also, hey, not gonna name names but a certain serial harasser tied to TTRPGs is in the news again for some not so good reasons
I recommend looking it up and maybe taking an active stance where you can in bringing down any influence he has in the industry, if at all possible
I hate being vague, but there's a reason for it
So Dubh let me know the specifics and I think they're ok to share.
Zak Sabbath has been accused by his long time girlfriend of a serious pattern of abuse and repeated incidence of assaults on other people, both sexual and physical. She does, however, say in the post that she didn't want her account circulated outside her circle of friends (which it obviously has been) so I don't know if it's ethical to repost them here. They're out there if you want to google them, it's pretty gross stuff.
So do you guys even track spell components? Like we have a bard in our party, and my rule is that the instrument is his foci and his music is the spell, so he doesn't need components for lower level spells (if he ever gets to the big stuff, yes he needs the diamonds or whatever) but he has to be able to perform in some way
I don't think I've ever been in a game where they tracked common spell components. Even the big spell components, unless they're plot relevant, are typically waved off as "You've got your focus or your pouch? Good, cast away.".
Much like the encumbrance rules and a bag of holding, the rules are there if you want them. If you don't care for tracking inventory on spread sheets during your fantasy murder hobo nights, then there are ways to bypass those rules.
Plot relevant being "You've been rendered unconscious and are waking up in a prison cell with no components, armor or weapons" or "You're looking for 25k worth of diamonds for a True Resurrection spell" kind of thing.
Hey, what are folks favorite inhabitants of the elemental plane of fire?
I've been revising and creating creatures & monsters to populate my planes.
Don't know about favorite, but in Volo's there are some folk called Firenewts
Technically they need hot water to breed, so they might not live on the Fire Plane proper if your's is the kind where all water is evaporated
Mordenkainen's has Myrmidons if you want to spice up your fire elementals (think they're a re-print from PotA) and of course a Phoenix
Otherwise it's all the usual suspects that you probably already thought about: Azer, Efreeti, Salamanders, Fire Snakes, Fire Genasi, Fire Giants, Red Dragons, Red Guard Drakes, Magmins, Magma Mephits, Smoke Mephits
If your Plane of Fire has a City of Brass, there's probably a bunch of Tieflings and maybe some devils, like Cambions and Pit Fiends
So do you guys even track spell components? Like we have a bard in our party, and my rule is that the instrument is his foci and his music is the spell, so he doesn't need components for lower level spells (if he ever gets to the big stuff, yes he needs the diamonds or whatever) but he has to be able to perform in some way
I don't think I've ever been in a game where they tracked common spell components. Even the big spell components, unless they're plot relevant, are typically waved off as "You've got your focus or your pouch? Good, cast away.".
Much like the encumbrance rules and a bag of holding, the rules are there if you want them. If you don't care for tracking inventory on spread sheets during your fantasy murder hobo nights, then there are ways to bypass those rules.
Plot relevant being "You've been rendered unconscious and are waking up in a prison cell with no components, armor or weapons" or "You're looking for 25k worth of diamonds for a True Resurrection spell" kind of thing.
Yeah, for the middling stuff that falls between "random crap assumed to be in a pouch" and "extremely rare, expensive, or plot relevant" I'd probably at most have players retcon possession of it by subtracting an appropriate amount of gold.
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Zonugal(He/Him) The Holiday ArmadilloI'm Santa's representative for all the southern states. And Mexico!Registered Userregular
Hey, what are folks favorite inhabitants of the elemental plane of fire?
I've been revising and creating creatures & monsters to populate my planes.
Don't know about favorite, but in Volo's there are some folk called Firenewts
Technically they need hot water to breed, so they might not live on the Fire Plane proper if your's is the kind where all water is evaporated
Mordenkainen's has Myrmidons if you want to spice up your fire elementals (think they're a re-print from PotA) and of course a Phoenix
Otherwise it's all the usual suspects that you probably already thought about: Azer, Efreeti, Salamanders, Fire Snakes, Fire Genasi, Fire Giants, Red Dragons, Red Guard Drakes, Magmins, Magma Mephits, Smoke Mephits
If your Plane of Fire has a City of Brass, there's probably a bunch of Tieflings and maybe some devils, like Cambions and Pit Fiends
Oh, I went through the different books and grabbed what I wanted.
I wasn't feeling the Myrmidons though. But I did add/modify: Azer, Efreeti, Firenewts, Fire Elementals, Fire Giants, Fire Titans, Magma Mephits, Magmin, the Phoenix, Salamanders, & Steam Mephits.
I also created: Ember Knights, Flame Oozes, Leviathan of Flames, Magma Elementals, & Magma Golems.
Aw, I’m absolutely charmed until the end of my next turn that you’re making them!
Whenever D&D and planes are brought up the Gith spring to mind. I could easily see a bunch of Gith meditating in a titan’s charred black skull talking about how fire is a purifying element, necessary for rebirth.
They could be a nice bit of normalcy, almost, for the players. Just some folk, maybe food and board if they do something for them. Not related to the main plot, just hanging out being bad knock-off eastern philosophers.
It’s been my long-standing account that high fantasy by its very nature is post-Apocalypse.
Think about it: delving into ruins, secret things locked away, demon cults, forbidden lands, forgotten gods, untamed wilds bigger than nations, age of the elves all but over, barbarians pushing against the remaining settlements. All the old standbys point to a civilisation, or even layers of civilisations, having ended before your adventure begins.
Oh, I went through the different books and grabbed what I wanted.
I wasn't feeling the Myrmidons though.
I love Myrmidons, but only because I read the lore for their original 4E incarnation, which were called Archons.
Basically the archons were created as foot soldiers for godlike elementals called the primordials in their war against the gods. The primordials lost and are mostly dead or imprisoned, though, so the remaining archons from the original armies find new causes to fight for to fulfill their love of battle and secure facilities in the Elemental Chaos to produce more of their kind. Each element also had more than one kind of archon to fulfill different roles in combat, and there were also storm, ooze, ice, and bronze archons.
They were renamed myrmidons in 5E because archons before 4E had just been angels of a different alignment (and those archons haven't appeared in 5E yet, btw).
I painted my first mini the other night. They were going to toss out a bunch of extra Manshoon D&D colectible figure boxes we had so i said I'd take one and one of the wargamers took it outside and spray primed it with their stuff they were doing then I spent the shift fighting a far too old painting starter set we have in the cabinet where only half the colors weren't a hard solid and even some of those were maybe questionable. But like, it was super peaceful and enjoyable. and I want to do it more now. even this bad paint job is just so much cooler than a base gray figure.
It does present the issue of setting up adventures, though. Like the game suggests doing things like having the players go out to face things threatening villages, but there are no villages. There is mention of merchants but how in the balls can you have merchants in a place where there seems to be, far as I can tell, only one road that is actually still kind of a road and basically no centers of population with anything worth trading (because we know the Hobbits of the Shire don't trade for shit) between the Lhun and the Misty Mountains. There is, far as I can tell, nothing at all, to a point that it's honestly a bit disbelief-breaking that, like, Bree exists in its current form.
My plan is to straight up start making up a lot of settlements. Humans have this annoying tendency to set up anywhere where there is space and tillable soil, and Arnor fell a thousand years ago. There has been time for people to start trying to move back in.
Where is your game set? If you are using Rhovanion, then do you have the setting (Heart of the Wild, iirc) supplement?
You are right that there aren’t, like, huge cities around, but there are plenty of opportunities to help merchants setup trade routes between the Dale / Erebor / Laketown triangle and places like the three ‘major’ Woodman settlements, the Iron Hills, and the Carrock. This especially works early in the timeline after the Battle of the Give Armies when the shadow retreats from Dol Guldur after being confronted by the White Council.
Yeah, thing is, we're probably going to set this on the other side of the Misty Mountains. Hence my annoyance.
And the "well there's orcs" thing doesn't really fly that much for any of us, because, well, there really aren't for a large chunk of the map. Cardolan and northwest Eregion are perfectly reasonable and pleasantly-weathered chunks of land with rivers and forests, where for some reason nobody has settled since Arnor fell a thousand years ago (the barrows with barrow wights are all the way next to the Shire, there's plenty of space to live without camping near those!). And the only road that still exists goes straight through troll country anyway, so clearly people are willing to brave orcs and trolls in any case.
Tolkien knew his history. And middle earth is not based on the high middle ages but an earlier period. We are so used to the idea of population growth that we find it weird that land is fallow, settlements are shrinking etc... But in western europe from the mid 2nd century until the ~7th (date very uncertain) the population was in decline. Year over year, generation after generation there were fewer people around. Even after the population started increasing again it took centuries for it to become noticeable.
Rome itself is the most extreme example of this (being more dependent on imports from Egypt and North Africa than most) but is by no means alone. All the great cities of western Europe underwent similar decline over this period. In 5 BCE the population of the city of Rome was 800,000-1,000,000. In the early 4th century, during the time of Constantine, the population was down to around 600,000. After the sack in 419 CE it was down to 300,000-500,000. By 590 CE, after the end of food imports from North Africa and the wars of Justinian, it was down to 150,000 at most. In 800 CE, on the Christmas day when Charlemagne was crowned Roman Emperor (and getting very close to the period that the material culture of LOTR is based on) the most optimistic estimate of the population of Rome would be 30,000 people.
The tale of the 3rd age as presented in the appendix of Return of the King is strange and foreign to us but very understandable from the point of view of (roughly) 1000 CE.
Flame hydra, body composed of an amorphous magma blob that grows multiple serpent-shaped necks and heads that bite and spit magma. Lives in a magma-based liquid ecosystem. Not related to normal monstrous animal hydras, just resembles their form. Adults stay in or around large bodies of liquid magma. Reproduces by budding heads off once they gain enough mass, which swim or slither away to find a new nesting site. Cutting off a head doesn't cause new heads to grow, but creates an independent juvenile magma hydra serpent.
I painted my first mini the other night. They were going to toss out a bunch of extra Manshoon D&D colectible figure boxes we had so i said I'd take one and one of the wargamers took it outside and spray primed it with their stuff they were doing then I spent the shift fighting a far too old painting starter set we have in the cabinet where only half the colors weren't a hard solid and even some of those were maybe questionable. But like, it was super peaceful and enjoyable. and I want to do it more now. even this bad paint job is just so much cooler than a base gray figure.
There was a guy at the comic shop I play D&D at who painted minis, but he moved before I could get all of mine painted by him. I'm thinking about attempting to paint some myself, but I'm afraid of ruining them with a shitty paint job.
A few more Fire type creatures you might find handy:
Animal/Monster + Fire/Magma. Does the normal thing, but it's hot and has fire-based effects. Example, lava rat swarm, magam kraken.
Boil Crab: Beasts of the Boundless Blue
Thoqqua: Forgotten Foes
Walking Vent: Beasts of the Boundless Blue
Lives near volcanic vents/hot water areas. Weak vermin. Boil crabs are so hot that they glow with the radiance of a torch. Luckily, boil crabs are usually timid creatures that would rather flee than fight. When cornered or surprised, however, they become very aggressive. Once aggravated, a boil crab will fight until it is slain. Upon death, the heat immediately begins to dissipate from the crab’s body. The flesh of these crabs is considered
a delicacy by the some, as it will keep the consumer warm while it is being digested.
Worm-like creatures made of glowing, hot stone about 5 feet long and 200 lbs. Eat minerals, very territorial, magical beast level intelligence. A thoqqua burrows by melting rock with its hot body leaving behind a 1 ft wide tunnel that becomes traversable by others able to fit once it cools. Likes to hide underground and erupt to slam into surprised targets. Very territorial. Very little dissuades a thoqqua from attacking except severe damage from cold. Eggs contain minor amounts of rare metals and can be sold as treasure.
Walking vents are massive elementals that dwell in, tend, and protect deep water hydrothermal vents. They are single minded, and do not tolerate trespassers. Unaffected by the crushing pressure and scalding heat, they stand eternal watch over their charges, for no reason that can be determined by mortal creatures. They are rare outside the deep ocean, but can sometimes be found tending shallow water hot springs.
Walking vents simply try to crush their foes with their boiling arms. They radiate the same heat as the hottest vents, making them nearly impossible to approach, weapons used against them soften and melt rapidly. They will not pursue their enemies once they flee from the vent fields.
It is thought that walking vents form spontaneously around the deepest and most elemental of hydrothermal vents, sometimes traveling to smaller and weaker vents. Unable to swim, walking vents move ponderously across the
sea floor.
Two of these are for more marine type settings, but it could be useful to reflavour to shallower water settings if you want to vary things up at all and want to provide some more fauna for your elemental plane of fire.
It’s been my long-standing account that high fantasy by its very nature is post-Apocalypse.
Think about it: delving into ruins, secret things locked away, demon cults, forbidden lands, forgotten gods, untamed wilds bigger than nations, age of the elves all but over, barbarians pushing against the remaining settlements. All the old standbys point to a civilisation, or even layers of civilisations, having ended before your adventure begins.
This is why I'm deeply fond of Shannara.
Thundarr the Barbarian influenced me a great deal when it comes to my preferred aesthetic for these kinds of things. I saw it as re-runs as a kid in the late 80's and it's just kind of stuck.
I painted my first mini the other night. They were going to toss out a bunch of extra Manshoon D&D colectible figure boxes we had so i said I'd take one and one of the wargamers took it outside and spray primed it with their stuff they were doing then I spent the shift fighting a far too old painting starter set we have in the cabinet where only half the colors weren't a hard solid and even some of those were maybe questionable. But like, it was super peaceful and enjoyable. and I want to do it more now. even this bad paint job is just so much cooler than a base gray figure.
There was a guy at the comic shop I play D&D at who painted minis, but he moved before I could get all of mine painted by him. I'm thinking about attempting to paint some myself, but I'm afraid of ruining them with a shitty paint job.
It's super easy to strip paint off of models without damaging the model!
Living in great domed palaces swept in fire, wearing silks the colour of flame, drinking hot wine and eating the most spiced food, laughing and singing, duelling and riddling, great friends and terrible enemies, quick to anger and generous to a fault
I painted my first mini the other night. They were going to toss out a bunch of extra Manshoon D&D colectible figure boxes we had so i said I'd take one and one of the wargamers took it outside and spray primed it with their stuff they were doing then I spent the shift fighting a far too old painting starter set we have in the cabinet where only half the colors weren't a hard solid and even some of those were maybe questionable. But like, it was super peaceful and enjoyable. and I want to do it more now. even this bad paint job is just so much cooler than a base gray figure.
There was a guy at the comic shop I play D&D at who painted minis, but he moved before I could get all of mine painted by him. I'm thinking about attempting to paint some myself, but I'm afraid of ruining them with a shitty paint job.
It's super easy to strip paint off of models without damaging the model!
My big takeaway so far is how forgiving the process is. The paint is really easy to cover over mistakes. My biggest issue was how quickly they dry up on the paper bowl I was using without an actual wet pallet.
I painted my first mini the other night. They were going to toss out a bunch of extra Manshoon D&D colectible figure boxes we had so i said I'd take one and one of the wargamers took it outside and spray primed it with their stuff they were doing then I spent the shift fighting a far too old painting starter set we have in the cabinet where only half the colors weren't a hard solid and even some of those were maybe questionable. But like, it was super peaceful and enjoyable. and I want to do it more now. even this bad paint job is just so much cooler than a base gray figure.
There was a guy at the comic shop I play D&D at who painted minis, but he moved before I could get all of mine painted by him. I'm thinking about attempting to paint some myself, but I'm afraid of ruining them with a shitty paint job.
It's super easy to strip paint off of models without damaging the model!
My big takeaway so far is how forgiving the process is. The paint is really easy to cover over mistakes. My biggest issue was how quickly they dry up on the paper bowl I was using without an actual wet pallet.
you interested in links to youtube channels that have good painting vids for beginners?
So, for a game that's mostly just a riff on cyberpunk blades or at least in that kind of narrative/crunch mix area:
Rather than stress you have resources which take downtime actions/cash (same function as coin in blades) to top up: Munitions, Nutrition and Connection which you spend in the place of stress. Rather than a meter it's instead a number from 1-5. With every use making you roll 1-3D6 depending on the severity (IE, mag dumping your rifle or throwing a grenade is more than firing off a pistol). If any of them come up higher than your current resource then it's reduced by 1.
Munitions is for armour, your guns, grenades or any military tech upkeep uses. Being out of it implies your ability to fight has being severely diminished.
Nutrition is your physical ability: You can use it to dodge, sprint, swing a crowbar or outlast sleep deprivation. Being out of it implies you aren't in the physical state to do much other than crawl back to bed or the nearest food stand.
Connection is both social and to the various networks and datasphere's occupying the city. You can use it for bribes, when searching the net or using gadgets. Being out of it implies you haven't paid your internet bill. Which is a problem when so much stuff has AR integration and presumes you do too.
Mostly my thoughts are:
1) Being high up on a resource might be too much in terms of how long it lasts. Though the idea is you only restore 1d3 per cash you put towards it so it might just specialize characters.
2) In terms of categories munitions is a weird one because it feels very presumptive of characters that they'd all need this category but also most characters would and I feel it's important to seperate 'semi illegal ammo and weapons' from the other piles.
3) Also tempted to add a 4th category of small change for small purchases like gear, repairs, bribes and services but am not sure if that tramples on stuff too much. In theory you could just have 'get a new pistol' as a two dice munitions check.
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MsAnthropyThe Lady of Pain Breaks the Rhythm, Breaks the Rhythm, Breaks the RhythmThe City of FlowersRegistered Userregular
It does present the issue of setting up adventures, though. Like the game suggests doing things like having the players go out to face things threatening villages, but there are no villages. There is mention of merchants but how in the balls can you have merchants in a place where there seems to be, far as I can tell, only one road that is actually still kind of a road and basically no centers of population with anything worth trading (because we know the Hobbits of the Shire don't trade for shit) between the Lhun and the Misty Mountains. There is, far as I can tell, nothing at all, to a point that it's honestly a bit disbelief-breaking that, like, Bree exists in its current form.
My plan is to straight up start making up a lot of settlements. Humans have this annoying tendency to set up anywhere where there is space and tillable soil, and Arnor fell a thousand years ago. There has been time for people to start trying to move back in.
Where is your game set? If you are using Rhovanion, then do you have the setting (Heart of the Wild, iirc) supplement?
You are right that there aren’t, like, huge cities around, but there are plenty of opportunities to help merchants setup trade routes between the Dale / Erebor / Laketown triangle and places like the three ‘major’ Woodman settlements, the Iron Hills, and the Carrock. This especially works early in the timeline after the Battle of the Give Armies when the shadow retreats from Dol Guldur after being confronted by the White Council.
Yeah, thing is, we're probably going to set this on the other side of the Misty Mountains. Hence my annoyance.
And the "well there's orcs" thing doesn't really fly that much for any of us, because, well, there really aren't for a large chunk of the map. Cardolan and northwest Eregion are perfectly reasonable and pleasantly-weathered chunks of land with rivers and forests, where for some reason nobody has settled since Arnor fell a thousand years ago (the barrows with barrow wights are all the way next to the Shire, there's plenty of space to live without camping near those!). And the only road that still exists goes straight through troll country anyway, so clearly people are willing to brave orcs and trolls in any case.
Yeah, Eriador is tougher to plan around. One of my dream campaign ideas is to do a Tolkien-esque take on The Great Pendragon campaign focusing on a non-canonical last-great-ruler of Arthurian in the early/mid third age, so sadly my only concrete idea in how to address things is to dial the clock back a lot. Though, given the Woodmen were largely made up by Cubicle 7, it might be possible to do something similar for the other part of Middle-Earth, like a group of men have maybe built some kind of new settlements near Tharbad or something?
the idea is that the spell focus only replaces material components- nothing else- but when you cast a spell using material components (with or without a spell focus) the same hand that uses the focus/materials can also do the gestures. A spell that has no material components doesn't use a spell focus at all, so you need to have a hand free for its somatic components.
It's dumb as hell and really weird, but it's apparently how it's meant to work.
it's not the last time I'll disagree with his rulings, no doubt
he seems to tend toward more 'hard' rules, when I would prefer something softer because I think it sounds cool af
not like I'll ever have to worry about it since I don't do adventure league
who knows, I might end up playing 5e with someone else one of these days (I'll probably be the GM, tho)
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Zonugal(He/Him) The Holiday ArmadilloI'm Santa's representative for all the southern states. And Mexico!Registered Userregular
Two of these are for more marine type settings, but it could be useful to reflavour to shallower water settings if you want to vary things up at all and want to provide some more fauna for your elemental plane of fire.
I think I'll likely shy away from doing any types of deep water/aquatic element on the plane. I envision it is just scorched earth, molten rock, blaring fires, volcanos, steaming geysers, and lava rivers.
But you raise a good point in that I wonder what the natural occupants/denizens of the plane subsist on in terms of food.
Two of these are for more marine type settings, but it could be useful to reflavour to shallower water settings if you want to vary things up at all and want to provide some more fauna for your elemental plane of fire.
I think I'll likely shy away from doing any types of deep water/aquatic element on the plane. I envision it is just scorched earth, molten rock, blaring fires, volcanos, steaming geysers, and lava rivers.
But you raise a good point in that I wonder what the natural occupants/denizens of the plane subsist on in terms of food.
Yeah, my general point was to make sure to include some flora and fauna to help make the setting come more to life. The wandering vent could just as easily be re-purposed into a land-based volcanic vent that is able to get up and move around. If the party is traveling across the landscape at all having a group of wandering vents move in and surround a campsite or a place where the party stops could produce an interesting encounter. I don't necessarily see these as encounters that have to end in deadly combat, but more of a matter of a way of embellishing the setting.
the idea is that the spell focus only replaces material components- nothing else- but when you cast a spell using material components (with or without a spell focus) the same hand that uses the focus/materials can also do the gestures. A spell that has no material components doesn't use a spell focus at all, so you need to have a hand free for its somatic components.
It's dumb as hell and really weird, but it's apparently how it's meant to work.
it's not the last time I'll disagree with his rulings, no doubt
he seems to tend toward more 'hard' rules, when I would prefer something softer because I think it sounds cool af
not like I'll ever have to worry about it since I don't do adventure league
who knows, I might end up playing 5e with someone else one of these days (I'll probably be the GM, tho)
it kinda feels like they're doubling down on an oversight in the rules.
Since I try to be consistent with the rules first, and houserules second, whenever I design new things I tend to design them around the base rules RAW, as frustrating as that might be. Hence my inclusion of a way around that problem in that invocation, even if were I GMing a game I'd houserule Warlocks with IPATB being able to do that anyway.
I've got some memories coming back of 2nd Edition which actually had a fair bit of fleshing out done for the lesser known elemental planes creatures. The "regular animal, but on the planes version" was referred to as an Animental.
If you are looking for weird things, you can use something like an Entrope, a worm-type creature that bores between elemental planar boundaries and causes small regions from one plane to spill into another plane. This can create the old paraelemental boundary areas, or just allow for some more exotic/unusual terrain. It could be permanent or temporary as the planar boundary heals over time (depends on how you want to handle the stuff).
Some more 2nd edition stuff:
Firebats (blood drain, basically a bat on fire, you need to jump through some hoops to permanently kill one because it re-ignites after X turns if slain by normal means)
Grue: Harginn (aka Flame Horror. Grues are underling creatures of the Elemental Plane, more important in the ecology than vermin but less intelligent than true elementals. They occupy a niche somewhat equivalent to animals, in other respects more like servants, that has no exact equivalent on the Prime Material Plane. Grues prey on vermin, serve as pets and guards for elementals on their native planes, and can be conjured to other planes by a magical summons.) These allow you to have the players eaten by a Grue.
Hell Hound
Fire Snake
Firetail
Phantom Stalker
Flame Spirit
Rasts
Digging through some 5th edition stuff you've also got stuff like Igniguana, Magmoids, and Lava Children.
I painted my first mini the other night. They were going to toss out a bunch of extra Manshoon D&D colectible figure boxes we had so i said I'd take one and one of the wargamers took it outside and spray primed it with their stuff they were doing then I spent the shift fighting a far too old painting starter set we have in the cabinet where only half the colors weren't a hard solid and even some of those were maybe questionable. But like, it was super peaceful and enjoyable. and I want to do it more now. even this bad paint job is just so much cooler than a base gray figure.
There was a guy at the comic shop I play D&D at who painted minis, but he moved before I could get all of mine painted by him. I'm thinking about attempting to paint some myself, but I'm afraid of ruining them with a shitty paint job.
It's super easy to strip paint off of models without damaging the model!
My big takeaway so far is how forgiving the process is. The paint is really easy to cover over mistakes. My biggest issue was how quickly they dry up on the paper bowl I was using without an actual wet pallet.
you interested in links to youtube channels that have good painting vids for beginners?
Oh yeah for sure. This one was a ton of fun and I'm probably going to come home tonight with one of the getting started sets we have just to have a pallete of colors to play with. I have a few of the "2nd tier pose of a set of two figures" I can mess around with to figure a lot out
the idea is that the spell focus only replaces material components- nothing else- but when you cast a spell using material components (with or without a spell focus) the same hand that uses the focus/materials can also do the gestures. A spell that has no material components doesn't use a spell focus at all, so you need to have a hand free for its somatic components.
It's dumb as hell and really weird, but it's apparently how it's meant to work.
it's not the last time I'll disagree with his rulings, no doubt
he seems to tend toward more 'hard' rules, when I would prefer something softer because I think it sounds cool af
not like I'll ever have to worry about it since I don't do adventure league
who knows, I might end up playing 5e with someone else one of these days (I'll probably be the GM, tho)
it kinda feels like they're doubling down on an oversight in the rules.
Since I try to be consistent with the rules first, and houserules second, whenever I design new things I tend to design them around the base rules RAW, as frustrating as that might be. Hence my inclusion of a way around that problem in that invocation, even if were I GMing a game I'd houserule Warlocks with IPATB being able to do that anyway.
Yeah, I think that's basically it (the doubling down, that is). The tweets are intended to be clarifications of existing rules, not errata.
Whether or not he actually likes the existing rule, that's what the book says, so that's what his clarification says. If they think it's worth fixing, that's what the actual errata releases are for (and they haven't gotten around to fixing it there, but if they were going to, that's where they'd do it).
I think realistically, everyone just houserules it, so it might just not be worth the effort to find a way to rephrase it that fixes this problem without introducing any new ones. Sometimes it's easier to just say 'you know what I mean' than to make sure the RAW is perfect in every case.
The Efreeti are very natural opponents. They are lawful evil, and love enforcing the status quo with shitty contracts, and force if it fails. They live in luxury while everyone toils for their pleasure.
Entering one of the major cities should start by feeling like entering Arabian Nights, only to find out there are a hundred evil sultans manoeuvring against each other. And some if them already know you're here, and are thinking if there is any tiny advantage they can squeeze out of you.
You can also do cool things on the edges of the plane. The planes of earth and fire have often been at war, and the volcanic border is a mass graveyard of toxic fumes. But if you risk it artefacts of great power could be buried in the ash .....
I painted my first mini the other night. They were going to toss out a bunch of extra Manshoon D&D colectible figure boxes we had so i said I'd take one and one of the wargamers took it outside and spray primed it with their stuff they were doing then I spent the shift fighting a far too old painting starter set we have in the cabinet where only half the colors weren't a hard solid and even some of those were maybe questionable. But like, it was super peaceful and enjoyable. and I want to do it more now. even this bad paint job is just so much cooler than a base gray figure.
There was a guy at the comic shop I play D&D at who painted minis, but he moved before I could get all of mine painted by him. I'm thinking about attempting to paint some myself, but I'm afraid of ruining them with a shitty paint job.
It's super easy to strip paint off of models without damaging the model!
My big takeaway so far is how forgiving the process is. The paint is really easy to cover over mistakes. My biggest issue was how quickly they dry up on the paper bowl I was using without an actual wet pallet.
you interested in links to youtube channels that have good painting vids for beginners?
Oh yeah for sure. This one was a ton of fun and I'm probably going to come home tonight with one of the getting started sets we have just to have a pallete of colors to play with. I have a few of the "2nd tier pose of a set of two figures" I can mess around with to figure a lot out
This guy has some good intro videos on his channel if you scroll down to the older vids (he also does a lot of vids about running 5e D&D and older games). I really like his old school "speed painting" style. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdMl19aDv5e_2l_AeJRXp2g/videos
Warhammer youtube channel. Obviously focused on Games Workshop stuff and honestly I think most of the vids are aimed at an advanced audience but still has some things I found useful. https://www.youtube.com/user/GamesWorkshopWNT/videos
The Efreeti are very natural opponents. They are lawful evil, and love enforcing the status quo with shitty contracts, and force if it fails. They live in luxury while everyone toils for their pleasure.
I can't really go through with this interpretation of the Efreeti (which I do enjoy!) just because of how powerful I made them in relation to other monsters.
They can cast Wish at will, as I wanted them to be able to fight akin to Jafar at the end of Aladdin. These are beings who don't even have to fight you in any conventional sense. They can polymorph you into kitty-cats or teleport you to the arctic or transform into giant cobras to eat you. Their container also act as their phylactery, in that they just rejuvenate akin to a lich if destroyed.
So instead, to fight an Efreeti to engage in a battle of wills. You have to trick them in one way or another, to get possession of their container (and then use that as leverage against them).
Entering one of the major cities should start by feeling like entering Arabian Nights, only to find out there are a hundred evil sultans manoeuvring against each other. And some if them already know you're here, and are thinking if there is any tiny advantage they can squeeze out of you.
I like this concept and will likely use it but for the different immigrants who are trying to seize, or hold onto, power.
You can also do cool things on the edges of the plane. The planes of earth and fire have often been at war, and the volcanic border is a mass graveyard of toxic fumes. But if you risk it artefacts of great power could be buried in the ash .....
My different planes/realms aren't distinctly connected in any concrete way. There are portals and gate-ways but all of them function akin to their own planetary object in the vast darkness of the Astral Sea.
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gavindelThe reason all your softwareis brokenRegistered Userregular
Continuing my series of snake based shenanigans, today we have:
DINOSER - Mother of SER PENTOR and SER PYTHON. Also apparently a Sith, cause holy hell Witch Bolt cast as a 3rd level spell is a total wrecker. She dealt an impressive amount of damage to the party before dying. Also didn't roll a concentration check below 15 while Witch Bolt was active, so she dropped the fighter (twice!) harder than Luke Skywalker.
DINOSER rode into battle riding an anklyosaurus and flanked with velociraptors (movie version; clever girl reference included). So naturally, the druid turned into a giant spider, headbutted her off her own mount, and stole it. The party now has a pet anklyosaurus named Warm Rock. Her favorite activities are grazing, sunbathing, and refusing to move until she gets more Goodberries by the handful.
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yeah its... yeah.
I'm glad she's doing better now at least.
I don't think I've ever been in a game where they tracked common spell components. Even the big spell components, unless they're plot relevant, are typically waved off as "You've got your focus or your pouch? Good, cast away.".
Much like the encumbrance rules and a bag of holding, the rules are there if you want them. If you don't care for tracking inventory on spread sheets during your fantasy murder hobo nights, then there are ways to bypass those rules.
Plot relevant being "You've been rendered unconscious and are waking up in a prison cell with no components, armor or weapons" or "You're looking for 25k worth of diamonds for a True Resurrection spell" kind of thing.
Don't know about favorite, but in Volo's there are some folk called Firenewts
Technically they need hot water to breed, so they might not live on the Fire Plane proper if your's is the kind where all water is evaporated
Mordenkainen's has Myrmidons if you want to spice up your fire elementals (think they're a re-print from PotA) and of course a Phoenix
Otherwise it's all the usual suspects that you probably already thought about: Azer, Efreeti, Salamanders, Fire Snakes, Fire Genasi, Fire Giants, Red Dragons, Red Guard Drakes, Magmins, Magma Mephits, Smoke Mephits
If your Plane of Fire has a City of Brass, there's probably a bunch of Tieflings and maybe some devils, like Cambions and Pit Fiends
Yeah, for the middling stuff that falls between "random crap assumed to be in a pouch" and "extremely rare, expensive, or plot relevant" I'd probably at most have players retcon possession of it by subtracting an appropriate amount of gold.
Oh, I went through the different books and grabbed what I wanted.
I wasn't feeling the Myrmidons though. But I did add/modify: Azer, Efreeti, Firenewts, Fire Elementals, Fire Giants, Fire Titans, Magma Mephits, Magmin, the Phoenix, Salamanders, & Steam Mephits.
I also created: Ember Knights, Flame Oozes, Leviathan of Flames, Magma Elementals, & Magma Golems.
I'm currently designing the Mokdorans.
Whenever D&D and planes are brought up the Gith spring to mind. I could easily see a bunch of Gith meditating in a titan’s charred black skull talking about how fire is a purifying element, necessary for rebirth.
They could be a nice bit of normalcy, almost, for the players. Just some folk, maybe food and board if they do something for them. Not related to the main plot, just hanging out being bad knock-off eastern philosophers.
Am I right in saying that the chances of rolling a 20 on a d20 twice in a row* would be described as 20 to the power of 2, or 1 in 400?
*assuming perfectly balanced dice etc
The important thing to note though is that if you have already rolled one twenty, then the odds to roll another are still just one in twenty.
I believe you are correct.
I know that part, thanks! I was reminded today of Amy The Falcon rolling two 20s in a row, and wondered what the actual odds were.
This is why I'm deeply fond of Shannara.
I love Myrmidons, but only because I read the lore for their original 4E incarnation, which were called Archons.
Basically the archons were created as foot soldiers for godlike elementals called the primordials in their war against the gods. The primordials lost and are mostly dead or imprisoned, though, so the remaining archons from the original armies find new causes to fight for to fulfill their love of battle and secure facilities in the Elemental Chaos to produce more of their kind. Each element also had more than one kind of archon to fulfill different roles in combat, and there were also storm, ooze, ice, and bronze archons.
They were renamed myrmidons in 5E because archons before 4E had just been angels of a different alignment (and those archons haven't appeared in 5E yet, btw).
-- The Ember Knights
-- The Firenewts
-- The Salamanders
-- Sutr the Fire Titan and the Fire Giants
The rest are just random, unaligned creatures just existing.
And they are all lazily governed by the primordial god of fire.
Tolkien knew his history. And middle earth is not based on the high middle ages but an earlier period. We are so used to the idea of population growth that we find it weird that land is fallow, settlements are shrinking etc... But in western europe from the mid 2nd century until the ~7th (date very uncertain) the population was in decline. Year over year, generation after generation there were fewer people around. Even after the population started increasing again it took centuries for it to become noticeable.
Rome itself is the most extreme example of this (being more dependent on imports from Egypt and North Africa than most) but is by no means alone. All the great cities of western Europe underwent similar decline over this period. In 5 BCE the population of the city of Rome was 800,000-1,000,000. In the early 4th century, during the time of Constantine, the population was down to around 600,000. After the sack in 419 CE it was down to 300,000-500,000. By 590 CE, after the end of food imports from North Africa and the wars of Justinian, it was down to 150,000 at most. In 800 CE, on the Christmas day when Charlemagne was crowned Roman Emperor (and getting very close to the period that the material culture of LOTR is based on) the most optimistic estimate of the population of Rome would be 30,000 people.
The tale of the 3rd age as presented in the appendix of Return of the King is strange and foreign to us but very understandable from the point of view of (roughly) 1000 CE.
There was a guy at the comic shop I play D&D at who painted minis, but he moved before I could get all of mine painted by him. I'm thinking about attempting to paint some myself, but I'm afraid of ruining them with a shitty paint job.
Animal/Monster + Fire/Magma. Does the normal thing, but it's hot and has fire-based effects. Example, lava rat swarm, magam kraken.
Boil Crab: Beasts of the Boundless Blue
Thoqqua: Forgotten Foes
Walking Vent: Beasts of the Boundless Blue
Two of these are for more marine type settings, but it could be useful to reflavour to shallower water settings if you want to vary things up at all and want to provide some more fauna for your elemental plane of fire.
Thundarr the Barbarian influenced me a great deal when it comes to my preferred aesthetic for these kinds of things. I saw it as re-runs as a kid in the late 80's and it's just kind of stuck.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSKamG44JDU
It's super easy to strip paint off of models without damaging the model!
Living in great domed palaces swept in fire, wearing silks the colour of flame, drinking hot wine and eating the most spiced food, laughing and singing, duelling and riddling, great friends and terrible enemies, quick to anger and generous to a fault
I think I will look to Durga for some inspiration and I am set.
My big takeaway so far is how forgiving the process is. The paint is really easy to cover over mistakes. My biggest issue was how quickly they dry up on the paper bowl I was using without an actual wet pallet.
you interested in links to youtube channels that have good painting vids for beginners?
Rather than stress you have resources which take downtime actions/cash (same function as coin in blades) to top up: Munitions, Nutrition and Connection which you spend in the place of stress. Rather than a meter it's instead a number from 1-5. With every use making you roll 1-3D6 depending on the severity (IE, mag dumping your rifle or throwing a grenade is more than firing off a pistol). If any of them come up higher than your current resource then it's reduced by 1.
Munitions is for armour, your guns, grenades or any military tech upkeep uses. Being out of it implies your ability to fight has being severely diminished.
Nutrition is your physical ability: You can use it to dodge, sprint, swing a crowbar or outlast sleep deprivation. Being out of it implies you aren't in the physical state to do much other than crawl back to bed or the nearest food stand.
Connection is both social and to the various networks and datasphere's occupying the city. You can use it for bribes, when searching the net or using gadgets. Being out of it implies you haven't paid your internet bill. Which is a problem when so much stuff has AR integration and presumes you do too.
Mostly my thoughts are:
1) Being high up on a resource might be too much in terms of how long it lasts. Though the idea is you only restore 1d3 per cash you put towards it so it might just specialize characters.
2) In terms of categories munitions is a weird one because it feels very presumptive of characters that they'd all need this category but also most characters would and I feel it's important to seperate 'semi illegal ammo and weapons' from the other piles.
3) Also tempted to add a 4th category of small change for small purchases like gear, repairs, bribes and services but am not sure if that tramples on stuff too much. In theory you could just have 'get a new pistol' as a two dice munitions check.
Yeah, Eriador is tougher to plan around. One of my dream campaign ideas is to do a Tolkien-esque take on The Great Pendragon campaign focusing on a non-canonical last-great-ruler of Arthurian in the early/mid third age, so sadly my only concrete idea in how to address things is to dial the clock back a lot. Though, given the Woodmen were largely made up by Cubicle 7, it might be possible to do something similar for the other part of Middle-Earth, like a group of men have maybe built some kind of new settlements near Tharbad or something?
"The only real politics I knew was that if a guy liked Hitler, I’d beat the stuffing out of him and that would be it." -- Jack Kirby
it's not the last time I'll disagree with his rulings, no doubt
he seems to tend toward more 'hard' rules, when I would prefer something softer because I think it sounds cool af
not like I'll ever have to worry about it since I don't do adventure league
who knows, I might end up playing 5e with someone else one of these days (I'll probably be the GM, tho)
Twitch (I stream most days of the week)
Twitter (mean leftist discourse)
Oh, I'm going to have the Djinn not directly tied to any particular plane. They're wanderers, journeymen, explorers, ect...
I'll likely do that just to continue to populate it.
I think I'll likely shy away from doing any types of deep water/aquatic element on the plane. I envision it is just scorched earth, molten rock, blaring fires, volcanos, steaming geysers, and lava rivers.
But you raise a good point in that I wonder what the natural occupants/denizens of the plane subsist on in terms of food.
CW for abuse, and potentially NSFW stuff on Mandy's account
Yeah, my general point was to make sure to include some flora and fauna to help make the setting come more to life. The wandering vent could just as easily be re-purposed into a land-based volcanic vent that is able to get up and move around. If the party is traveling across the landscape at all having a group of wandering vents move in and surround a campsite or a place where the party stops could produce an interesting encounter. I don't necessarily see these as encounters that have to end in deadly combat, but more of a matter of a way of embellishing the setting.
it kinda feels like they're doubling down on an oversight in the rules.
Since I try to be consistent with the rules first, and houserules second, whenever I design new things I tend to design them around the base rules RAW, as frustrating as that might be. Hence my inclusion of a way around that problem in that invocation, even if were I GMing a game I'd houserule Warlocks with IPATB being able to do that anyway.
Twitch (I stream most days of the week)
Twitter (mean leftist discourse)
If you are looking for weird things, you can use something like an Entrope, a worm-type creature that bores between elemental planar boundaries and causes small regions from one plane to spill into another plane. This can create the old paraelemental boundary areas, or just allow for some more exotic/unusual terrain. It could be permanent or temporary as the planar boundary heals over time (depends on how you want to handle the stuff).
Some more 2nd edition stuff:
Digging through some 5th edition stuff you've also got stuff like Igniguana, Magmoids, and Lava Children.
Oh yeah for sure. This one was a ton of fun and I'm probably going to come home tonight with one of the getting started sets we have just to have a pallete of colors to play with. I have a few of the "2nd tier pose of a set of two figures" I can mess around with to figure a lot out
Yeah, I think that's basically it (the doubling down, that is). The tweets are intended to be clarifications of existing rules, not errata.
Whether or not he actually likes the existing rule, that's what the book says, so that's what his clarification says. If they think it's worth fixing, that's what the actual errata releases are for (and they haven't gotten around to fixing it there, but if they were going to, that's where they'd do it).
I think realistically, everyone just houserules it, so it might just not be worth the effort to find a way to rephrase it that fixes this problem without introducing any new ones. Sometimes it's easier to just say 'you know what I mean' than to make sure the RAW is perfect in every case.
DIESEL
Against the Fall of Night Playtest
Nasty, Brutish, and Short
The Efreeti are very natural opponents. They are lawful evil, and love enforcing the status quo with shitty contracts, and force if it fails. They live in luxury while everyone toils for their pleasure.
Entering one of the major cities should start by feeling like entering Arabian Nights, only to find out there are a hundred evil sultans manoeuvring against each other. And some if them already know you're here, and are thinking if there is any tiny advantage they can squeeze out of you.
You can also do cool things on the edges of the plane. The planes of earth and fire have often been at war, and the volcanic border is a mass graveyard of toxic fumes. But if you risk it artefacts of great power could be buried in the ash .....
WillSmithGenie.png :whistle:
This guy has some good intro videos on his channel if you scroll down to the older vids (he also does a lot of vids about running 5e D&D and older games). I really like his old school "speed painting" style.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdMl19aDv5e_2l_AeJRXp2g/videos
Lots of painting videos. Some of these run into more advanced stuff than I am comfortable with but there are some beginner tutorials as well
https://www.youtube.com/user/ThePaintingClinic/videos
Painting and building terrain to go with your minis
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2Rlv-ug-mtnXuMwlpcqFgg/videos
Kind of weird mix of content on this channel but if you scroll through it they have some good painting vids and streams
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGriU-WfAekkpZiep_dG0xg/videos
Warhammer youtube channel. Obviously focused on Games Workshop stuff and honestly I think most of the vids are aimed at an advanced audience but still has some things I found useful.
https://www.youtube.com/user/GamesWorkshopWNT/videos
In addition to vids about techniques this channel has some good reviews of different brands of paints and tools
https://www.youtube.com/user/PhatWOP001/videos
I can't really go through with this interpretation of the Efreeti (which I do enjoy!) just because of how powerful I made them in relation to other monsters.
They can cast Wish at will, as I wanted them to be able to fight akin to Jafar at the end of Aladdin. These are beings who don't even have to fight you in any conventional sense. They can polymorph you into kitty-cats or teleport you to the arctic or transform into giant cobras to eat you. Their container also act as their phylactery, in that they just rejuvenate akin to a lich if destroyed.
So instead, to fight an Efreeti to engage in a battle of wills. You have to trick them in one way or another, to get possession of their container (and then use that as leverage against them).
I like this concept and will likely use it but for the different immigrants who are trying to seize, or hold onto, power.
My different planes/realms aren't distinctly connected in any concrete way. There are portals and gate-ways but all of them function akin to their own planetary object in the vast darkness of the Astral Sea.
DINOSER - Mother of SER PENTOR and SER PYTHON. Also apparently a Sith, cause holy hell Witch Bolt cast as a 3rd level spell is a total wrecker. She dealt an impressive amount of damage to the party before dying. Also didn't roll a concentration check below 15 while Witch Bolt was active, so she dropped the fighter (twice!) harder than Luke Skywalker.
DINOSER rode into battle riding an anklyosaurus and flanked with velociraptors (movie version; clever girl reference included). So naturally, the druid turned into a giant spider, headbutted her off her own mount, and stole it. The party now has a pet anklyosaurus named Warm Rock. Her favorite activities are grazing, sunbathing, and refusing to move until she gets more Goodberries by the handful.