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[DnD 5E] You can't triple stamp a double stamp!

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Posts

  • GaddezGaddez Registered User regular
    edited September 2018
    Hell, I can do you one better:
    Ad%26d_gateway_to_the_sf.png

    The first quest involves you going off to murder a priest of bane who was the sole point of opposition in the Zhentarim to them crossing the desert to fuck up the sword coast, with the party having to clean up this mess after the fact.

    Gaddez on
  • SleepSleep Registered User regular
    I'm a big fan of making parties their own worst enemies

  • GaddezGaddez Registered User regular
    Sleep wrote: »
    I'm a big fan of making parties their own worst enemies

    I find one of the best ways to start a campaign is at the end of another story; I ran one a while back that started with the players sneaking into the castle of a king who was trying to put down a revolution with the help of a lich: there goal was to break the lich's phylactery so that the rebels could kill the stupid thing once and for all.

    They ultimately found the phylactery around the kings neck and after killing him they were able to destroy it.

    The catch however, was that the royal bloodline was tied to a powerful warding spell put in place by the gods; that no giant could enter the kingdom so long as the royal bloodline was unbroken. Which was kind of important since the kingdom was the grave of a Primordial who's element was motion; effectively it governed kinetic energy and as a result it was nigh unbeatable when it was active (anything that got close to it was simply ripped apart) and that if the giants could get their hands on it's heart (literally the crown jewel) they could ressurect it, thus firing up a potential second dawn war.

  • SteelhawkSteelhawk Registered User regular
    In the Acquisitions Inc. holiday special, the company burst into an abandoned church and beat the shit out of a couple of goblins. Batman style, teeth losing interrogations.... axes to the head... the usual. Turns out the pair of gobs found an empty town and were just playing around swinging on the rope, dinging the church bells. Acquisitions Inc. busted up an innocent play date.

  • webguy20webguy20 I spend too much time on the Internet Registered User regular
    Not Another D&D Podcast does similar. Its set 20 years after a previous adventuring party defeated a necromancer.

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  • SleepSleep Registered User regular
    Steelhawk wrote: »
    In the Acquisitions Inc. holiday special, the company burst into an abandoned church and beat the shit out of a couple of goblins. Batman style, teeth losing interrogations.... axes to the head... the usual. Turns out the pair of gobs found an empty town and were just playing around swinging on the rope, dinging the church bells. Acquisitions Inc. busted up an innocent play date.

    The oops fantasy racism play is kinda fucked up, but I'd be lying if I said I hadn't done it.

  • SteelhawkSteelhawk Registered User regular
    Sleep wrote: »
    Steelhawk wrote: »
    In the Acquisitions Inc. holiday special, the company burst into an abandoned church and beat the shit out of a couple of goblins. Batman style, teeth losing interrogations.... axes to the head... the usual. Turns out the pair of gobs found an empty town and were just playing around swinging on the rope, dinging the church bells. Acquisitions Inc. busted up an innocent play date.

    The oops fantasy racism play is kinda fucked up, but I'd be lying if I said I hadn't done it.

    Yeah, me too. Fantasy racism is OK, though. I don't know why, but it is. It's even in non rpg fiction.

    "The elf did this" "The dwarf said"....

    Nobody ever writes "The black guy said" or "The Asian girl did this" in fiction.

  • DarkPrimusDarkPrimus Registered User regular
    edited September 2018
    It's an ingrained artifact from the origins of the genre that most players don't even realize is problematic.

    The trope of monocultured fantasy races seems to always go hand-in-hand with the trope that humans are the only race that isn't monocultural, and I think that's silly. A race isn't a culture: elves, dwarves, whatever, they should have differences in their behavior based on where they grew up, not just "because they're an elf/dwarve/etc."

    (And while we're at it, even the usage of the word "race" feels kind of icky these days.)

    It makes for richer settings and more engaging characters if you allow more variety to exist.

    DarkPrimus on
  • SteelhawkSteelhawk Registered User regular
    That's part of the reason I always liked Eberron's take on Orcs and Hobgoblins.

    Orcs are still Orcs, but they're more of the noble savage type. Some of them are slavering monsters in thrall to dark powers. Most others are druid-ish variety, just trying to keep to their old ways and territory. The first race to do the whole "save-the-world-from-demons" bit and all that. The Hobgoblins are a race trying to rebuild their empire. Not by conquest (yet?), but by consolidating their negotiated gains of territory ceded to them at the end of the Last War. I equate Hobgoblins very much with Klingons.

  • Endless_SerpentsEndless_Serpents Registered User regular
    edited September 2018
    For no particular reason orcs in my current campaign are of six major groups (discussed but not yet seen):

    1. Ancestor worshipping islanders that hunt sea monsters for glory. Discovered a lot of places first but didn’t stake a claim. Ritual cannibals.
    2. Heavy industrial Mordor types that are rebuilding the remains of the Dark Lord’s empire for their own needs.
    3. The Mongols, who having overtaken some elven nations are being slowly altered by them from within, with the current Khan even adopting their religious views. Empire is of equal size to anything a human has pulled off and has been around a while.
    4. Poison eating rainforest berserkers who are lead by druids with a more survival of the fittest, predatory view, no lovely hippy crap. They break civilisations and plant trees over the ruins.
    5. A newly founded nation trying to compete civilly next to humans and dwarves. Picture an orc with a frilly shirt and a glass of wine, trying not to headbutt an annoying dwarf diplomat who’s dropping thinly veiled racial slurs. They’re trying to reclaim the lost history of their people, which the orc gods (demon princes) cut from all recollection. Spanish, all rapiers and siestas.
    6. Straight up murder blood blood double murder albino orcs that are sealed inside a cave complex that spans an old dwarf kingdom all the way to a dark elf citadel. They follow the demon princes and are comparable to demons or a ancient wyrm in terms of “oh shit” if they ever get out. The main tying agreement between elves and dwarves is keeping the fury box closed.

    Endless_Serpents on
  • SmrtnikSmrtnik job boli zub Registered User regular
    So i think tonight's game went well and they got two items at Yester Hill and were rewarded for their cowardice by going up the back of the hill and dealing with the tree first.

    steam_sig.png
  • Phoenix-DPhoenix-D Registered User regular
    DarkPrimus wrote: »
    It's an ingrained artifact from the origins of the genre that most players don't even realize is problematic.

    The trope of monocultured fantasy races seems to always go hand-in-hand with the trope that humans are the only race that isn't monocultural, and I think that's silly. A race isn't a culture: elves, dwarves, whatever, they should have differences in their behavior based on where they grew up, not just "because they're an elf/dwarve/etc."

    (And while we're at it, even the usage of the word "race" feels kind of icky these days.)

    It makes for richer settings and more engaging characters if you allow more variety to exist.

    This is part of the reason why the game I'm in, the party is entirely kobolds.

  • SleepSleep Registered User regular
    Tonight i got to use

    This
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPTCq3LiZSE

    As the visions my players saw when the pseudo died in a crazy powerful magical construct that links their minds with the bodies of nimblewrights that they pilot to kill super powerful outsiders threatening the city they live in.

  • Mongrel IdiotMongrel Idiot Registered User regular
    5. A newly founded nation trying to compete civilly next to humans and dwarves. Picture an orc with a frilly shirt and a glass of wine, trying not to headbutt an annoying dwarf diplomat who’s dropping thinly veiled racial slurs. They’re trying to reclaim the lost history of their people, which the orc gods (demon princes) cut from all recollection. Spanish, all rapiers and siestas.
    I didn't realize I needed this in my life until right now.

  • webguy20webguy20 I spend too much time on the Internet Registered User regular
    So I am going to be starting in storm kings thunder in a month or so and am thinking uo my character.

    Going to be an Oath of the common man paladin with a dip of 2 levels into hexblade warlock.

    I have two questions

    1. When should I do my 2 level dip? I'm thinking paladin 2, warlock 2, paladin till the end.

    2. What are some modern communist/socialist works that I should brush up on so i can RP effectively?

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  • Hexmage-PAHexmage-PA Registered User regular
    DarkPrimus wrote: »
    (And while we're at it, even the usage of the word "race" feels kind of icky these days.)

    There was a thread on this over on ENWorld in response to Pathfinder 2E switching to the word "ancestry". Some people liked the change, some people liked "race" better, and some people liked neither and offered-up alternatives like "kind" or "species".

    Race in D&D is weird because you can have radically different creatures producing offspring together. For example, humans (who need to sleep and live less than a century) can have children with elves (who don't sleep and live for about 700 years). Going even further, human and genie pairings yield genasi, human and dragon (polymorphed into human, presumably) pairings yield half-dragons, human and succubus yields a cambion, human plus yuan-ti yields yuan-ti pureblood, etc.

    Personally I find half-elves, half-orcs, and especially half-ogres pretty uncomfortable to think much about. Half-elves live nowhere near as long as their elven parents, half-orcs are smarter than orcs, and half-ogres are just icky all around.

  • webguy20webguy20 I spend too much time on the Internet Registered User regular
    When I run campaigns i reflavor the default evil intelligent races as not intrinsically evil and that goes a long way in making things better. Im a firm believer that people, whether human orc or elf, are the product of their culture and environment.

    Being able to have fallen elves and heroic orcs can really open up the story telling potential of a game.

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  • tinwhiskerstinwhiskers Registered User regular
    Who just agreed to emergency DM a one shot in ummmm five hours. This idiot.

    Hopefully my boss didn't expect me to get much done this afternoon.

    6ylyzxlir2dz.png
  • joshgotrojoshgotro Deviled Egg The Land of REAL CHILIRegistered User regular
    System, number of PCs, setting?

  • Endless_SerpentsEndless_Serpents Registered User regular
    At the minute I’m going with a lot of races being ill-fitting names spoken only in Common by farmers who’ve never met anyone different.

    There are no half-ogres, but there might be some smudgy grey area between human, orc and ogre. Some other lesser known race that doesn’t have enough political or historic clout to define themselves. Hell, maybe when you get there the half-ogres are actually goliaths, or earth gensai.

    Likewise there are several nations of elves that might well live in or near forests but to a human peasant the nearest nation is always The Wood Elves.

  • Ken OKen O Registered User regular
    Following up my cursed bard. Wrote my DM and we worked out something that makes sense for us. We're going to be using saving throws for me to resist the spirit's desires when my character comes across something that would cause him to act differently than normal. The checks will get easier to pass as time goes by and the more I resist. So if I make all my saves the spirit will be beaten in a few days. We also stole from the ghost possession rules, it's be forced out if I drop to 0 hp.

    http://www.fingmonkey.com/
    Comics, Games, Booze
  • tinwhiskerstinwhiskers Registered User regular
    joshgotro wrote: »
    System, number of PCs, setting?

    5e, 4-6 PCs levels 6 or 7, Norminal in forgotten realms, but really not engaged in the setting beyond "Waterdeep is a big city".

    6ylyzxlir2dz.png
  • SleepSleep Registered User regular
    webguy20 wrote: »
    So I am going to be starting in storm kings thunder in a month or so and am thinking uo my character.

    Going to be an Oath of the common man paladin with a dip of 2 levels into hexblade warlock.

    I have two questions

    1. When should I do my 2 level dip? I'm thinking paladin 2, warlock 2, paladin till the end.

    2. What are some modern communist/socialist works that I should brush up on so i can RP effectively?

    1) yeah that's probably the best play. But why no summonable weapon and second level slots?

    2)Have you tried the socialist decentralized art of memes?

  • DarkPrimusDarkPrimus Registered User regular
    joshgotro wrote: »
    System, number of PCs, setting?

    5e, 4-6 PCs levels 6 or 7, Norminal in forgotten realms, but really not engaged in the setting beyond "Waterdeep is a big city".

    Turns out you're running A Quiet Year for the group instead so they can generate the setting for the actual D&D campaign.

  • Hexmage-PAHexmage-PA Registered User regular
    edited September 2018
    webguy20 wrote: »
    When I run campaigns i reflavor the default evil intelligent races as not intrinsically evil and that goes a long way in making things better. Im a firm believer that people, whether human orc or elf, are the product of their culture and environment.

    Being able to have fallen elves and heroic orcs can really open up the story telling potential of a game.

    My take is that creatures with a strong tie to demon lords, such as minotaurs and gnolls, are most often evil because of a supernatural influence the demon lord has over them.

    However, some demon lords have lost control of the races they once held spiritual domination over. The patron of minotaurs, Baphomet, and the patron of gnolls, Yeenoghu, have suffered setbacks that greatly lessened their control over their former thralls. Gnolls in particular are split between followers of Yeenoghu and followers of the Elder Spirits of the natural world, with both factions zealously waging war on each other.

    As for drow, in my setting Lolth has been dead for a very long time and largely replaced by two spider-like Elder Spirits known as Fateweaver and Spinner of Shadows, with the majority favoring the former. As a result they are tend towards Neutral. They live far from the surface and have little contact with the aboveground races, usually only emerging to trade their exotic wares or to deliver prophecies given to them by Fateweaver.

    Wood elves, as a long-lived race that reproduces much more slowly than the humans that have historically overrun their territories with sheer numbers, are xenophobic. They live in remote enclaves, devise defenses to forbid human encroachment, and exile any elf who speaks to a human or owns human-crafted items. Some elven communities have even begun worshiping the demon lord Oublivae, an entity who promises to one day destroy human civilization and chase the survivors into the wilderness to be captured and ritually sacrificed by the elves in her honor. Elven human hunters wear eerie masks that forbid them from speaking but enable telepathy between their allies, as well as grant immunity to the inhalation poisons the elves use as part of their arsenal. Though these demon-worshiping elves view humans as little more than vermin to be exterminated they reserve a different treatment for any half-elves they encounter. These unfortunates are abducted, slain, and magically reincarnated in adult wood elf bodies with nearly all memories of their old life erased so that they can be assimilated (or, as they would phrase it, made whole). These guys are Chaotic Evil, of course.

    Hexmage-PA on
  • SchadenfreudeSchadenfreude Mean Mister Mustard Registered User regular
    Wow. No D&D for a month and then it all comes at once.

    I've got my Curse of Strahd group tomorrow, I'm DMing a one shot for a bunch of Adventurers League DMs from my FLGS on Saturday, then I've got AL on Monday, a homebrew I actually play in two or three days after that and then my own homebrew two days after that! Did I spend that month off prepping any of this? Of course not!

    Woo.

    Contemplate this on the Tree of Woe
  • Super NamicchiSuper Namicchi Orange County, CARegistered User regular
    incorporating fantasy races into your game affords you the opportunity (should you wish to) to explore serious themes like racism while putting a significant enough distance between the people playing and the subject matter

    this is all of course social contract-type stuff, but i feel it warrants saying that you don’t necessarily need to see fantasy racism as a bad thing, assuming it is serving an actual purpose and your posse doesn’t object

    older bits of fantasy are rooted in this sort of shorthand and some people like that; lord of the rings is popular, and for them it makes sense to lean into it and present something familiar

  • RiemannLivesRiemannLives Registered User regular
    incorporating fantasy races into your game affords you the opportunity (should you wish to) to explore serious themes like racism while putting a significant enough distance between the people playing and the subject matter

    this is all of course social contract-type stuff, but i feel it warrants saying that you don’t necessarily need to see fantasy racism as a bad thing, assuming it is serving an actual purpose and your posse doesn’t object

    older bits of fantasy are rooted in this sort of shorthand and some people like that; lord of the rings is popular, and for them it makes sense to lean into it and present something familiar

    doing this is tricky at best

    because it's far too easy to basically end up making your fantasy-world-standins for real-world racists be correct. If you use magic users or vampires or
    orcs or whatever as an analogy for racism then what happens when the people who don't like the magic users end up being (at least partially) correct?

    Attacked by tweeeeeeees!
  • DarkPrimusDarkPrimus Registered User regular
    Also, in the real world, the people who are hated don't have supernatural powers or connections to the Demon Realm or whatever that can provide an actual reason for thinking they're dangerous or distrustful or worthy of extra scrutiny, etc.

    There is no legitimacy to real-world racism. The modern concept of race itself is a racist idea, conceived of to justify European colonial imperialism and the brutality of the slave trade.

  • Super NamicchiSuper Namicchi Orange County, CARegistered User regular
    I think it’s rather unfair to just assume anyone who wants to incorporate serious, darker themes like racism is just going fall into straight allegory and somehow justify / legitimize actual systemic oppression in the real world

  • Super NamicchiSuper Namicchi Orange County, CARegistered User regular
    and the answer to your question about “what do you do when your fantasy racists end up being partially correct” is you play to find out what happens and work through those ramifications and develop a good story because that sounds super compelling and dramatic

  • webguy20webguy20 I spend too much time on the Internet Registered User regular
    edited September 2018
    Sleep wrote: »
    webguy20 wrote: »
    So I am going to be starting in storm kings thunder in a month or so and am thinking uo my character.

    Going to be an Oath of the common man paladin with a dip of 2 levels into hexblade warlock.

    I have two questions

    1. When should I do my 2 level dip? I'm thinking paladin 2, warlock 2, paladin till the end.

    2. What are some modern communist/socialist works that I should brush up on so i can RP effectively?

    1) yeah that's probably the best play. But why no summonable weapon and second level slots?

    2)Have you tried the socialist decentralized art of memes?

    for Question 1 I don't want to lose any more paladin levels than I have to because I really want to try out the oath of the common man, and the benefits of pact of the blade aren't big enough to go to level 3. Especially with an already powerful eldrich blast, with invocations to give it flexibility. Two levels give me Hex curse and hex fighter, which is huge which lets me just pump Charisma, Con and dex without having to worry about strength.

    If we were playing a different game that went past level 12 then I might take different leveling options.

    webguy20 on
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  • KadokenKadoken Giving Ends to my Friends and it Feels Stupendous Registered User regular
    webguy20 wrote: »
    So I am going to be starting in storm kings thunder in a month or so and am thinking uo my character.

    Going to be an Oath of the common man paladin with a dip of 2 levels into hexblade warlock.

    I have two questions

    1. When should I do my 2 level dip? I'm thinking paladin 2, warlock 2, paladin till the end.

    2. What are some modern communist/socialist works that I should brush up on so i can RP effectively?

    I also played a revolutionary type character in the SKT campaign I was in, and honestly, I felt really icky trying to bring back
    a caste system
    to the point that when it was finally revealed that's what was happening my interest just plummeted until I finally quit after a number of sessions trying to keep it going for everyone else's sake.

  • Endless_SerpentsEndless_Serpents Registered User regular
    So homebrew junk time, Aasimar:
    1. A sun worshipping mostly human empire has aasimar royalty who are pulling the whole we’re celestial, we must be good! Let me explain why enslaving and “civilising” beastmen is actually lawful good. They hold almost the entire equatorial line and all trade passes through them.
    2. Nomadic burly barbarian guys who believe they’ve been sent by the gods to cut out rot (both literal and social) and turn up to fill the ranks of rebels and small good nations whenever they’re needed. Basically a tribe of Captain Americas.
    3. Scattered towns built around a massive Planar Gate used by angels at the dawn of time. Though all aasimar the villages include humans, halflings, goliaths and elves, so race has kind of melted here.
    4. You know Doom? Yeah. Heavy metal knights that hunt demons. Inventors of the hand cannon. Flaming swords and judgement. They also occasionally birth a tiefling, who are trained from childhood and serve on the frontline.
    5. The main city state of the party has a few aasimar families that are known for their oracles and healers. Might actually just be human at this point, and wear makeup and halo tiaras to keep up appearances.
    6. A desert order of assassins. Scimitars and throwing chakrams. Literally the maji from The Mummy.

  • webguy20webguy20 I spend too much time on the Internet Registered User regular
    Kadoken wrote: »
    webguy20 wrote: »
    So I am going to be starting in storm kings thunder in a month or so and am thinking uo my character.

    Going to be an Oath of the common man paladin with a dip of 2 levels into hexblade warlock.

    I have two questions

    1. When should I do my 2 level dip? I'm thinking paladin 2, warlock 2, paladin till the end.

    2. What are some modern communist/socialist works that I should brush up on so i can RP effectively?

    I also played a revolutionary type character in the SKT campaign I was in, and honestly, I felt really icky trying to bring back
    a caste system
    to the point that when it was finally revealed that's what was happening my interest just plummeted until I finally quit after a number of sessions trying to keep it going for everyone else's sake.

    Yea I'm interested to see how our DM is going to handle it. We're a pretty flexible group at the table and no-one is afraid to change the module as written to accommodate character concepts. I'm going to play mine as a persuasive salesman type, super high charisma and only leans on persuasion, not intimidation. He'll get people to do what he wants because he will be so persuasive people will think it's their idea. That is the idea anyways. He's also going to be a true believer, and not in it for the power, and the Oath is built to support that.

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  • GaddezGaddez Registered User regular
    So I got my hands on the new Module (dragon heist) and I gotta say... It kinda feels like either their was a massive fight between the writers or they thought they were doing something really clever, because it's not really a module so much as 4 small ones built around a central plot.

    Which one you are doing isn't governed by Player's choices or interests it's decided by the season (real or in game).

    Which is kind of clever I guess, but it ultimately winds up feeling like I'm only getting to use a quarter of the book's contents and the various antagonists aren't interlinking nearly as much as I was lead to believe they would.

    Really, they should have spent more time working on this before they rushed it out for print.

  • KasynKasyn I'm not saying I don't like our chances. She called me the master.Registered User regular
    Might be looking at the first TPK I've ever been a part of in any campaign. We opened up a sarcophagus at level two to discover a fucking troll inside, followed by the DM critting on the initiative roll and the creature knocking out two of the three PCs before their first action.

    So that's cool, I guess.

  • tinwhiskerstinwhiskers Registered User regular
    Kasyn wrote: »
    Might be looking at the first TPK I've ever been a part of in any campaign. We opened up a sarcophagus at level two to discover a fucking troll inside, followed by the DM critting on the initiative roll and the creature knocking out two of the three PCs before their first action.

    So that's cool, I guess.

    Jesus, that's probably a TPK, even if the DM doesn't roll super good.

    6ylyzxlir2dz.png
  • SteelhawkSteelhawk Registered User regular
    It will be with that that attitude.

  • Endless_SerpentsEndless_Serpents Registered User regular
    edited September 2018
    If I ever have a TPK my backup plan is the Grim Reaper wanted them to die, having especially empowered the foes of the day (so they don’t feel bad) and he has a mission for them to kill the Devil or a Great Old One, something suitably badass, and they descend into their realm in jet black versions of whatever they usually wear as I play the Doom soundtrack.

    Should they succeed they’re brought back to life about a year after their death. They keep their death equipment and I play the Doom soundtrack again as they face down whatever villain has had a year ruling the world while they’ve been away.

    Endless_Serpents on
This discussion has been closed.