out of the Abyss, i want to say) which means that you can roughly take them and add them into any setting. Curse of Sthrad doesn't have to be in Ravenloft for instance you can just stick it wherever you want a vampire to be ruling if you have space for that
*Faerun is a very orderly and overactive place. I mean this in the game world sense and these are both negative things. Its filled with non-hostile agents which are off doing things which you may be a part of. This does two super negative things. First off it means that you're less likely to be the hero. And it also means that there isn't much of a space for adventure except for what others give you. (and why are they giving the job to you instead of like... doing it themselves because shouldn't that literally be their job?)
As i see it any setting MUST have a fundamental character flow chart that looks something like so.
Is a character more powerful than the party Y/N
If Y: is this character a villain Y/N/Maybe
If Y: Good
If Maybe: OK
If N: is this character dead? Y/N
If Y: Good
If N: Is this character more powerful because of status, are they a king of guild leader or are they actually more powerful in a direct physical sense? Status/Both/Physical
If Status: OK
If Both: Return to "is this character a Villain" and answer "maybe"
if Physical: Delete this character
Faerun most certainly does not fit this flow chart.
In so much as Storm King's Thunder is a module it is good. I have played only the intro (the DM i had was super bad and I did not return after a few sessions) and was not impressed.
Strictly it has a number of problems
1) Its in Faerun and...
Faerun is super boring
Faerun is "filled in" which leaves no little for mystery or wonder
Faerun has loads of players who know about it... which makes it hard to both DM or to add personal touches as a player. There is a lot of meta knowledge that you're both expected to have and that no one will tell you about (especially if your DM is bad)
There is no reason to do fucking anything in Faerun*
2) Its kind of themeless and structure less. There
3) It does not plug and play. Most of the other modules can plug and play (Besides out of the Abyss, i want to say) which means that you can roughly take them and add them into any setting. Curse of Sthrad doesn't have to be in Ravenloft for instance you can just stick it wherever you want a vampire to be ruling if you have space for that
*Faerun is a very orderly and overactive place. I mean this in the game world sense and these are both negative things. Its filled with non-hostile agents which are off doing things which you may be a part of. This does two super negative things. First off it means that you're less likely to be the hero. And it also means that there isn't much of a space for adventure except for what others give you. (and why are they giving the job to you instead of like... doing it themselves because shouldn't that literally be their job?)
As i see it any setting MUST have a fundamental character flow chart that looks something like so.
Is a character more powerful than the party Y/N
If Y: is this character a villain Y/N/Maybe
If Y: Good
If Maybe: OK
If N: is this character dead? Y/N
If Y: Good
If N: Is this character more powerful because of status, are they a king of guild leader or are they actually more powerful in a direct physical sense? Status/Both/Physical
If Status: OK
If Both: Return to "is this character a Villain" and answer "maybe"
if Physical: Delete this character
Faerun most certainly does not fit this flow chart.
As a brand new player I'm finding the Faerun setting wonderful. It gives a great setting with a deep background. The Sword Coast Adventure Guide is magnificent. It gives tons of detail (and for me puts in place all the old DnD video games I could never quite get into since I didn't really understand them).
I was able to slot in the couple of quests my party did just to learn the game. Turns out it's happening around Daggerford, which the book gives tons of awesome detail on. And also guess what? The maps of these areas are easily found online and printed out. So now I have this sweet map of the town and ever major location. Along with the lore from the book! It really is a great setting. And who says it can't be customized? This is my world and it doesn't have to conform to any preconceived lore. Having lots of landmarks and other features to pull from is a wonderful resource for a newbie such as myself. And if my world doesn't line up with the lore, who cares? I want a teaming land with other adventurers and weird things that need investigating. I'm not so vain to think my party are the only heroes in the world. They will probably rise above all the others, but it will be a long road.
In the meantime, the previously dead Hobgoblin king, and his new sidekick Jeff the Goblin, who was accidentally resurrected (unknowingly) by the heroes is rising and will soon lead the combined might of the local goblin tribes he's conquered against Daggerford and their militia.
Plenty of other settings have that stuff you like without any of the downsides of Faerun. “Filled in” does not refer to the map of Faerun it refers to the character space of Faerun. And while you may feel OK with the idea of going off book this does not mean that everyone will be and this will create clashes between players which does not exist in other, less filled in setting like eberron
Plenty of other settings have that stuff you like without any of the downsides of Faerun. “Filled in” does not refer to the map of Faerun it refers to the character space of Faerun. And while you may feel OK with the idea of going off book this does not mean that everyone will be and this will create clashes between players which does not exist in other, less filled in setting like eberron
Fair enough. I like it for the map and locations. Nothing says I have to use the 'correct' characters. But I'm a sucker for any generic fantasy setting.
I haven't really begun running SKT yet, my party is level 3 and I'm still dropping foreshadowing for whats coming in the module, but after reading through it and making an outline for myself I don't really see anything wrong with the module that can't be pretty easily fixed on the DMs end. Many of the actual plot hooks are super lame, for example no one wants to walk like 3000 miles north into the frozen wastes to tell an npc that her brother that the party never met died. Pretty much all of the Giant Lord plots need tweaking, and you really need to meet some of the important NPCs earlier if you want the party to care about the plot. Honestly the whole thing seems to hinge on chapter 3 and making sure you give the players a sense of how much damage the chaos is causing while introducing a lot of elements that will be important later in the campaign.
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KadokenGiving Ends to my Friends and it Feels StupendousRegistered Userregular
edited April 2018
YES
Straight up, you are right.
I honestly think it’s my GM which is the problem because it feels like he never thinks about this stuff until the day of the game. He always sticks to the book.
While in my campaign he’s in, I’ll spend hours on the stories I run. I homebrewed all of them except for the first and I made a big change from the text during outlining it where the text gives you a binary choice and I said, “nah” because it was more interesting that way.
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Zonugal(He/Him) The Holiday ArmadilloI'm Santa's representative for all the southern states. And Mexico!Registered Userregular
You folks make a lot of good points.
The primary reason I wanted to use Forgotten Realms was to give my players a sense of communal history with the D&D community.
Because without that motivator I would rather use a home-brewed campaign setting where I just steal from Adventure Time and the Auralnauts, and just have all of the towns & places be named like Swamp-Town, Ice-Kingdom, Coast-City, ect...
There is absolutely nothing wrong with Forgotten Realms as a setting if you approach it with the information presented to you in any given edition.
Many of @Goumindong 's (Not criticizing, just following the reference) complaints are carried over baggage from previous editions and the sheer volume of 2e/3e novels and sourcebooks where every NPC given to you in a storyline and thereafter described in a sourcebook was simply cooler and more powerful than anything you came up with as a player.
Most of that is not there in 5e (or 4e IIRC?) So go ahead and use that fluff guilt free and as you see fit!
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KadokenGiving Ends to my Friends and it Feels StupendousRegistered Userregular
The primary reason I wanted to use Forgotten Realms was to give my players a sense of communal history with the D&D community.
Because without that motivator I would rather use a home-brewed campaign setting where I just steal from Adventure Time and the Auralnauts, and just have all of the towns & places be named like Swamp-Town, Ice-Kingdom, Coast-City, ect...
Those are better than “the Sword Coast”. They actually give me info about a place. “Sword Coast” isn’t even good enough to be a metal name like “Sea of Blades”.
The primary reason I wanted to use Forgotten Realms was to give my players a sense of communal history with the D&D community.
Because without that motivator I would rather use a home-brewed campaign setting where I just steal from Adventure Time and the Auralnauts, and just have all of the towns & places be named like Swamp-Town, Ice-Kingdom, Coast-City, ect...
Those are better than “the Sword Coast”. They actually give me info about a place. “Sword Coast” isn’t even good enough to be a metal name like “Sea of Blades”.
Don't let the names fool you.
Swampton is actually located on a marsh.
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Zonugal(He/Him) The Holiday ArmadilloI'm Santa's representative for all the southern states. And Mexico!Registered Userregular
The primary reason I wanted to use Forgotten Realms was to give my players a sense of communal history with the D&D community.
Because without that motivator I would rather use a home-brewed campaign setting where I just steal from Adventure Time and the Auralnauts, and just have all of the towns & places be named like Swamp-Town, Ice-Kingdom, Coast-City, ect...
Those are better than “the Sword Coast”. They actually give me info about a place. “Sword Coast” isn’t even good enough to be a metal name like “Sea of Blades”.
Don't let the names fool you.
Swampton is actually located on a marsh.
So basically: run a version of Forgotten Realms where all the epic NPCs are missing, died centuries ago or just never existed at all?
Or take ideas from it and make your own world
Well yes, I love homebrew content, but it's not easy for DMs to work out a bunch of content, while there's FR like right there with detailed descriptions of every neck of the woods your players will want to fuck with.
It sounds like Forgotten Realms only falls apart when someone asks why none of the epic NPCs is stepping in to save the world instead. Take those out of the equation and your players will be none the wiser (unless they read all the fucking pulpy R.A. Salvatore novels when they were teens) and assume that yes they are the noble heroes who will save the realm.
Why not just make it the towns near by with various known things like people would really know {landmarks local flavor and creatures}
Not everyone knows of if the King is alive or dead since he doesn't personally comes around to say Hi
So basically: run a version of Forgotten Realms where all the epic NPCs are missing, died centuries ago or just never existed at all?
Or take ideas from it and make your own world
Well yes, I love homebrew content, but it's not easy for DMs to work out a bunch of content, while there's FR like right there with detailed descriptions of every neck of the woods your players will want to fuck with.
It sounds like Forgotten Realms only falls apart when someone asks why none of the epic NPCs is stepping in to save the world instead. Take those out of the equation and your players will be none the wiser (unless they read all the fucking pulpy R.A. Salvatore novels when they were teens) and assume that yes they are the noble heroes who will save the realm.
The problem with faerun is when you're playing with people that have been around the block a few times.
They will likely expect the world to work in a certain way and when it doesn't they burst into tears.
Also when you do actually want to add something new to the world, you can't, because the map's already kinda full.
In my next campaign I'm just going to add a disclaimer that states what is and what isn't.
I love the sword coast but I don't want all of the smaller cities and towns to already be there.
Also not entirely sold on the spell plague.
Regarding why Elminster/Drizzt aren't just showing up:
They're off saving the world.
That lich you're fighting is small beans. And even if his plan comes to fruition, eh, someone else more competent will fix it.
Or just don't make them that cringe-worthy in your version.
As of 4E, it is now canon that the setting is paired with a parallel world called Abeir, which was split off into its own thing to end the war between the gods and primordials. Abeir was ruled by the primordials until they were eventually usurped by dragons. During 4E certain parts of the Realms were swapped with sections Abeir, which eventually returned to normal.
Perhaps the party could be primarily stationed in the established Forgotten Realms but make forays into (largely undetailed) Abeir for some reason.
From the Forgotten Realms wiki:
Abeir is the twin planet of Toril, located in the same material plane of its sibling world, but within a "pocket dimension" that is out of synchrony with Toril. Abeir revolves around the same sun of Realmspace, although from Abeir the sun is seen as blue colored. Abeir shares the lunar satellite Selûne and its Tears with Toril.
Ao gave the primordials control over Abeir, while retaining sovereignty over Toril for the gods. When Abeir-Toril was sundered, the city of Xxiphu, the realm of the aboleth, remained on Abeir.
Those events were unknown to Faerûnian sages until after the Spellplague, when the dragonborn of Abeir and the sarrukhs of Okoth revealed forgotten lore regarding the ancient past.
Abeir has a steel-colored sky due to the arambar, the residue energy left by the death of the primordial of the same name.
The only known continents of Abeir are Shyr and Laerakond (at least before it was transferred to Toril). For a time, Maztica was also part of this world. Like Toril, it also contains an Underdark.
The original kingdom of the Abolethic Sovereignty was also located in Abeir.
Abeir is inhabited primarily by primordials, dragons, dragonborn, dwarves, genasi, halflings, humans, and a few other races that also inhabit Toril.
Elves and other fey creatures are almost unheard of in Abeir, although drow are known to inhabit its Underdark.
Abeir was also inhabited by abominations and other aberrant creatures from the Far Realm, most of them the original inhabitants of Abeir-Toril.
Magic manifests differently on Abeir than in Toril, as there is no Weave and no normal ways to contact any gods, as gods were wary about this world.
Likewise, Planar magic (or at least planar magic that depends on the Nine Hells), such as that granted to warlocks by a pact, also works differently and is more difficult to use than in Toril.
I mean, even Curse if Strahd, which is supposed to be in it's own dimension, has NPCs that are far more capable than the players (at least at adventures start, before the PCs level a bunch) that could try and fix the situation but do not, or have already tried and failed. And they don't even help the PCs unless the tarot card reading makes them. So i assume the reason Drizzt and Elminster and so on aren't solving all the other published adventures is because they are busy/are drunk in a bar and haven't heard of the problem/tried but slipped on a banana and now are too embarrassed/etc
..
Big CoH spoiler:
Hell, the party can run into Mordenkainen and he's just hanging out in the woods, mind self wiped in embarrassment to loosing a 1v1 with Strahd. And he won't help the party unless the card makes him.
yeah in my home setting it took me 3 years to ever actually draw a full map of the continent the players are on. Their adventures never really brought them outside of a specific region, barring inter planar travel. Like I knew the various regions, and had an idea the shape of things, but the world map just hadn't been important enough to actually get hexed out. I still haven't hexed out the other continents in the world, but that's fine cause the PCs barely even know that the other continents exist. 2 of em are completely hidden to the player characters. 1 being for aquatic adventures and thus fully submerged the second being on the opposite side of the planet from the party, and featuring a bunch of floating islands.
The players are helping to build the big fuck off important characters for the setting. In that their characters are those types of people.
He's pretty good. I guess that's what plenty of practise gets you! So far I've only painted 3D-printed miniatures and that was a load of fun, I imagine that proper minis are a bit easier to do details on.
The bulette mini is actually taken from a toy set that is based on the one that originally inspired the bulette in the first place. I just gave him the toy and a large-sized base for him to refine it.
So I'm running a 5e DnD game on Twitch. It's been a lot of fun so far and I'm running a campaign of my own devising which has been going mostly pretty well. The players were contacted by a woman offering them a chance at finding information about their most precious desire in life, if they succeeded in a contest of sorts. When they arrived at the location she suggested and met each other for the first time, she told them they were now a team in a race against various other teams in Faerun.
A synopsis of the past few sessions, spoilered for length
The race is a big deal in some circles and it seems to be known by some of the more secretive organizations but there's not many details she's allowed to give them, due to the rules. The main thing they need to do for the first step is get their entry ticket. There are more teams than tickets so to pass the first step they need to find a ticket. They went down into this little tomb and found that a team of goblins had beat them inside. They took out the rear guard and snuck further in to find that the goblins had been pretty much all killed by zombies. The group dispatched those and found the room with the ticket, a glowing Roulette spindle attached to a roulette table that looked out of place in the tomb. Before they could reach it however, a huge dude in massively baggy black clothes blasted his way in through the ceiling and grabbed the spindle, vanishing in a flash of light. The spindle was still there, but no longer glowing. They headed up to talk to their contact who asked them to meet in the town of Secomber for more information.
They made their way to Secomber encountering a drunk druid and helping him cleanse his grove along the way. Since the spellplague happened, I'm giving Secomber kind of a "last town on the frontier" vibe. Most of the other small towns collapsed and the people fled here. There's not a ton of order and the town isn't huge but there is a river and a small port and a few basic amenities. Lots of people moving through towards Waterdeep and such.
At this point I let the love of puns get the better of me and the party met Tom, of Tom's Two Tower's Tavern, where they enjoyed some terrific Twhiskey. (TM, by Tom). As they met with their contact again, she informed them there was a good chance of a ticket being in the town they're in right now. A local bandit organization finally united some of the warring thieves organizations and have a hideout somewhere underneath Secomber where they have gotten their hands on a ticket. Only problem is, they're not actually aware of the game and can't use the ticket. They know they have something special, but not exactly what. To make matters worse, other teams have started to get wind of the ticket being here and the party being a competing team.
While meeting with their contact the windows of the tavern exploded inwards and bottles of Cloudkill got tossed inside, along with the exterior of the tavern getting set alight. The party managed to save Tom and themselves but the building was too far gone and collapsed in the flames. The Cloudkill ran into the cellar where it still sits, preventing Tom from getting many of his belongings and his beloved Twhiskey recipe, though he has asked the group for help in that matter.
At this point we had to swap a person out so when they went to visit the former barbarian party member they found he seemed to have turned into silver. The barbarian had set up a camp right outside of town and a man setting up a festival had approached him, assuming the town sent him out to help. He shrugged and did indeed help, so the party was standing in the middle of a carnival looking into this tent while plenty of random people were strolling by oohing and ahhing at the cursed silver man. During this a few interesting folk strode into the square. 4 jugglers and a man in a robe were in one area, the man in the robe laid out a small carpet and was throwing up bits of smoke and flashes of light like a little show while the jugglers danced around him, tossing knives and various things to each other as they juggled.
A cleric in full plate came out with a retinue of people, one with a horn, one with a flag. (The party didn't bother checking the guy's sigils or anything) This guy lowered his visor and had his lackey blow the horn, then demanded to speak to the proprietor of the carnival. No one made any moves to do anything about this and the guy seemed kinda lost. The party decided to ignore him and were discussing how they might best grind up a man made of silver so they could sell it.
Then the guy in the robe on the carpet finished his ritual. A blue beam of light shot into the sky and then sunburst out over the festival, making some cool pyrotechnic displays that made many of the festival goers point excitedly. But as this blue wave passed over the 4 jugglers and the man in the robe, it coalesced around them, making them shimmer just slightly with a blue glow. This same thing happened to each of the party members as it passed, highlighting them in the crowd. The man in full plate and his retinue also glowed, though they sighed and turned to leave upon seeing this.
The newest member of the group had just arrived (having been told by his contact that the group needed him to meet up and be a replacement) and strode right up to the jugglers to ask them why he was glowing with them when one of the jugglers with the knives took a swipe at him. The group noticed this and engaged in combat, fighting off the jugglers as the crowd screamed and scattered. Their leader, the guy who cast the ritual, tossed out a few spells and then made his escape through the crowd once a few of the jugglers went down. (They later examined his ritual carpet and guessed he cast some sort of spell to locate other players in the game. They couldn't find a scroll to recreate it themselves) Their new party member introduced himself and told them he had been attacked by a group of rainbow haired people tossing colorful boxes (Wild magic grenades!) at him on the way to this town.
Their contact called for them and they turned to see her striding out of the tent where their silver friend had been lying. She was now holding him, somehow having been miniaturized. (Planning for him to now be a magic item they can toss out and he'll grow to normal size and fight for a round or two I think). Since the tavern burnt down they regrouped at the General Store where poor old Tom seems to have gotten a job. The general store has a meeting room upstairs that Tom let them use, grateful that they saved him from the burning Inn. They shared info, asked their Contact for more information on the people they've been encountering, and have a decent idea of some of the opponents now. They know that the group that burnt down the inn are the Ebon Dwarves, the jugglers are members of the Jesters, the rainbow haired folk are from the Wilders, and she wasn't familiar with the plate wearing religious people. She tells them about the bandit group under secomber that has the ticket and even has a contact they can meet to try and talk their way in. (Planning on there being a high profile illegal gambling operation going on, they can either infiltrate like Bond...or more likely shoot their way in like Bond)
So our next session will be a foray into the sewers followed by finding the bandit hideout and getting the last ticket. Assuming they can get there before any of the other groups find out about it as well!
So that was super long but I'm hoping I have started to develop this into an interesting thing. There's multiple parties at work, they aren't even 100% sure who their contact is and who they're working for or what the race will entail when they're actually in it. I'm hoping the tension of other people actively working towards the same goal is coming across as interesting, the party seems to be positive about it so far. Once they actually get the ticket I'll hammer down exactly which other teams also managed to get a ticket and then the very interesting bits begin! I'd be curious if anyone has experience running a sort of race like this and would have any kind of pointers. I'd love to do something like a Casino Royale type session and have been trying to figure out how to work that in. I tried to do a few carnival games and that ended up being a little bit of a slog with too much rolling. It's been a blast DMing and trying out stuff like this again.
We are still occasionally getting caught up on little rule things that I need to hammer into my GM brain more. Like, do spell attacks crit? In 5e what exactly does a crit do? Easy stuff to look up but as we're streaming I need to get better about having that info on hand. Especially since roll20's compendium decided to not work for me last night!
Our current party is:
Human Warlock, fey pact (Adolescent Girl, think Wednesday Adams)
Halfling Cleric, Death Domain, worships Urgolan
Human Monk who thinks he's a punch wizard
Half-elf Rogue, more of a swashbuckler, writing a travel guide of Faerun
The warlock stole a prize doll from the festival after the people scattered and then discovered it's a Talking Doll which I imagine will lead to some very fun interactions.
This whole thing sounds amazing. Do you have a sketch out of how the game is going to play out?
As for your questions:
From page 196 of the PHB:
CRITICAL HITS
When you score a critical hit, you get to roll extra dice for the attack's damage against the target. Roll all of the attack's damage dice twice and add then together. Then add any relevant modifiers as normal.
It just says "attack", with no difference between physical and magical. So if a ranger crits with their longbow, the total damage would be (2d8) + attack mod, same as if the wizard scored a crit with Frozen Ray.
Whoops forgot to check this thread for the weekend. Good to know about crits!
I do have it sketched out! A few of my players are on the boards so I'm hoping they aren't checking this thread but essentially
my players don't read this! Go away!
When they get their ticket they will be transported to a massive endless warehouse type thing full of shelves with various dusty knick knacks. Their goal is to be the first to find a certain number of powerful gems. The team with the most gems when all gems are found wins! The catch is that the gems are located inside various knick knacks and they have to enter each item a-la Disgaea's item world to see if there's a gem hidden inside. When each item's "world" is cleared or the problem inside dealt with, the item will be restored into whatever magic item it used to be and they can take it with them. This gives me a ton of opportunity for fun randomized dungeons and weird worlds based on their item. They'll have to find a way to track down which items have gems and which are just random debris and there's a chance they'll run into another team inside any item, also trying to find the gems. The actual gem worlds will be full on fun dungeon encounters, the other random items will be more randomly generated things.
I'm thinking we'll have some various spirit type folks who have set up vendor shops and services as a little mini town in parts of the warehouse. This is also when they'll discover that no one has ever actually completed this race before, most people end up dying in this warehouse having not found the gems. But our players being clever will surely figure out a better way to track down the gems!
My friday game nearly broke down when they found their first non-potion magic item, a pouch of dust of dryness!
I'm describing the contents of the chest they found it in, gold, silver, copper, some knick-knacks they can sell for some gold, and a pouch with dust inside! I'm still describing the dust when one of the players interrupts:
Player: "I lick the dust."
I was giggling so hard while trying to decide just how fucked he was. I decided that having it kill him straight up was probably unfun so I had him roll a con save to decide his exhaustion level over how dehydrated he suddenly got. Its been days and I'm still breaking down into fits of giggles over the whole situation.
My friday game nearly broke down when they found their first non-potion magic item, a pouch of dust of dryness!
I'm describing the contents of the chest they found it in, gold, silver, copper, some knick-knacks they can sell for some gold, and a pouch with dust inside! I'm still describing the dust when one of the players interrupts:
Player: "I lick the dust."
I was giggling so hard while trying to decide just how fucked he was. I decided that having it kill him straight up was probably unfun so I had him roll a con save to decide his exhaustion level over how dehydrated he suddenly got. Its been days and I'm still breaking down into fits of giggles over the whole situation.
I wanna make a multiclassed Storm Herald Barbarian/Tempest Cleric next. Apparently you can synergize them to push creatures every round, which sounds really fun.
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Active checks are for when the players announce that their character is doing something AND it's a dramatic situation (combat is going on or there is some other consequence for failure). Passive checks are for when characters are just assumed to be doing something and/or it's a low-stakes situation. Passive checks are happening all the time, it's just that you don't usually think about it because the DC is so low that nobody fails it. Walking up an inclined road is Passive Climbing with a DC of 0, so nobody fails. Climbing a rope up to a treehouse might have a DC of 10, so most characters do it fine and maybe someone has to give the weakling with 8 STR an assist because their Passive Climbing is only 9.
I'm more focused on learning about the campaign setting, so any hard rules (prestige classes, feats, ect...) don't matter to me. I'm just in it for the lore.
I figure the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting book from 3.5 would be a good first choice?
That is a pretty nice damage boost all around, so if you use this, plan accordingly.
I think one balance is that the big damage save spells are cast rarely due to their high level, so there are far fewer d20 being rolled compared to a fighter making multiple attacks with advantage each round.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
Keep in mind that a lot of the damage from melee attacks comes from static ability mods etc, which aren't affected by crits - applying crits to an attack whose damage is exclusively composed of dice is going to be a larger bonus, percentage-wise, than what you see when someone crits on an attack that deals 1d8+5. Plus, weapon dice for individual attacks are generally pretty small, and when someone does manage to stack a bunch of dice on one with sneak attack or smite and crit, they end up rolling 8d6 or 10d8 or whatever and those are the crits that make people take significant notice because they end up landing for ~45-50 damage and obliterating something.
A fireball crit is going to start close to that range and then get doubled. If you're cool with that, rock on, but definitely expect it to be swingy and have a plan for when they eventually instagib the boss in a set-piece fight with an unexpected 90-damage fireball crit to the face or whatever.
I recently did this research and had the same question. If you're planning on being set in the Sword Coast, the 5e Sword Coast Adventuring Guide has a good overview of the big picture in the area, gods, factions, some history, things like that. But strangely I found that reading through the module Storm King's Thunder was a huge huge help for me, they have a much more detailed map than wotc put out on their website, and at least a blurb about every location on the map included. For practical purposes SKT is like 75% campaign setting and I love it for that.
The Sword Mountain.
<Metal riff> swooord mountaaaaaiinnnn yeaahhhhhh
Terrific!
And is Storm King's Thunder a good/fun module?
Yes, but it's very sandboxy and the party can get in over their heads depending where they choose to go. And if they choose to go to all the places they can and you award loot that it says to award they will be loaded with magic items. Good story though.
I was fully enjoying it until the fire giant mining pit encounter when I had to ask the question, “why do I care?” about the digging efforts for a relic that could hurt dragons when every other dragon is a bully.
Saving villages and towns from goblins, orcs, and giants was cool though because the stakes were actually clear and the goal was noble. Saving halflings from slavery was cool, as was diving into ghost infested crypts.
I disagree that it has a good story. The sandbox parts were okay for a while, though.
Well the sandbox means the fire giant stuff only happens if the players go there.
We even decided to try to go back with some Order of the Gauntlet knights, who are tremendously boring boyscouts by the way, and he just said they would pay us to deal with the problem. I do not care about Neverwinter, you help your city!
He also hews just too closely to the book. I never get to do my social rogue stuff even in situations where I can find good reasons to do it in. I also get interrupted before I can sneak about the place or scout anything. I have a grappling hook and I have been able to use it all of once because there’s always some reason I can’t use it.
E: even acknowledging it is partly a GM problem, Faerun is generally uninteresting.
Strictly it has a number of problems
1) Its in Faerun and...
2) Its kind of themeless and structure less. There
3) It does not plug and play. Most of the other modules can plug and play (Besides out of the Abyss, i want to say) which means that you can roughly take them and add them into any setting. Curse of Sthrad doesn't have to be in Ravenloft for instance you can just stick it wherever you want a vampire to be ruling if you have space for that
*Faerun is a very orderly and overactive place. I mean this in the game world sense and these are both negative things. Its filled with non-hostile agents which are off doing things which you may be a part of. This does two super negative things. First off it means that you're less likely to be the hero. And it also means that there isn't much of a space for adventure except for what others give you. (and why are they giving the job to you instead of like... doing it themselves because shouldn't that literally be their job?)
As i see it any setting MUST have a fundamental character flow chart that looks something like so.
Is a character more powerful than the party Y/N
If Y: is this character a villain Y/N/Maybe
If Y: Good
If Maybe: OK
If N: is this character dead? Y/N
If Y: Good
If N: Is this character more powerful because of status, are they a king of guild leader or are they actually more powerful in a direct physical sense? Status/Both/Physical
If Status: OK
If Both: Return to "is this character a Villain" and answer "maybe"
if Physical: Delete this character
Faerun most certainly does not fit this flow chart.
As a brand new player I'm finding the Faerun setting wonderful. It gives a great setting with a deep background. The Sword Coast Adventure Guide is magnificent. It gives tons of detail (and for me puts in place all the old DnD video games I could never quite get into since I didn't really understand them).
I was able to slot in the couple of quests my party did just to learn the game. Turns out it's happening around Daggerford, which the book gives tons of awesome detail on. And also guess what? The maps of these areas are easily found online and printed out. So now I have this sweet map of the town and ever major location. Along with the lore from the book! It really is a great setting. And who says it can't be customized? This is my world and it doesn't have to conform to any preconceived lore. Having lots of landmarks and other features to pull from is a wonderful resource for a newbie such as myself. And if my world doesn't line up with the lore, who cares? I want a teaming land with other adventurers and weird things that need investigating. I'm not so vain to think my party are the only heroes in the world. They will probably rise above all the others, but it will be a long road.
In the meantime, the previously dead Hobgoblin king, and his new sidekick Jeff the Goblin, who was accidentally resurrected (unknowingly) by the heroes is rising and will soon lead the combined might of the local goblin tribes he's conquered against Daggerford and their militia.
It will be quite epic
Fair enough. I like it for the map and locations. Nothing says I have to use the 'correct' characters. But I'm a sucker for any generic fantasy setting.
Straight up, you are right.
I honestly think it’s my GM which is the problem because it feels like he never thinks about this stuff until the day of the game. He always sticks to the book.
While in my campaign he’s in, I’ll spend hours on the stories I run. I homebrewed all of them except for the first and I made a big change from the text during outlining it where the text gives you a binary choice and I said, “nah” because it was more interesting that way.
The primary reason I wanted to use Forgotten Realms was to give my players a sense of communal history with the D&D community.
Because without that motivator I would rather use a home-brewed campaign setting where I just steal from Adventure Time and the Auralnauts, and just have all of the towns & places be named like Swamp-Town, Ice-Kingdom, Coast-City, ect...
Many of @Goumindong 's (Not criticizing, just following the reference) complaints are carried over baggage from previous editions and the sheer volume of 2e/3e novels and sourcebooks where every NPC given to you in a storyline and thereafter described in a sourcebook was simply cooler and more powerful than anything you came up with as a player.
Most of that is not there in 5e (or 4e IIRC?) So go ahead and use that fluff guilt free and as you see fit!
Those are better than “the Sword Coast”. They actually give me info about a place. “Sword Coast” isn’t even good enough to be a metal name like “Sea of Blades”.
Swampton is actually located on a marsh.
Or take ideas from it and make your own world
Well yes, I love homebrew content, but it's not easy for DMs to work out a bunch of content, while there's FR like right there with detailed descriptions of every neck of the woods your players will want to fuck with.
It sounds like Forgotten Realms only falls apart when someone asks why none of the epic NPCs is stepping in to save the world instead. Take those out of the equation and your players will be none the wiser (unless they read all the fucking pulpy R.A. Salvatore novels when they were teens) and assume that yes they are the noble heroes who will save the realm.
Not everyone knows of if the King is alive or dead since he doesn't personally comes around to say Hi
The problem with faerun is when you're playing with people that have been around the block a few times.
They will likely expect the world to work in a certain way and when it doesn't they burst into tears.
Also when you do actually want to add something new to the world, you can't, because the map's already kinda full.
In my next campaign I'm just going to add a disclaimer that states what is and what isn't.
I love the sword coast but I don't want all of the smaller cities and towns to already be there.
Also not entirely sold on the spell plague.
Regarding why Elminster/Drizzt aren't just showing up:
They're off saving the world.
That lich you're fighting is small beans. And even if his plan comes to fruition, eh, someone else more competent will fix it.
Or just don't make them that cringe-worthy in your version.
As of 4E, it is now canon that the setting is paired with a parallel world called Abeir, which was split off into its own thing to end the war between the gods and primordials. Abeir was ruled by the primordials until they were eventually usurped by dragons. During 4E certain parts of the Realms were swapped with sections Abeir, which eventually returned to normal.
Perhaps the party could be primarily stationed in the established Forgotten Realms but make forays into (largely undetailed) Abeir for some reason.
From the Forgotten Realms wiki:
..
Big CoH spoiler:
The players are helping to build the big fuck off important characters for the setting. In that their characters are those types of people.
Is that Strahd on the far left? Looks great!
I do have it sketched out! A few of my players are on the boards so I'm hoping they aren't checking this thread but essentially
I'm thinking we'll have some various spirit type folks who have set up vendor shops and services as a little mini town in parts of the warehouse. This is also when they'll discover that no one has ever actually completed this race before, most people end up dying in this warehouse having not found the gems. But our players being clever will surely figure out a better way to track down the gems!
I'm describing the contents of the chest they found it in, gold, silver, copper, some knick-knacks they can sell for some gold, and a pouch with dust inside! I'm still describing the dust when one of the players interrupts:
Player: "I lick the dust."
I was giggling so hard while trying to decide just how fucked he was. I decided that having it kill him straight up was probably unfun so I had him roll a con save to decide his exhaustion level over how dehydrated he suddenly got. Its been days and I'm still breaking down into fits of giggles over the whole situation.