i love common magic and the current town my players are embroiled in is Deadwood meets Hogsmeade meets Las Vegas and they set fire to steam magitech riverboat casino a few sessions ago
I don't think low magic works well for 5e, you kind of have to exclude about half the classes... and if like, a wizard, is lord of the rings level of uncommon they could just get a job as a king's advisor or something at level 1
I applaud anyone who can make it work but I feel like there are better game systems for a super low magic world
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KadokenGiving Ends to my Friends and it Feels StupendousRegistered Userregular
i love common magic and the current town my players are embroiled in is Deadwood meets Hogsmeade meets Las Vegas and they set fire to steam magitech riverboat casino a few sessions ago
I don't think low magic works well for 5e, you kind of have to exclude about half the classes... and if like, a wizard, is lord of the rings level of uncommon they could just get a job as a king's advisor or something at level 1
I applaud anyone who can make it work but I feel like there are better game systems for a super low magic world
I tend to look at it this way:
It's basically the buffy the vampire slayer effect. For most people in the world magic isn't just rare it's unheardof and often dismissed as bullshit. However for the adventuring party, and the "world" they run in, magic is like an every day thing.
I don't think low magic works well for 5e, you kind of have to exclude about half the classes... and if like, a wizard, is lord of the rings level of uncommon they could just get a job as a king's advisor or something at level 1
I applaud anyone who can make it work but I feel like there are better game systems for a super low magic world
I tend to look at it this way:
It's basically the buffy the vampire slayer effect. For most people in the world magic isn't just rare it's unheardof and often dismissed as bullshit. However for the adventuring party, and the "world" they run in, magic is like an every day thing.
If that's the case though, why would any wizard adventure, and where did they learn magic? Even a guy capable of Firebolt would be as noteworthy as The Blackstaff in the Forgotten Realms
I don't think low magic works well for 5e, you kind of have to exclude about half the classes... and if like, a wizard, is lord of the rings level of uncommon they could just get a job as a king's advisor or something at level 1
I applaud anyone who can make it work but I feel like there are better game systems for a super low magic world
I tend to look at it this way:
It's basically the buffy the vampire slayer effect. For most people in the world magic isn't just rare it's unheardof and often dismissed as bullshit. However for the adventuring party, and the "world" they run in, magic is like an every day thing.
If that's the case though, why would any wizard adventure, and where did they learn magic? Even a guy capable of Firebolt would be as noteworthy as The Blackstaff in the Forgotten Realms
There could be a lot of ways. Maybe you're from Neverwinter, and you couldn't cut it in wizard school so you moved out to the outskirts of civilization, thinking you'd be able to impress the locals with your little firebolt spell, but this town has some serious issues and your little academic bubble is about to run headlong into real challenges (which, as it turns out, is where you blossom).
Maybe there's an underground network of magic users, keeping an eye out for anyone with the gift, since they tend to either get angry-mob-with-pitchforked to death or blow up a village, leading to the prevalance of those angry mobs, and you've got to deal with what you're pretty sure is a werewolf threatening the village while keeping your secret safe.
Maybe there's just a resident wizard who keeps an eye out over an area, ala Discworldian witches, and yours is getting on in years and you've got a knack, and he's got a huge wizard problem to deal with so you've got to figure out how to handle the rest of the troubles in town.
It'd take a lot of GM work, which is not super great because most of the way 5e is presented requires a lot of GM work, but it's all easy enough to justify
It kind of feels like such a world would kind of automatically make the entire story about your party's spellcaster
Again I'm not saying it can't be done, but why 5e? Every class is either a spellcaster or has a spellcaster subclass, or is a monk which is wishy washy but they shoot lasers or shadows or fire for 3 of em
It feels like if you wanted to run a game where magic was so rare that the majority of the population doesn't even believe it exists, 5e is a poor system, because you're going to have to suspend disbelief or grind the game to a halt every time someone casts a spell and every person witnessing it panics
I ran a low magic campaign and I'm also playing in a low magic campaign run by someone else.
Although I am having fun it definitely isn't easy in either game and I tend to agree that the 5e system isn't optimal for this style of game.
As a GM, I felt very hamstringed on what npcs amd obstacles I could throw at the players, and was forced to 'reflavor' many abilities so that they could fit into the world.
As a player, I felt the lack of any int/wis based characters hard when doing daily adventuring.
Hope my group never wanted to investigate/percieve anything, cus it wasn't happening with a 0 or -1 on every character.
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Blake TDo you have enemies then?Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.Registered Userregular
I don't think low magic works well for 5e, you kind of have to exclude about half the classes... and if like, a wizard, is lord of the rings level of uncommon they could just get a job as a king's advisor or something at level 1
I applaud anyone who can make it work but I feel like there are better game systems for a super low magic world
I tend to look at it this way:
It's basically the buffy the vampire slayer effect. For most people in the world magic isn't just rare it's unheardof and often dismissed as bullshit. However for the adventuring party, and the "world" they run in, magic is like an every day thing.
If that's the case though, why would any wizard adventure, and where did they learn magic? Even a guy capable of Firebolt would be as noteworthy as The Blackstaff in the Forgotten Realms
There could be a lot of ways. Maybe you're from Neverwinter, and you couldn't cut it in wizard school so you moved out to the outskirts of civilization, thinking you'd be able to impress the locals with your little firebolt spell, but this town has some serious issues and your little academic bubble is about to run headlong into real challenges (which, as it turns out, is where you blossom).
Maybe there's an underground network of magic users, keeping an eye out for anyone with the gift, since they tend to either get angry-mob-with-pitchforked to death or blow up a village, leading to the prevalance of those angry mobs, and you've got to deal with what you're pretty sure is a werewolf threatening the village while keeping your secret safe.
Maybe there's just a resident wizard who keeps an eye out over an area, ala Discworldian witches, and yours is getting on in years and you've got a knack, and he's got a huge wizard problem to deal with so you've got to figure out how to handle the rest of the troubles in town.
It'd take a lot of GM work, which is not super great because most of the way 5e is presented requires a lot of GM work, but it's all easy enough to justify
You can also not give the wizard a focus and make the items that they need rarer as well so they might be able to be the coolest guy in the village, but if they're a douche they aren't going to the materials for the spells they need from the village.
I've been working on my anxiety by DMing for a party of people I really enjoy spending time with, but the day leading up to a session is absolute stomach churning hell and the day after is nearly as bad as I worry myself in circles about what could have gone better in the session.
Weirdly it doesn't seem to present at all during the actual DMing, probably because I have too many plates spinning to worry about anything.
Except in one case: I feel like I need to justify when things don't go the players way. I have pre-written tactics and abilities and situations and sometimes I find myself hesitating or feeling guilty when it feels like I might be picking on certain characters. I'll usually try to set that aside and let the player know later that it wasn't anything personal and I usually make an effort to make sure their character has a good spot to shine in the next battle/situation/session, but it still drives me to distraction sometimes!
On a separate but related note, my players had an awesome session last time we met and I'm really looking forward to the next one!
Long story short: the party accidentally crashed a Cloud Giant's Castle into the harbor of Waterdeep and had a freefall battle on the way down with the final two giants trying to murder eachother while one player tried to save and heal one of the giants and another player tried to murder that same giant, with everyone featherfalling at the last moment and watching the giants splat into the ground.
Next session should be fun, I imagine the authorities in Waterdeep will be interested in talking to the people who had a very public hand in crashing the castle.
With the Ravnica sourcebook coming out next month and like 6 planeshift supplements out im thinking I'm gonna start up 5e again and do a planeswalker campaign. I have enough time to figure out some super awesome abilities for when their sparks ignite.
I've been doing this very same thing in prep for Ravnica.
So apparently the The Art of Magic: The Gathering series are giant fucking world building books. My Dominaria book came in today and it is amazing. They have one for each plane they have a Plane Shift conversion out for as well.
It kind of feels like such a world would kind of automatically make the entire story about your party's spellcaster
Again I'm not saying it can't be done, but why 5e? Every class is either a spellcaster or has a spellcaster subclass, or is a monk which is wishy washy but they shoot lasers or shadows or fire for 3 of em
It feels like if you wanted to run a game where magic was so rare that the majority of the population doesn't even believe it exists, 5e is a poor system, because you're going to have to suspend disbelief or grind the game to a halt every time someone casts a spell and every person witnessing it panics
Maybe your players like the 5e system, and don't want to learn a new one, or don't have time to learn a new one. Maybe YOU really like the 5e system, and don't want to learn a new one, or don't have time to learn a new one. Maybe no one wants to drop $50-$200 on books for a new system. Maybe you just feel like it. There's a ton of reasons why 5e.
Like I said in my original post, yes it would take a lot of work on the GMs part, but that post was answering the question you originally asked, which was about the narrative reasons to justify low magic.
Likewise, narratively, you don't have to grind the game to a halt every time someone uses magic. Make it part of the players' job to keep the secret up. They have to lure beasts away from town, or lure citizens away from beasts. They need to keep on the good side of the law, since they're sneaking around keeping secrets. Maybe one of them has a family member in the law that they REALLY need to keep the secret from, or they can lean on them for help etc etc. If the secret gets out, suddenly that's a new threat to deal with.
Narrative reasons are easy to come up with, the (solveable, but complicated) problem is for the GM to deal with the prevalence of magic stuff baked into the books.
It's one more log on the "5e is a great game presented in a terrible way" pile.
I last time I got a low magic setting to work it was actually just a big region that was low magic, and mostly because culturally everyone didn't believe magic was actually real anymore since their ancestors killed all the wizards like 400 years prior
so the one wizard in the party spent so much of her time just trying to conceal her magic, and finding magical items meant they were super super old and basically artifacts
I like exploring what magic availability does for standard of living—I also have a world populated with mid level characters. my PCs are definitely The Protagonists, but they are not even close to being the most capable folks. the world is a big place though and travel remains fraught with risk, and there are no Elminsters
In my setting i had a low magic theme that still kinda holds up outside the main city we operate out of.
There was localized magic created by magical constructs/shrines found in the wild, which were often also the source of divine magic (which in my setting requires a resonance with one or more of these constructs as there are no gods or real solid religions). Divine casters were still somewhat rare, and didn't exceed 4th level which was reserved for like grand masters of their traditions and were kinda starting to die out. The characters are living in the age when scholars finally put together the strange symbols of power from these magical constructs, the abilities of the rare sorcerer, and even rarer warlock, to create learned magic. Like the decade leading up to the first campaign was marked by the increased use of magic that was ritualistic super costly and time consuming to create new weapons of war. One of the characters in the first party was the professor that got over the hump and figured out quick and dirty spell slot magic and cantrips, and he immediately started teaching it to everyone. He's the first archmage of the setting now, and the school he has tenure at is now offering classes for learned magic (bards, wizards, swordmages, arcane tricksters, arcane archers, etc).
It's been pretty fun playing the proliferation of magic story out. Especially with the players being the primary driver of that proliferation.
Oh it could also be fun to have a world where magic is low because it's a slowly renewing resource, and too many wizards can drain an area entirely. Wizards need to deal harshly with rivals because otherwise their own power supply goes dark.
Oh it could also be fun to have a world where magic is low because it's a slowly renewing resource, and too many wizards can drain an area entirely. Wizards need to deal harshly with rivals because otherwise their own power supply goes dark.
I treat D&D land as a dusty place. Disturb the ruin, the forest, anywhere, and magic is churned up and rises like fog across the land.
Ordinary folk lead ordinary lives, and the land is okay with that. You open that tomb? You draw those sigils on the ground? You seek out the hag? Shit escalates.
As a rule, the cult leader dies first, to whatever they think they’re working with.
There are still potion makers, healers and enchanted weapon smiths, because that stuff a sort of inoffensive arcana.
meanwhile im over here giving my players decanters of endless cats and turning them into mimics
Somewhat related to the "low magic" issue, is that I HATE the Identify spell. All it does in my games is identity the school of magic. If it's boring, like a +1 sword, they can find that out during a short rest. But anything more fun than that takes effort to figure out.
meanwhile im over here giving my players decanters of endless cats and turning them into mimics
Somewhat related to the "low magic" issue, is that I HATE the Identify spell. All it does in my games is identity the school of magic. If it's boring, like a +1 sword, they can find that out during a short rest. But anything more fun than that takes effort to figure out.
I have identify work like normal, but it can be fooled as part of the creation of the item, doesn't identify curses, and cannot tell you anything about a powerful or ancient item (requiring Legend Lore)
I actually have them roll an arcana check every time they cast identify but the result of that roll is mostly worthless, it gives me wiggle room, if they get a really high roll though I'll let them pierce the fail and be like "well here's what you get, but you suspect it's bullshit"
meanwhile im over here giving my players decanters of endless cats and turning them into mimics
Somewhat related to the "low magic" issue, is that I HATE the Identify spell. All it does in my games is identity the school of magic. If it's boring, like a +1 sword, they can find that out during a short rest. But anything more fun than that takes effort to figure out.
That's actually how it's supposed to work. A short rest allows you to Identify something, without attuning to it. Now of course there... are things which are only revealed by the spell, or even hidden from it. This also applies to potions, as you can take a tiny taste to figure out what it is.
"Hmm... this definitely tastes like it removes curses. I've never had a curse or drank a curse removal potion, but... I definitely feel a bit less cursed after that sip."
Alternate joke: "Hmm... bright nightshade midtones, with a touch of castor oil, newt-eye finish. Definitely a Late Illefarn era Potion of Lesser Restoration."
Minor COS spoilers from last night's game. Looks like the end is nigh.
Madam Wachter is arrested. That night Strahd threw a fit and after running from the party had his minions kill some villagers in Vallaki. That will happen every night until we go meet him at Castle Ravenloft. So he's forced our hand to confront him instead of exploring elsewhere. I wanted to check out the Dragon Knight place, but it looks like next session should be a big one.
"Hmm... this definitely tastes like it removes curses. I've never had a curse or drank a curse removal potion, but... I definitely feel a bit less cursed after that sip."
Alternate joke: "Hmm... bright nightshade midtones, with a touch of castor oil, newt-eye finish. Definitely a Late Illefarn era Potion of Lesser Restoration."
Potion of Colloidal Silver
it doesn't do anything other than make you believe it cured you of something
Welp, two of my players said they quit and that D&D wasn't fun for them anymore. Coincidentally its the same peeps who were less than enthused about the magic items they got.
When I asked them why, they said they would rather let me know face to face.
I was greeted with 2 pages of complaints/gripes.
In essence, it was the magic items, some new people they didn't like, how some people weren't into the story, or didn't know how to play their characters.
Over the course of a few beers and a couple hours, I was able to make them understand that there are different types of players and they have to deal with those different types. Do I want everyone to read all the shit I write? Yes, I do but if they don't I can't/won't make them. Do I want everyone to know what their characters are capable of and how to read their character sheet? Yes I do.
They confessed that there was a lot of petty gripes and we went over ways to try and make things more palatable and so they un-quit.
"Hmm... this definitely tastes like it removes curses. I've never had a curse or drank a curse removal potion, but... I definitely feel a bit less cursed after that sip."
Alternate joke: "Hmm... bright nightshade midtones, with a touch of castor oil, newt-eye finish. Definitely a Late Illefarn era Potion of Lesser Restoration."
The Arts and Arcana book about Dungeons and Dragons is pretty darn awesome, even for someone like me who is kinda new to playing it. Loads of awesome pictures from things like promotions and ofc all different editions and commentary to read. Check it out if you get the chance.
Interesting things afoot in the Curse of Strahd game I'm a player in
Curse of Strahd Amber Temple spoilers
We're neck deep in the Amber Temple and this session we fought an Amber Jackal Golem who seemed immune or close to immune to nonmagical attacks, which left my fighter pretty much SOL. I used my Blood Spear to do a little damage at least, but a full turn of attacking with it does less damage than I do with 1/3rd of my crossbow shots. Being a dex character in Curse of Strahd suuuuuuccckkkks.
We found a secret door leading to a room full of amber sarcophagi and 7 ghasts (they all died to a fireball before we even stepped into the room) and heard whispers offering power from them. Our party rogue decided to take all the powers while the party debated about it and by the end of the session he had accepted 5 (!) deals.
He can now spider climb on walls, got +4 charisma, "has many lives", has "the power of the storm" (some kind of lightning power?) and has "power over the dead".
Also he now has no teeth, a third eye, all three eyes have turned gross and yellow, half his face is paralyzed and drooping, and he has gained two major character flaws, he "won't take no for an answer" and "won't help anyone without promise of payment".
The player is our scout and the only person with darkvision so he'll always be ahead and basically swore he would take every power he runs across so I doubt I'll ever get the chance to even be tempted by one of these 'gods' trapped in the amber. Its a shame because my character is on a desperate quest for revenge against Strahd and would have heavily considered a lot of these offers.
Next session we're planning to try to kill some Flameskulls we can see flickering on the other half of the upstairs section, the NPC we ran into promised to give me his shiny necklace that my character judged as worth 1000 gold if I find his masters spellbook and/or staff for him, and told us he last saw his master in that hallway.
Curse of strahd game went uh, well, my poor oblivious naive wizard got in super over her head though
my wizard alter selfed to look like Irena, because we found out that izek was obsessed with her and I figured wizard is better at escaping than her
Well Izek kidnapped me and locked me in his room, I used my portents to make him blind as a bat and slipped a potion of poison into his wine, as he started screaming in pain I yelled for the burgermeister's son, who's totally infatuated with my character for several reasons (not the least of which, I had a formal wizard education at not-hogwarts and he didn't and I might be able to help his research)
Initiative was rolled, and everything came out flawlessly, just as the burgermeister arrived, he saw his son finishing Izek off with magic missiles and izek's dead body slumped over his guest, who had been demon-fist-punched in the face a few times
The DM dropped my alignment from LG to NG for killing Izek instead of using magic to escape, which is fair (the guy's a rapey serial killer so definitely still on the "Good" end), this character has never killed anyone before and is now extra traumatized, but got to spend the night at the burgermeister's house and more importantly, spend the night with the burgermeister's son's spellbook
so many delicious spells, also now the son is in a weird place, feeling great about himself and more confident than he ever has been before because he killed the scariest guy in the town, but at the same time working with him he now knows his teleportation experiments cant ever get him out of barovia... a new ally in the fight against strahd?
DM let me scribe spells I can't cast yet, so spending the next 24 hours "recovering" my wizard drank 3 bottles of wine and scribed fireball, suggestion, counterspell, and fly and gained 1 point of "madness" as a reflection of how awful that experience was, I have no idea what that means, the DM does though and that excites me
Where did your characters first run into the son? In the book as written, the party doesn't meet him until the attic
I met him in the attic the day before, and used my Weaver's proficiency to make him an animated stuffed animal out of an undead cat. I let him look over my spell book and he gave me some spell scribing supplies, the dm also revealed he was smitten with my wizard to the cleric who actually has insight
I found out about the Irena thing while purchasing stuffing for the stuffed cat project
Posts
your preferences aren't absolutes
I applaud anyone who can make it work but I feel like there are better game systems for a super low magic world
I mean to anyone not me? No they’re not.
But what I enjoy? Yeah
I tend to look at it this way:
It's basically the buffy the vampire slayer effect. For most people in the world magic isn't just rare it's unheardof and often dismissed as bullshit. However for the adventuring party, and the "world" they run in, magic is like an every day thing.
If that's the case though, why would any wizard adventure, and where did they learn magic? Even a guy capable of Firebolt would be as noteworthy as The Blackstaff in the Forgotten Realms
There could be a lot of ways. Maybe you're from Neverwinter, and you couldn't cut it in wizard school so you moved out to the outskirts of civilization, thinking you'd be able to impress the locals with your little firebolt spell, but this town has some serious issues and your little academic bubble is about to run headlong into real challenges (which, as it turns out, is where you blossom).
Maybe there's an underground network of magic users, keeping an eye out for anyone with the gift, since they tend to either get angry-mob-with-pitchforked to death or blow up a village, leading to the prevalance of those angry mobs, and you've got to deal with what you're pretty sure is a werewolf threatening the village while keeping your secret safe.
Maybe there's just a resident wizard who keeps an eye out over an area, ala Discworldian witches, and yours is getting on in years and you've got a knack, and he's got a huge wizard problem to deal with so you've got to figure out how to handle the rest of the troubles in town.
It'd take a lot of GM work, which is not super great because most of the way 5e is presented requires a lot of GM work, but it's all easy enough to justify
Again I'm not saying it can't be done, but why 5e? Every class is either a spellcaster or has a spellcaster subclass, or is a monk which is wishy washy but they shoot lasers or shadows or fire for 3 of em
It feels like if you wanted to run a game where magic was so rare that the majority of the population doesn't even believe it exists, 5e is a poor system, because you're going to have to suspend disbelief or grind the game to a halt every time someone casts a spell and every person witnessing it panics
Although I am having fun it definitely isn't easy in either game and I tend to agree that the 5e system isn't optimal for this style of game.
As a GM, I felt very hamstringed on what npcs amd obstacles I could throw at the players, and was forced to 'reflavor' many abilities so that they could fit into the world.
As a player, I felt the lack of any int/wis based characters hard when doing daily adventuring.
Hope my group never wanted to investigate/percieve anything, cus it wasn't happening with a 0 or -1 on every character.
Satans..... hints.....
I've been working on my anxiety by DMing for a party of people I really enjoy spending time with, but the day leading up to a session is absolute stomach churning hell and the day after is nearly as bad as I worry myself in circles about what could have gone better in the session.
Weirdly it doesn't seem to present at all during the actual DMing, probably because I have too many plates spinning to worry about anything.
Except in one case: I feel like I need to justify when things don't go the players way. I have pre-written tactics and abilities and situations and sometimes I find myself hesitating or feeling guilty when it feels like I might be picking on certain characters. I'll usually try to set that aside and let the player know later that it wasn't anything personal and I usually make an effort to make sure their character has a good spot to shine in the next battle/situation/session, but it still drives me to distraction sometimes!
On a separate but related note, my players had an awesome session last time we met and I'm really looking forward to the next one!
Long story short: the party accidentally crashed a Cloud Giant's Castle into the harbor of Waterdeep and had a freefall battle on the way down with the final two giants trying to murder eachother while one player tried to save and heal one of the giants and another player tried to murder that same giant, with everyone featherfalling at the last moment and watching the giants splat into the ground.
Next session should be fun, I imagine the authorities in Waterdeep will be interested in talking to the people who had a very public hand in crashing the castle.
So apparently the The Art of Magic: The Gathering series are giant fucking world building books. My Dominaria book came in today and it is amazing. They have one for each plane they have a Plane Shift conversion out for as well.
Maybe your players like the 5e system, and don't want to learn a new one, or don't have time to learn a new one. Maybe YOU really like the 5e system, and don't want to learn a new one, or don't have time to learn a new one. Maybe no one wants to drop $50-$200 on books for a new system. Maybe you just feel like it. There's a ton of reasons why 5e.
Like I said in my original post, yes it would take a lot of work on the GMs part, but that post was answering the question you originally asked, which was about the narrative reasons to justify low magic.
Likewise, narratively, you don't have to grind the game to a halt every time someone uses magic. Make it part of the players' job to keep the secret up. They have to lure beasts away from town, or lure citizens away from beasts. They need to keep on the good side of the law, since they're sneaking around keeping secrets. Maybe one of them has a family member in the law that they REALLY need to keep the secret from, or they can lean on them for help etc etc. If the secret gets out, suddenly that's a new threat to deal with.
Narrative reasons are easy to come up with, the (solveable, but complicated) problem is for the GM to deal with the prevalence of magic stuff baked into the books.
It's one more log on the "5e is a great game presented in a terrible way" pile.
so the one wizard in the party spent so much of her time just trying to conceal her magic, and finding magical items meant they were super super old and basically artifacts
party's fighter and rogue got to be hot shit but I get beheaded if I do anything other than use a sling
There was localized magic created by magical constructs/shrines found in the wild, which were often also the source of divine magic (which in my setting requires a resonance with one or more of these constructs as there are no gods or real solid religions). Divine casters were still somewhat rare, and didn't exceed 4th level which was reserved for like grand masters of their traditions and were kinda starting to die out. The characters are living in the age when scholars finally put together the strange symbols of power from these magical constructs, the abilities of the rare sorcerer, and even rarer warlock, to create learned magic. Like the decade leading up to the first campaign was marked by the increased use of magic that was ritualistic super costly and time consuming to create new weapons of war. One of the characters in the first party was the professor that got over the hump and figured out quick and dirty spell slot magic and cantrips, and he immediately started teaching it to everyone. He's the first archmage of the setting now, and the school he has tenure at is now offering classes for learned magic (bards, wizards, swordmages, arcane tricksters, arcane archers, etc).
It's been pretty fun playing the proliferation of magic story out. Especially with the players being the primary driver of that proliferation.
It's called Darksun.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Ordinary folk lead ordinary lives, and the land is okay with that. You open that tomb? You draw those sigils on the ground? You seek out the hag? Shit escalates.
As a rule, the cult leader dies first, to whatever they think they’re working with.
There are still potion makers, healers and enchanted weapon smiths, because that stuff a sort of inoffensive arcana.
See i do that stuff, but it's stuff they shouldn't be like immediately fine with. It's all totally new shit no one's seen before.
Like sometimes that archmage looks at a problem or creature and has nothing but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ "i'm gonna need to dissect this thing when we are done"
Somewhat related to the "low magic" issue, is that I HATE the Identify spell. All it does in my games is identity the school of magic. If it's boring, like a +1 sword, they can find that out during a short rest. But anything more fun than that takes effort to figure out.
I have identify work like normal, but it can be fooled as part of the creation of the item, doesn't identify curses, and cannot tell you anything about a powerful or ancient item (requiring Legend Lore)
I actually have them roll an arcana check every time they cast identify but the result of that roll is mostly worthless, it gives me wiggle room, if they get a really high roll though I'll let them pierce the fail and be like "well here's what you get, but you suspect it's bullshit"
That's actually how it's supposed to work. A short rest allows you to Identify something, without attuning to it. Now of course there... are things which are only revealed by the spell, or even hidden from it. This also applies to potions, as you can take a tiny taste to figure out what it is.
Alternate joke: "Hmm... bright nightshade midtones, with a touch of castor oil, newt-eye finish. Definitely a Late Illefarn era Potion of Lesser Restoration."
Comics, Games, Booze
Potion of Colloidal Silver
it doesn't do anything other than make you believe it cured you of something
When I asked them why, they said they would rather let me know face to face.
I was greeted with 2 pages of complaints/gripes.
In essence, it was the magic items, some new people they didn't like, how some people weren't into the story, or didn't know how to play their characters.
Over the course of a few beers and a couple hours, I was able to make them understand that there are different types of players and they have to deal with those different types. Do I want everyone to read all the shit I write? Yes, I do but if they don't I can't/won't make them. Do I want everyone to know what their characters are capable of and how to read their character sheet? Yes I do.
They confessed that there was a lot of petty gripes and we went over ways to try and make things more palatable and so they un-quit.
This DMing gig is a lot of work.
It’s not a very important country most of the time
http://steamcommunity.com/id/mortious
Curse of Strahd Amber Temple spoilers
We found a secret door leading to a room full of amber sarcophagi and 7 ghasts (they all died to a fireball before we even stepped into the room) and heard whispers offering power from them. Our party rogue decided to take all the powers while the party debated about it and by the end of the session he had accepted 5 (!) deals.
He can now spider climb on walls, got +4 charisma, "has many lives", has "the power of the storm" (some kind of lightning power?) and has "power over the dead".
Also he now has no teeth, a third eye, all three eyes have turned gross and yellow, half his face is paralyzed and drooping, and he has gained two major character flaws, he "won't take no for an answer" and "won't help anyone without promise of payment".
The player is our scout and the only person with darkvision so he'll always be ahead and basically swore he would take every power he runs across so I doubt I'll ever get the chance to even be tempted by one of these 'gods' trapped in the amber. Its a shame because my character is on a desperate quest for revenge against Strahd and would have heavily considered a lot of these offers.
Next session we're planning to try to kill some Flameskulls we can see flickering on the other half of the upstairs section, the NPC we ran into promised to give me his shiny necklace that my character judged as worth 1000 gold if I find his masters spellbook and/or staff for him, and told us he last saw his master in that hallway.
Well Izek kidnapped me and locked me in his room, I used my portents to make him blind as a bat and slipped a potion of poison into his wine, as he started screaming in pain I yelled for the burgermeister's son, who's totally infatuated with my character for several reasons (not the least of which, I had a formal wizard education at not-hogwarts and he didn't and I might be able to help his research)
Initiative was rolled, and everything came out flawlessly, just as the burgermeister arrived, he saw his son finishing Izek off with magic missiles and izek's dead body slumped over his guest, who had been demon-fist-punched in the face a few times
The DM dropped my alignment from LG to NG for killing Izek instead of using magic to escape, which is fair (the guy's a rapey serial killer so definitely still on the "Good" end), this character has never killed anyone before and is now extra traumatized, but got to spend the night at the burgermeister's house and more importantly, spend the night with the burgermeister's son's spellbook
so many delicious spells, also now the son is in a weird place, feeling great about himself and more confident than he ever has been before because he killed the scariest guy in the town, but at the same time working with him he now knows his teleportation experiments cant ever get him out of barovia... a new ally in the fight against strahd?
DM let me scribe spells I can't cast yet, so spending the next 24 hours "recovering" my wizard drank 3 bottles of wine and scribed fireball, suggestion, counterspell, and fly and gained 1 point of "madness" as a reflection of how awful that experience was, I have no idea what that means, the DM does though and that excites me
I met him in the attic the day before, and used my Weaver's proficiency to make him an animated stuffed animal out of an undead cat. I let him look over my spell book and he gave me some spell scribing supplies, the dm also revealed he was smitten with my wizard to the cleric who actually has insight
I found out about the Irena thing while purchasing stuffing for the stuffed cat project