When didn't Dwarves have females? I don't recall that ever being a thing in any offical capacity over the decades of D&D. The joke was always there that you couldn't tell Dwarf women from the men, but there were always female dwarves.
It's kind of a Tolkien thing, but not really. With Tolkien dwarves, one in three were female, but generally stayed concealed within their mountain kingdoms. If they did travel, which was rare, they went attired as men, and naturally had beards anyway so other races would mistake them for menfolk. This lead to the misconception among other races that there were no dwarf women, and that dwarves were born straight from the stone.
So elves, and hobbits, and humans, and orcs "all" thought that dwarves were only dudes, but were wrong in doing so.
Does anybody know what they mean when they say that "Dungeon of the Mad Mage picks up where Dragon Heist left off"?
I would assume that it would hardly be necessary to run Heist before Mad Mage, but how connected are they? I'm thinking of taking my Phandelver party through Undermountain.... would I be missing the "good stuff" if we skipped Heist?
Does anybody know what they mean when they say that "Dungeon of the Mad Mage picks up where Dragon Heist left off"?
I would assume that it would hardly be necessary to run Heist before Mad Mage, but how connected are they? I'm thinking of taking my Phandelver party through Undermountain.... would I be missing the "good stuff" if we skipped Heist?
I haven't read it because of spoilers but there's an article on D&D Beyond about how to bridge the two adventures.
Well Heist is pretty great so you would be, it also introduces them to all the players topside the party will interact with
I recommend at least running a super condensed dragon heist to introduce them to the Yawning Portal, Durnan, the various factions, and giving them a base of operations in waterdeep to sink gold into... probably not a full module. Maybe a brief questline with Jarlaxle, so they can learn a bit about underdark politics and the glorious shirtless drow pirate? Even just a single session to get them trollskull manor as a reward for saving Phandelin by the lords alliance or something?
OK.,.. so from that article and @override367 I gather that there are no plot or story points bridging the two, but rather a lot of the setup/establishing work is done in Dragon Heist.
That's fine, I can find a way to intro the Yawning Portal myself. Me and Undermountain go back a ways, you see. Weird things happened in 4th edition that I don't clearly understand, but OK I can gloss over the time jump from my beloved 2ed edition boxed sets in my own noodle to what the situation is in 5e.
There are surely intros in mad mage, but I believe character references to some of the factions in Dragon heist, for example the 3 children that are scampering about I think make an appearance there too
Troll Skull manor is a great base of operations given to the party by Volo for doing him a solid, if you don't own dragon heist and are interested in giving this fixer upper to the party I can send you the relevant section of the module
That's OK, thank you. Let me get my mitts on the module first and see what I can see but I don't see a problem with using the Yawning Portal itself as a home base or sorts.
When didn't Dwarves have females? I don't recall that ever being a thing in any offical capacity over the decades of D&D. The joke was always there that you couldn't tell Dwarf women from the men, but there were always female dwarves.
It's kind of a Tolkien thing, but not really. With Tolkien dwarves, one in three were female, but generally stayed concealed within their mountain kingdoms. If they did travel, which was rare, they went attired as men, and naturally had beards anyway so other races would mistake them for menfolk. This lead to the misconception among other races that there were no dwarf women, and that dwarves were born straight from the stone.
So elves, and hobbits, and humans, and orcs "all" thought that dwarves were only dudes, but were wrong in doing so.
Well Hobbits know little and less, what would Orcs care for the reproduction method of their food, and humans... Are humans.
Elves on the other hand should know full well better, but may go along with it purely to be snooty little shites.
I might use orcs to throw shade as us. Men have axes, women have clubs! That’s just the way things have always been and should be! Boys wear red, girls wear purple! Fact! Marriage is for having babies! This land? That’s our land now. Your culture is wrong and we will change it for the better! Having the most and best weapons is the definition of civilisation! We will strike you down in the name of our god of peace and love.
So I've had the best thing happen in my dragon heist campaign; one of my players has had a run in with an intellect devourer and unfortunately lost his intelligence check.
Now, this would be infuriating under other circumstances because this is nominally an instagib, but instead (because I'm not a dick and due to how the devourer functions, it's effectively puppeting him about with all of his knowledge and personality traits.
Effectively, the party now has a hidden traitor mechanic going that I'm going to let the player fire at a time of his choosing :P
I might use orcs to throw shade as us. Men have axes, women have clubs! That’s just the way things have always been and should be! Boys wear red, girls wear purple! Fact! Marriage is for having babies! This land? That’s our land now. Your culture is wrong and we will change it for the better! Having the most and best weapons is the definition of civilisation! We will strike you down in the name of our god of peace and love.
So I've had the best thing happen in my dragon heist campaign; one of my players has had a run in with an intellect devourer and unfortunately lost his intelligence check.
Now, this would be infuriating under other circumstances because this is nominally an instagib, but instead (because I'm not a dick and due to how the devourer functions, it's effectively puppeting him about with all of his knowledge and personality traits.
Effectively, the party now has a hidden traitor mechanic going that I'm going to let the player fire at a time of his choosing :P
there doesn't seem to be any consensus on intellect devourers, based on our DM and us futzing about them, and googling it for a while before remembering this is dungeons and dragons and we can do it however we want:
-if the devourer leaves of its own accord or because you hit the person until it had to leave - the person dies, it tears up that grey matter on its way out and unless you can hit them with a Regeneration or Spare the Dying, they die. Spare the Dying leaves you with essentially a body on life support and you have to haul their meat sack to the temple to get regenerated for an exorbitant price
-If you kick it out with protection from good and evil, its kicked out and the person is fine and the devourer doesn't keep its ill-gotten brains
this has been a satisfying enough way to run it, the MM can fuck right off with requiring a wish to bring someone back if they die in this manner, as opposed to a reincarnate, resurrection, or true resurrection (which can bring someone back if all you have is a hand, 5th Element style)
Just a small thing, but you only need a Wish to immediately bring them back while the intellect devourer is moving them like a meat puppet. If you 'kill' the host or cast Protection from Evil and Good and force it to leave you can use Resurrection, True Resurrection or Reincarnate to bring back the body.
If the host body dies, the intellect devourer must leave it. A protection from evil and good spell cast on the body drives the intellect devourer out. The intellect devourer is also forced out if the target regains its devoured brain by means of a wish. By spending 5 feet of its movement, the intellect devourer can voluntarily leave the body, teleporting to the nearest unoccupied space within 5 feet of it. The body then dies, unless its brain is restored within 1 round.
This isn't to say it's not still a dick punch. A CR 2 creature shouldn't need a level 13+ cleric to help out if you fail it's save.
The reason there's a lot of argument is the wording
The wording about "the body then dies" is immediately after the "by spending 5 feet of its movement,t he intellect devourer can voluntarily leave the body, teleporting to the nearest unoccupied space within 5 feet of it."
The table argument was that "A protection from evil and good spell cast on the body drives the intellect devourer" is just a condition that drives it out, just like if you wish it out. And that if it requires a wish to regain a devoured brain, once its dead it requires a wish.
We ended up agreeing after research that the designer intent is that the person's intellect is devoured immediately and their brain is physically gone, so protection from good and evil just kills them
What's been more satisfying to actually play is that the intellect devourer "phases" into the target's head an hijacks the brain. When the creature leaves, it basically obliterates the brain as a fuck you to its host, but if you can protection from evil and good the host, the intellect devourer is harmlessly deposited on the ground and a Greater Restoration can fix the person from their 0int coma. Furthermore, since intellect devourers are intelligent, once you find one out you can convince it to leave the host alive in exchange for its own life in some circumstances
Thing is, I've set this up so that what the devourer does is largely in the control of the player; it's effectively running him as a trojan horse so that it can spy on the players on behalf of the xanathar guild. This way, he gets to play his character with his abilities, but he now has a neat meta plot.
And Now I'm thinking about running a mini campaign wherein the players are all intellect devourers and they have the goal of taking control of a city.
Good lord I'm really starting to actually love these things.
Thing is, I've set this up so that what the devourer does is largely in the control of the player; it's effectively running him as a trojan horse so that it can spy on the players on behalf of the xanathar guild. This way, he gets to play his character with his abilities, but he now has a neat meta plot.
And Now I'm thinking about running a mini campaign wherein the players are all intellect devourers and they have the goal of taking control of a city.
Good lord I'm really starting to actually love these things.
Sometimes it takes a minute to realize the awesome part of an otherwise totally bullshit monster entry.
Pulling a goa'uld possession on a main character is a super good plot
I have a character concept that I haven't had a chance to play yet that's a dwarf that is the victim of an intellect devourer, but the dwarf was such a drunk moron that the devourer essentially reformatted itself after eating the brain and believes it's a dwarf now, complete with little legs sticking out of his skull.
Thing is, I've set this up so that what the devourer does is largely in the control of the player; it's effectively running him as a trojan horse so that it can spy on the players on behalf of the xanathar guild. This way, he gets to play his character with his abilities, but he now has a neat meta plot.
And Now I'm thinking about running a mini campaign wherein the players are all intellect devourers and they have the goal of taking control of a city.
Good lord I'm really starting to actually love these things.
Do the other players know about Brainy McSneakerson's problem and eventual, inevitable betrayal?
One thing I don't really get is how an intellect devourer is able to use cleric spells or whatever, surely the god knows their faithful is, you know, dead
One thing I don't really get is how an intellect devourer is able to use cleric spells or whatever, surely the god knows their faithful is, you know, dead
It's smart enough to cheat. It is smart enough to know how the god was getting their personage to cause that effect and replicates it. No more divine connection nor necessity to adhere to the religion at all. The brain with legs just fuckin does it because all the requisite pieces are there in the body and it just manipulates that.
One thing I don't really get is how an intellect devourer is able to use cleric spells or whatever, surely the god knows their faithful is, you know, dead
This is a good point, but probably one not to dwell on when you hit a great story idea.
Besides, its not like the diety actually gives you your spells themselves. Ain't nobody got time for that! There must be rank upon rank of minor angel bureaucrats who do the actual work of listening to prayers and doling out divine gifts. Clearly the Intellect Devourer-Cleric just got lost in the system.
Thing is, I've set this up so that what the devourer does is largely in the control of the player; it's effectively running him as a trojan horse so that it can spy on the players on behalf of the xanathar guild. This way, he gets to play his character with his abilities, but he now has a neat meta plot.
And Now I'm thinking about running a mini campaign wherein the players are all intellect devourers and they have the goal of taking control of a city.
Good lord I'm really starting to actually love these things.
Do the other players know about Brainy McSneakerson's problem and eventual, inevitable betrayal?
I took the effort to do this at the end of the session away from the rest of the players, so while some might think something is up, their isn't really anyway to suss out the whole deal.
And while the character is actually a cleric, I'm not going to be such a dick that I cut him off from his spells; push comes to shove I'll simply have him creating psionic effects channeled from an elder brain that replicate cleric spells preciesely.
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Zonugal(He/Him) The Holiday ArmadilloI'm Santa's representative for all the southern states. And Mexico!Registered Userregular
My new-ish D&D group continues to impress me. In Cragmaw Castle they successfully managed to lure the Owlbear from its "prison" right into King Grols room with successful dexterity checks and an animal handling check, using the mage hands and found salted beef.
Except the dwarf cleric player, who chose the pre-gen who had Gundren (the prisoner of the goblin tribes) as a cousin, could not leave his poor cousin at the mercy of an enraged owlbear and jumped in after it.
The ensuing combat included the owlbear eating the wolf... and then getting dogpiled by the bad guys AND the good guys as the rest of the party abandoned their plans to let the owlbear soften up the baddies and rain down blows on the owlbear's feathery butt in order to save their cleric.
I made someone a 5e human race for a space campaign a while back, figured I’d post it just because why not?
It’s seperated into sub-races of Terran, Exodian (space nomads), Martian, Transhuman, Machina (cyborgs and Blade Runner robots that are exactly like humans), Supers and Pirates.
I’m working on a subclass for a player in the dragon heist game I’m in, the dm is open to home brew content that’s reasonable. He wants to be a bardbarian but isn’t satisfied with the multiclass options
Path of the Skald
Third caster, bard, Rage is replaced with a Battle Song (it functions the same way), add your rage damage to any damaging spells as well. You can maintain your rage as long as you are concentrating on a spell in addition to taking damage or making attacks.
Inspiration dice d4/d6/d8/d10 (20th level for d10) based on Constitution not charisma as you need to belt that shit to the cheap seats, Inspiration dice recharge on a short rest
Level 6: You can bellow at an enemy spellcaster that is concentrating on a spell and force a concentration check as a reaction, consumes an inspiration dice, DC to maintain their spell is 10+spell level+dice
Level 10: You can inspire all your allies in the face of overwhelming odds. Once per short rest as an action you can give an inspiration dice to up to 5 friendly targets within 30 feet. This does not consume your inspiration dice.
Level 14: Thunderous Retort: When you succeed on a saving throw against a hostile spell or ability, you may use your reaction to cast Shatter against the source of the spell or effect and you may choose as many targets as you wish within the spell’s area to exclude from its effects. Roll an inspiration dice, the result is the level that shatter is cast at.
Once you use this ability you may not use it again until you complete a short or long rest.
I don’t have the flavor text or anything and I’m still working on it but I love a barbarian just yelling verses at people as he hits them with an axe
I'd consider setting the DC for the level 6 feature at the player's spell save DC+the bonus from the inspiration die, just for the sake of consistency.
It's pretty common for homebrew stuff to have calculations for things that are different from the ones used in the base game, and it tends to add a lot of complexity and memory issues for pretty minimal benefit - eliminating that stuff is one of the easiest ways to clean up homebrew content and make it come across as professional quality.
I love super long sessions. My friends and I have weekend gaming benders and they're mostly great. Friday nights are usually catching up and shit shooting. Character stuff and recaps. Maybe we'll get started that night too. Saturdays are all day affairs with many breaks and Sundays are usually for recovery before everyone goes home. Maybe we'll game that morning too if the GM has stuff he really wants finished (usually me) before the months long wait before we can do it again.
Our sessions start at noon and we say there is a stop time of 6. Then we vote on whether to go longer.
Most of the time the voting session is circumvented when someone says "How many pizzas should we order?"
Posts
It's kind of a Tolkien thing, but not really. With Tolkien dwarves, one in three were female, but generally stayed concealed within their mountain kingdoms. If they did travel, which was rare, they went attired as men, and naturally had beards anyway so other races would mistake them for menfolk. This lead to the misconception among other races that there were no dwarf women, and that dwarves were born straight from the stone.
So elves, and hobbits, and humans, and orcs "all" thought that dwarves were only dudes, but were wrong in doing so.
I would assume that it would hardly be necessary to run Heist before Mad Mage, but how connected are they? I'm thinking of taking my Phandelver party through Undermountain.... would I be missing the "good stuff" if we skipped Heist?
I haven't read it because of spoilers but there's an article on D&D Beyond about how to bridge the two adventures.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
I recommend at least running a super condensed dragon heist to introduce them to the Yawning Portal, Durnan, the various factions, and giving them a base of operations in waterdeep to sink gold into... probably not a full module. Maybe a brief questline with Jarlaxle, so they can learn a bit about underdark politics and the glorious shirtless drow pirate? Even just a single session to get them trollskull manor as a reward for saving Phandelin by the lords alliance or something?
That's fine, I can find a way to intro the Yawning Portal myself. Me and Undermountain go back a ways, you see. Weird things happened in 4th edition that I don't clearly understand, but OK I can gloss over the time jump from my beloved 2ed edition boxed sets in my own noodle to what the situation is in 5e.
Thank you!
Troll Skull manor is a great base of operations given to the party by Volo for doing him a solid, if you don't own dragon heist and are interested in giving this fixer upper to the party I can send you the relevant section of the module
I may change my mind though.
I dont see why TYP wouldnt work as a base!
I might have a problem.
Fix'd.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
thus your correction is IMMENSELY TRIGGERING TO ME (in the best way)
(bonus points if anyone else has seen this happen)
Areas of Opportunity is top shelf corp shade
Well, I mean, link please.
Well Hobbits know little and less, what would Orcs care for the reproduction method of their food, and humans... Are humans.
Elves on the other hand should know full well better, but may go along with it purely to be snooty little shites.
Wow! These orcs suck!
Yeah, they do...
Now, this would be infuriating under other circumstances because this is nominally an instagib, but instead (because I'm not a dick and due to how the devourer functions, it's effectively puppeting him about with all of his knowledge and personality traits.
Effectively, the party now has a hidden traitor mechanic going that I'm going to let the player fire at a time of his choosing :P
there doesn't seem to be any consensus on intellect devourers, based on our DM and us futzing about them, and googling it for a while before remembering this is dungeons and dragons and we can do it however we want:
-if the devourer leaves of its own accord or because you hit the person until it had to leave - the person dies, it tears up that grey matter on its way out and unless you can hit them with a Regeneration or Spare the Dying, they die. Spare the Dying leaves you with essentially a body on life support and you have to haul their meat sack to the temple to get regenerated for an exorbitant price
-If you kick it out with protection from good and evil, its kicked out and the person is fine and the devourer doesn't keep its ill-gotten brains
this has been a satisfying enough way to run it, the MM can fuck right off with requiring a wish to bring someone back if they die in this manner, as opposed to a reincarnate, resurrection, or true resurrection (which can bring someone back if all you have is a hand, 5th Element style)
This isn't to say it's not still a dick punch. A CR 2 creature shouldn't need a level 13+ cleric to help out if you fail it's save.
The wording about "the body then dies" is immediately after the "by spending 5 feet of its movement,t he intellect devourer can voluntarily leave the body, teleporting to the nearest unoccupied space within 5 feet of it."
The table argument was that "A protection from evil and good spell cast on the body drives the intellect devourer" is just a condition that drives it out, just like if you wish it out. And that if it requires a wish to regain a devoured brain, once its dead it requires a wish.
We ended up agreeing after research that the designer intent is that the person's intellect is devoured immediately and their brain is physically gone, so protection from good and evil just kills them
What's been more satisfying to actually play is that the intellect devourer "phases" into the target's head an hijacks the brain. When the creature leaves, it basically obliterates the brain as a fuck you to its host, but if you can protection from evil and good the host, the intellect devourer is harmlessly deposited on the ground and a Greater Restoration can fix the person from their 0int coma. Furthermore, since intellect devourers are intelligent, once you find one out you can convince it to leave the host alive in exchange for its own life in some circumstances
And Now I'm thinking about running a mini campaign wherein the players are all intellect devourers and they have the goal of taking control of a city.
Good lord I'm really starting to actually love these things.
Sometimes it takes a minute to realize the awesome part of an otherwise totally bullshit monster entry.
Pulling a goa'uld possession on a main character is a super good plot
Do the other players know about Brainy McSneakerson's problem and eventual, inevitable betrayal?
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
It's smart enough to cheat. It is smart enough to know how the god was getting their personage to cause that effect and replicates it. No more divine connection nor necessity to adhere to the religion at all. The brain with legs just fuckin does it because all the requisite pieces are there in the body and it just manipulates that.
Just straight up goa'uld rules.
This is a good point, but probably one not to dwell on when you hit a great story idea.
Besides, its not like the diety actually gives you your spells themselves. Ain't nobody got time for that! There must be rank upon rank of minor angel bureaucrats who do the actual work of listening to prayers and doling out divine gifts. Clearly the Intellect Devourer-Cleric just got lost in the system.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJXYMDu6dpY
I took the effort to do this at the end of the session away from the rest of the players, so while some might think something is up, their isn't really anyway to suss out the whole deal.
And while the character is actually a cleric, I'm not going to be such a dick that I cut him off from his spells; push comes to shove I'll simply have him creating psionic effects channeled from an elder brain that replicate cleric spells preciesely.
The other great part in that comic is its historically accurate to have Kant be the racist in that situation.
Except the dwarf cleric player, who chose the pre-gen who had Gundren (the prisoner of the goblin tribes) as a cousin, could not leave his poor cousin at the mercy of an enraged owlbear and jumped in after it.
The ensuing combat included the owlbear eating the wolf... and then getting dogpiled by the bad guys AND the good guys as the rest of the party abandoned their plans to let the owlbear soften up the baddies and rain down blows on the owlbear's feathery butt in order to save their cleric.
Good times.
It’s seperated into sub-races of Terran, Exodian (space nomads), Martian, Transhuman, Machina (cyborgs and Blade Runner robots that are exactly like humans), Supers and Pirates.
Path of the Skald
Third caster, bard, Rage is replaced with a Battle Song (it functions the same way), add your rage damage to any damaging spells as well. You can maintain your rage as long as you are concentrating on a spell in addition to taking damage or making attacks.
Inspiration dice d4/d6/d8/d10 (20th level for d10) based on Constitution not charisma as you need to belt that shit to the cheap seats, Inspiration dice recharge on a short rest
Level 6: You can bellow at an enemy spellcaster that is concentrating on a spell and force a concentration check as a reaction, consumes an inspiration dice, DC to maintain their spell is 10+spell level+dice
Level 10: You can inspire all your allies in the face of overwhelming odds. Once per short rest as an action you can give an inspiration dice to up to 5 friendly targets within 30 feet. This does not consume your inspiration dice.
Level 14: Thunderous Retort: When you succeed on a saving throw against a hostile spell or ability, you may use your reaction to cast Shatter against the source of the spell or effect and you may choose as many targets as you wish within the spell’s area to exclude from its effects. Roll an inspiration dice, the result is the level that shatter is cast at.
Once you use this ability you may not use it again until you complete a short or long rest.
I don’t have the flavor text or anything and I’m still working on it but I love a barbarian just yelling verses at people as he hits them with an axe
It's pretty common for homebrew stuff to have calculations for things that are different from the ones used in the base game, and it tends to add a lot of complexity and memory issues for pretty minimal benefit - eliminating that stuff is one of the easiest ways to clean up homebrew content and make it come across as professional quality.
I am a broken man now, we ran until after 4 AM.
They cleared an entire Giant Stronghold in a single session.
I walked away feeling not that great.
Most of the time the voting session is circumvented when someone says "How many pizzas should we order?"