I have not considered SKT. I'll look into it. Any reviews you want to give me?
All I know about it is that there are giants and that Artus Cimber may be equally as useless in this module as he is in ToA.
We only played a few hours of it, so I couldn't give you a nuanced review at all. So far so good, there have been giants, our DM already 3D-printed them (multiples). We're going into our 3rd or 4th session next weekend (if no one cancels) and we will hopefully leave the first village. I think it is a good one because there's plenty of different locations and overland travel to partake in, so you can introduce your party to a lot of other DnD-stuff that isn't in LMoP.
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webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
I have not considered SKT. I'll look into it. Any reviews you want to give me?
All I know about it is that there are giants and that Artus Cimber may be equally as useless in this module as he is in ToA.
From what I've gleaned from discussions over the last couple years is the biggest challenge for the DM is knowing your players, their characters, and tailoring the module to take their motivations into account to drive the game forward, as it is apparently very sandboxy.
Oh yeah, that's always an awkward one. I mean, something happened to the town we were in, but we didn't particularly care about that town (none of us were from there, we never visited before). My DM twisted some knives to get us motivated, but half our characters couldn't tell you why they'd risk their life for this Greater Good.
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webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
Oh yeah, that's always an awkward one. I mean, something happened to the town we were in, but we didn't particularly care about that town (none of us were from there, we never visited before). My DM twisted some knives to get us motivated, but half our characters couldn't tell you why they'd risk their life for this Greater Good.
I think our DM is going to get lucky as our characters are actively "Good" characters, and aren't necessarily willing to leave folks in the lurch. Hell when we've recovered treasure from goblins we've returned it to the rightful owners, and not kept the loot. We had an argument about killing a trapped owlbear because while its an aberration, is it evil or does it just act like a bear? We decided on the latter and set it free to go do owl bear things, because it's not the owl bears fault it had been trapped, and we wouldn't kill a regular bear in similar circumstances.
Oh yeah, that's always an awkward one. I mean, something happened to the town we were in, but we didn't particularly care about that town (none of us were from there, we never visited before). My DM twisted some knives to get us motivated, but half our characters couldn't tell you why they'd risk their life for this Greater Good.
I think our DM is going to get lucky as our characters are actively "Good" characters, and aren't necessarily willing to leave folks in the lurch. Hell when we've recovered treasure from goblins we've returned it to the rightful owners, and not kept the loot. We had an argument about killing a trapped owlbear because while its an aberration, is it evil or does it just act like a bear? We decided on the latter and set it free to go do owl bear things, because it's not the owl bears fault it had been trapped, and we wouldn't kill a regular bear in similar circumstances.
We let that Owlbear walk off because we were more or less dead at that point. It is funny how much value you can get out of Live and let live when you have arrows sticking out of your butt.
I have not considered SKT. I'll look into it. Any reviews you want to give me?
All I know about it is that there are giants and that Artus Cimber may be equally as useless in this module as he is in ToA.
From what I've gleaned from discussions over the last couple years is the biggest challenge for the DM is knowing your players, their characters, and tailoring the module to take their motivations into account to drive the game forward, as it is apparently very sandboxy.
Very. There is multiple directions the plot can go depending on the players and the DMs whim. Artus is down one of the paths and you may never actually run into him.
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webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
edited February 2019
So Lost Mines of Phandelver spoilers....
So we pick up from last time, we've explored about half the mine (Wave echo cave). Taken out the giant mesquito things, killed a couple different groups of ghouls, and were outside one of the original guard rooms with a bunch of skeletons inside. We proceed to clean up the skeletons without much issue, and go back outside to take a long rest because we had used up most of our resources. No problem and we have some fun RP around our campfire.
We go back into the mine, do some exploring and kill an ooze. We end up stumbling upon 5 bugbears in a room around a brassier. We end up kicking ass and taking names, and a bugbear runs in, lays eyes on us and runs off. Fuck. We go track him down and end up in a big chamber where we find the "black spider" and one of the dwarfs. We call out the black spider, and he tries to weasel out of it. I'm playing a Paladin of the Common Man (Homebrew), am able to get within 30ft of him and use my channel divinity "Turn the Bourgeoisie" successfully, so he tries to now get away from us for the next 10 turns, and with where I'm standing he can't get to either door, so he hides in a corner. At that point the DM has us roll initiative.
This is where we find out we were dumb. As soon as we saw the black spider we completely forgot about other enemies. We get ambushed by 4 large spiders and 3 bugbears in a surprise. The spiders web both our casters, and the bugbears are able to drop one, the character who is my little sister in game between their surprise on the first round and getting to go first in initiative due to us all sucking. the picture below is the start of round 3 I believe.
Anyways, due to some good rolls, strategy and sheer luck we start turning the tide. The weird thing is though while we're being attacked by enemies the Dwarf who should be our ally is also attacking. We think he is maybe dominated. Due to sheer luck our Druid is using moonbeam and ends up hitting the Dwarf at one point, and mother fucking surprise it's a doppelganger! We were all just like "holy shit!" and the DM goes, "Who else in this adventure has acted weird like this...". We realize a character we had encountered at Cragmaw keep was a doppelganger as well, and we had captured and turned them in at Waterdeep. Oops.
Anyways, we persevere, burn all of our spells, and end up killing all the mooks and the doppelganger. We start in on the Black Spider and he goes invnisible and runs. Through more luck and some good rolls we're able to run him down and kill him.
At this point we called it after a 6 hour game (with breaks for food and BSing). What a great fucking day. We're going to short rest and then finish clearing out the mine. Can't wait to see what else is in here!
we ran into 3 street urchins in water deep dragon heist, one of them wasn't responding so I cast lesser restoration to cure her deafness and she started bawling because she's been deaf for years, so I had to cast calm emotions to continue talking. I'm playing a fey creature so the primary reason for collecting wealth is hijinks, these kids claim to be adventurers so I gave the girl a rapier +1, the "rogue" a cloak of elvenkind, and the "wizard" a Wand of Web. My party wasn't present since they were all futzing with a submarine we found and they're pulling their hair out that I'm emptying my loot stores on 3 random street urchins just because they idolize my character (I mean, in a good way, they weren't getting mad at me. Just in an "oh noooo we left the sorcerer unsupervised)
When one of the kids said that they didn't have a place to live I just said "oh, well, I don't really sleep, you can have my room in Trollskull Manor, you might need to hire a coach, here's 50 gold pieces, I have to go back to my party"
Later when we return to the manor I had to get the "YOU CAN'T JUST KEEP CHILDREN YOU FIND ON THE STREET" speech (the same one I had an NPC give them in my game, because there they took the ghost Rosevalda from Dead House home with them and fucking resurrected her in Neverwinter, the priest was the one who told them "just because you found a dead kid and resurrected them doesn't mean you can keep them". They didn't listen of course and dragged her to Chult and sent her to wizard school)
Turned out they had plot relevant information so for the low price of 3 magic items, free room and board, and 50 gold pieces I managed to get the information that a few silver pieces would have gotten us. I'm so good at this!
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webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
we ran into 3 street urchins in water deep dragon heist, one of them wasn't responding so I cast lesser restoration to cure her deafness and she started bawling because she's been deaf for years, so I had to cast calm emotions to continue talking. I'm playing a fey creature so the primary reason for collecting wealth is hijinks, these kids claim to be adventurers so I gave the girl a rapier +1, the "rogue" a cloak of elvenkind, and the "wizard" a Wand of Web. My party wasn't present since they were all futzing with a submarine we found and they're pulling their hair out that I'm emptying my loot stores on 3 random street urchins just because they idolize my character (I mean, in a good way, they weren't getting mad at me. Just in an "oh noooo we left the sorcerer unsupervised)
When one of the kids said that they didn't have a place to live I just said "oh, well, I don't really sleep, you can have my room in Trollskull Manor, you might need to hire a coach, here's 50 gold pieces, I have to go back to my party"
Later when we return to the manor I had to get the "YOU CAN'T JUST KEEP CHILDREN YOU FIND ON THE STREET" speech (the same one I had an NPC give them in my game, because there they took the ghost Rosevalda from Dead House home with them and fucking resurrected her in Neverwinter, the priest was the one who told them "just because you found a dead kid and resurrected them doesn't mean you can keep them". They didn't listen of course and dragged her to Chult and sent her to wizard school)
Turned out they had plot relevant information so for the low price of 3 magic items, free room and board, and 50 gold pieces I managed to get the information that a few silver pieces would have gotten us. I'm so good at this!
In 20 years those kids are the ones going to be saving the world as an adventuring group. You done good.
That would actually be really fun to play if there is a TPK. Flash forward 15 years or so and now everyone is playing those kids as characters.
So last tuesday was actually hilarious for how it played out; only two of my players showed up, but mercifully neither one was intellect devoured and that meant that I could wrap up the Dragon heist campaign while setting up the next one.
The deal with the zhentarim was a good one for them; they'd come away from it with a tenth share of the treasure that while initially appearing small given the work they put in, it was made clear to them that it would still be an absurd haul that any dragon would be pleased to snooze on, and that the majority of the wealth would be used to defuse Laerals wrath and also further Zhentarim interests in the sword coast (and rather importantly delisting the resident manshoon clone). As a result, the players came away with 10 bank slips for 5k g each deposited around the city, in adition to a plethora of minor magic items to further future adventures.
Good times and partying at the Trollskull manor however wound up going sideways pretty quick, since the one player there found himself discussing matters with Laeral who was angry that the players had effectively let a criminal syndicate run off with some 150k gold and Jarlaxle baenre was yukking it up with a staff that acted as a VIP stamp for dragons to enter the city; about the only reason she wasn't blasting them to nothing was that their actions had also undermined Manshoon's efforts in the city and thrown the Xanathar guild for a loop. As such she made it clear to them that it was in their best interests to think about how to be good upstanding citizens going forward.
After that, the players got to see the items that the Zhents had left for them and included:
A sombrero of wizardry
a poncho of protection
A Falx of moon light
A +1 sickle
A potion of heroism
A vial of dust of disapearance
a mystery key
a shield of expressions (that copied the apearance of the users face warped to fit a round shield)
A dread helm
A cloak of billowing
Goggles of night
The players were feeling pretty good at this time as they also spent time buying a crap ton of spells from a local wizardry supplier, along with the neccesary components when another guest arrived at the tavern; a money lender who was rather voluminous and in need of a group of adventurers to drop off something for him to a person in skullport (artists concept seen in spoilers below):
At first my players were politely asking what was in it for them, given that a trip to skullport would have to mean a trip through undermountain, and when it became clear that they wouldn't be motivated by altruism, heroism or offers to talk to laeral on their behalf, Mirt (in probably one of my finest moments of subtlety) admitted that he wasn't really able to offer a reward that would entice them given that they had so much money in those banks.
The look in the player's eyes as he immediately caught the implication without me having to spell it out to him was one of those moments that makes GMing so very very worthwhile.
Next week should be fun as well; we're going to be looking at refilling the party (also a crap ton of character creation stuff) and one of my players had suggested that they handle this as a job fair.
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webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
So last tuesday was actually hilarious for how it played out; only two of my players showed up, but mercifully neither one was intellect devoured and that meant that I could wrap up the Dragon heist campaign while setting up the next one.
The deal with the zhentarim was a good one for them; they'd come away from it with a tenth share of the treasure that while initially appearing small given the work they put in, it was made clear to them that it would still be an absurd haul that any dragon would be pleased to snooze on, and that the majority of the wealth would be used to defuse Laerals wrath and also further Zhentarim interests in the sword coast (and rather importantly delisting the resident manshoon clone). As a result, the players came away with 10 bank slips for 5k g each deposited around the city, in adition to a plethora of minor magic items to further future adventures.
Good times and partying at the Trollskull manor however wound up going sideways pretty quick, since the one player there found himself discussing matters with Laeral who was angry that the players had effectively let a criminal syndicate run off with some 150k gold and Jarlaxle baenre was yukking it up with a staff that acted as a VIP stamp for dragons to enter the city; about the only reason she wasn't blasting them to nothing was that their actions had also undermined Manshoon's efforts in the city and thrown the Xanathar guild for a loop. As such she made it clear to them that it was in their best interests to think about how to be good upstanding citizens going forward.
After that, the players got to see the items that the Zhents had left for them and included:
A sombrero of wizardry
a concho of protection
A Falx of moon light
A +1 sickle
A potion of heroism
A vial of dust of disapearance
a mystery key
a shield of expressions (that copied the apearance of the users face warped to fit a round shield)
A dread helm
A cloak of billowing
Goggles of night
The players were feeling pretty good at this time as they also spent time buying a crap ton of spells from a local wizardry supplier, along with the neccesary components when another guest arrived at the tavern; a money lender who was rather voluminous and in need of a group of adventurers to drop off something for him to a person in skullport (artists concept seen in spoilers below):
At first my players were politely asking what was in it for them, given that a trip to skullport would have to mean a trip through undermountain, and when it became clear that they wouldn't be motivated by altruism, heroism or offers to talk to laeral on their behalf, Mirt (in probably one of my finest moments of subtlety) admitted that he wasn't really able to offer a reward that would entice them given that they had so much money in those banks.
The look in the player's eyes as he immediately caught the implication without me having to spell it out to him was one of those moments that makes GMing so very very worthwhile.
Next week should be fun as well; we're going to be looking at refilling the party (also a crap ton of character creation stuff) and one of my players had suggested that they handle this as a job fair.
A job fair sounds awesome. I'd love to make up like 3 characters with personality and be "interviewed" by an adventuring party and have them decide who they liked. I would also like to interview characters!
my players have completely wrecked the political balance in Port Nyanzaru, after the downtime once the soul monger is done they're going to find the city breaking out into violent revolution - there is no tie breaking moderate between the pro-slavery and the pro-freedom sides in the city's government anymore
I'm probably going to pick a historical revolution to model it off of, except also wizards and clerics
Might I suggest taking inspiration from the slave rebellions of Brazil and Haiti? Voodoo priests and dance-fighting monks staging guerilla actions from a magic jungle? Yes, please!
So last tuesday was actually hilarious for how it played out; only two of my players showed up, but mercifully neither one was intellect devoured and that meant that I could wrap up the Dragon heist campaign while setting up the next one.
The deal with the zhentarim was a good one for them; they'd come away from it with a tenth share of the treasure that while initially appearing small given the work they put in, it was made clear to them that it would still be an absurd haul that any dragon would be pleased to snooze on, and that the majority of the wealth would be used to defuse Laerals wrath and also further Zhentarim interests in the sword coast (and rather importantly delisting the resident manshoon clone). As a result, the players came away with 10 bank slips for 5k g each deposited around the city, in adition to a plethora of minor magic items to further future adventures.
Good times and partying at the Trollskull manor however wound up going sideways pretty quick, since the one player there found himself discussing matters with Laeral who was angry that the players had effectively let a criminal syndicate run off with some 150k gold and Jarlaxle baenre was yukking it up with a staff that acted as a VIP stamp for dragons to enter the city; about the only reason she wasn't blasting them to nothing was that their actions had also undermined Manshoon's efforts in the city and thrown the Xanathar guild for a loop. As such she made it clear to them that it was in their best interests to think about how to be good upstanding citizens going forward.
After that, the players got to see the items that the Zhents had left for them and included:
A sombrero of wizardry
a concho of protection
A Falx of moon light
A +1 sickle
A potion of heroism
A vial of dust of disapearance
a mystery key
a shield of expressions (that copied the apearance of the users face warped to fit a round shield)
A dread helm
A cloak of billowing
Goggles of night
The players were feeling pretty good at this time as they also spent time buying a crap ton of spells from a local wizardry supplier, along with the neccesary components when another guest arrived at the tavern; a money lender who was rather voluminous and in need of a group of adventurers to drop off something for him to a person in skullport (artists concept seen in spoilers below):
At first my players were politely asking what was in it for them, given that a trip to skullport would have to mean a trip through undermountain, and when it became clear that they wouldn't be motivated by altruism, heroism or offers to talk to laeral on their behalf, Mirt (in probably one of my finest moments of subtlety) admitted that he wasn't really able to offer a reward that would entice them given that they had so much money in those banks.
The look in the player's eyes as he immediately caught the implication without me having to spell it out to him was one of those moments that makes GMing so very very worthwhile.
Next week should be fun as well; we're going to be looking at refilling the party (also a crap ton of character creation stuff) and one of my players had suggested that they handle this as a job fair.
A job fair sounds awesome. I'd love to make up like 3 characters with personality and be "interviewed" by an adventuring party and have them decide who they liked. I would also like to interview characters!
The best part is that the one player is a transmuter wearing the goggles, the billowing cape and the dread helm so he's basically cosplaying as batman at this point.
[christian bale voice] If you could be a tree what kind of tree would you be!?!?![/christian bale voice]
I had a player (the paladin) bow out of the session unexpectedly, which usually is fine because it’s a big group of 6, but this player in particular is sort of the defacto leader. The current situation is highly political and investigation driven which appeals to about half the players, the paladin especially so. I introduced an amorphous shades-of-grey antagonist called the Cult of Life Eternal, and the bard loved it, though he’s also secretly (from the rest of the party anyway) chaotic evil and just wants to watch the world burn. Two of the other players just stayed at the Inn instead of investigating the cult. In case the players fail to find clues (or as the case turned out failed to even try) I had a backup quest in place to at least give a few combat encounters and drag the story along; the lair of a necromancy terrorizing the country side was discovered! But last night the players literally refused the call to adventure. “We want to wait for our Paladin before tackling any undead.”
So rather than play anything I had planned I basically had a one-on-one adventure for the bard with an audience as he joined a cult.
I had a player (the paladin) bow out of the session unexpectedly, which usually is fine because it’s a big group of 6, but this player in particular is sort of the defacto leader. The current situation is highly political and investigation driven which appeals to about half the players, the paladin especially so. I introduced an amorphous shades-of-grey antagonist called the Cult of Life Eternal, and the bard loved it, though he’s also secretly (from the rest of the party anyway) chaotic evil and just wants to watch the world burn. Two of the other players just stayed at the Inn instead of investigating the cult. In case the players fail to find clues (or as the case turned out failed to even try) I had a backup quest in place to at least give a few combat encounters and drag the story along; the lair of a necromancy terrorizing the country side was discovered! But last night the players literally refused the call to adventure. “We want to wait for our Paladin before tackling any undead.”
So rather than play anything I had planned I basically had a one-on-one adventure for the bard with an audience as he joined a cult.
That sounds frustrating for a DM. I'd be frustrated, anyway. Or maybe annoyed is a better term.
I kinda think it's the players; whenever I DM for my little brother's age-range (25-ish) they seem to be very self-preservation oriented and generally wait for content to come to them rather than seek out adventure. It could be that I'm shit at writing hooks and keeping the right amount of tension. When I play with my own age range though things tend to go as I expect... I kinda want to swap over to playing one of the published adventures and see how that turns out.
Welp. Game start pushed off because one person couldn't make it, another is moving away in like a month and the gm is trying to convince a couple of friends who had committed to a different game that is now over a month of not happening that their game is dead and they should join ours.
Do you want to become a bearded mentor? Because that’s how you become a bearded mentor.
After I directed them, the DM wanted an exhaustive list of everything my character keeps in her bedroom
At the end of the session, events so far in trollskull manor (which would be a few hours after the children made themselves at home in my character's room:
- A gunshot was heard downstairs as the pudgy boy that think's hes a wizard (Jenx) fired my Lantanese firearm (which he stole), accompanied by him "I CAST MAGIC MISSILE" and then "oh shit!"
- The other boy, Squidley, stole 5 vials of Alchemist's Fire from my alchemy workbench, a Heavy Crossbow, an explosive crossbow bolt (as per fireball), and some of my character's undergarments
- The girl Nat tattled on both of them and was waiting patiently for one of the party to show up to inform on them. She also ratted on some of the employees in the adjacent establishment owned by the party skimming gold, with the assistance of my familiar (!) who had been using the money to buy expensive gems
The session ended with city watch whistles blowing in trollskull alley and Jenx and Squiddly bursting into the tap room insisting they did nothing wrong
it's these kids, I was familiar with them from Chris perkins' stream but didnt know they were in the module. Also as in Perkins' game, the DM is planning on us having a session where we play as the kids, and one person plays as a mysterious unrevealed monster that is friends with one of them (?). It sounds fun.
oh and we found out Xanathar's identity. The party's wizard is raising a horde of skeletons to unleash into his lair. The kids found the fact that we have an basement full of undead "awesome!". So far from how Squiddly (the tiefling) is presented, his alignment is "chaotic suicidal" so I am expecting keeping them alive is going to be hardmode for this campaign, like keeping dogmeat alive in Fallout 1
In our game, i play a wizard and when we first met those kids a ghost was possessing my body, do the "wizard" kid is terrified of me. I keep trying to teach him magic though and he keeps freaking out and not getting it.
Even though we were down a person, I still have a lot of fun actually playing a character for the first time! Our terribly optimized party managed to clear through the first boss fight of Sunless Citadel and hit level 2, with some careful thinking and application of Sleep. Shout outs to @Steelhawk for articulating in his Undermountain game just how dangerous taking a long rest in a dungeon can be.
Sunless Citadel spoilers:
When we hit the pit trap right in front of the entrance and the secret door to skellingtons it was like "oh, so that's how it's gonna be." Apparently a lot of people have trouble not mouthing off to the kobolds and getting themselves unceremoniously shanked, but I told them whatever they wanted to hear. A couple traps and rats later, I was able to convince my party to return to the kobolds' territory for a long rest, and the DM articulated that any other choice of where to sleep would have turned out poorly.
For the room with the big mama rat, there was a tripped & jammed pit trap in front of a door with a little ledge. We managed to hear/smell scratching on the other side of it, but they weren't able to open the door and quieted down after a bit. I got our ranger who wanted nothing more than to kick the door down to tie a rope to the handle and open it from the other side of the trap as the bard and I stood, ready to ambush whatever came through, which turned out great. Apparently we could also have been diseased.
Meepo is soooo adorable. It's gonna be fun when I tell him that we don't need him to read Draconic anymore, since I'm taking the warlock feature to read languages.
We also had what I feel could be a good recurring joke - the ranger kicks a door and gets hit by a trap, and says "There was no way this could have been avoided." Later on, after hours of convincing people to be super careful and stay on track of the previous adventurers, I stupidly trip a trap myself and he says the line again.
The biggest point of contention was loot splitting, these peeps are THIRSTY oh so thirsty for treasure. I arbitrarily split up the treasure, which people assented to about half the time.
And that boy is a wizard, don't tell him no different. Give him a book.
so far he's gotten a wand of web and a pistol from me, and he has enough smokepowder for 28 shots
at least, i assume so, the watch might be upset about that....
You gave a kid a gun and expect nothing horrible to happen?
he stole it from my character's bedroom, look you can't expect a fey creature who JUST found out firearms exist when she looted one off a dead drow to have a gun safe
Okay granted I have an extradimensional storage unit summonable at any time from a tiny chest figurine, but that's where important stuff is kept like *checks onenote inventory list*
6 fancy bottles of wine
unidentified eggs from the far realm
giant glass sphere full of acid
comatose goblin cult fanatic
collection of eye-patches
marbles
stuff like firearms and wands of magic missiles just get left on the floor or in a sock drawer, I described it to my DM like "a skyrim player character emptying their inventory in breezehome"
and then I put 3 street urchins who believe they're adventurers in that room as their new home
One day you're going to look in there and see the aftermath of that goblin waking up. Please tell me about it when you do!
sorry there's two goblins in there, monks that drank a potion that keeps them asleep forever, they're crazy and violent and when woken up went crazy and were furious the world hadn't ended yet, so I knocked them out and gave them the rest of the sleeping potion and put them in my tiny chest. My character's plan is to reincarnate them as something else when I get the extra cash and get around to it, since their prophecy insists that they will be goblins at the end of days. Just killing them isn't good enough, this is like winning an internet argument for my character
also it's a running gag where I attempt to sell them to every horrified shopkeeper we encounter, at least until we got back to waterdeep because I'm a member of the magists and protectors in good standing and that would be illegal
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VizardObserverThe Duke of Ridiculous PoppycockyRegistered Userregular
edited February 2019
Hey gamers, I'm a dex based Awakened mystic. (edit based on post below this, I'm mainly Int lol, I I misspoke. Int primary, dex secondary.)
I just hit level 5 and I'm swapping out one of my disciplines and gaining a new one
atm I have
Psionic Restoration
Psychic Assault
Psychic Phantoms
What two disciplines do you think I should pick up? I need an AoE and I was thinking about picking up some uber-utility with Nomadic Mind (focus changed to expertise on things I already have compared to anything, and i have to know the language before I can speak it), and maybe Mastery of Ice for AoE?
Iirc Awakened wanted int not dex.
There was one discipline which have you a low cost line aoe, and focusing on it gave you ability to ignore difficult terrain and perma-slowfall, that one seemed very good.
Last night of semi-historic campaign set during the first Crusade and end of the campaign:
The siege of Jerusalem in progress, we ended up in the temple and ended up through a portal in .. well basically hell. Our party was met by a demon (The Devil's Advocate) giving us the choice between waking up a sleeping Angel or Devil. Our party (LE Paladin, once LG, now LE cleric, once CN, now CE Barbarian and me CN Rogue) started to discuss and ended up with the idea to wake up them both and have them both justify themselves to us. The Devil actually made some very good points (hints of Shin Megami Tensei with it being more Law vs. Chaos and was actually willing to talk and explain himself unlike the silent angel) according to my Rogue who had become pretty disappointed with Popes, Kings, nobles and religious figures during this crusade, but in the end the other three chose the Angel's side and my Rogue is loyal to his friends. (Also we found out that our choice would determine the life of a baby.)
In short, Angel disappeared, baby woke up, Devil was angry. I was really unlucky with my rolls during combat (as in I hit the Devil once during multiple attacks/rounds, but it was a sneak attack with a special arrow, so it did a bit of damage. I did crit on opening the locked doors to take the baby outside), but most of the time I was running with a baby in my arms, dodging attacks to get him to safety. Barbarian attacked the Devil with his cursed axe... which was counterproductive. He then used my +2 shortsword as I wasn't using it and it was the next best weapon. Paladin and Cleric managed to do really well against him. Paladin was knocked out several times, lost both his arms and some other parts of his body (result of some epic suicide attacks) and did massive damage against the Devil. He died in the end and was buried a hero. The Cleric managed to redeem himself and moved up to LN. Barbarian, Cleric and Rogue all survived.
And thus ended our first crusade. I had fully been planning for my Rogue to have died during the last mission, having become depressed with war and all the innocents victims it had claimed, but protecting the child was more important.
And for some reason a lot of cheese puns.
Also we're starting up our regular D&D campaign again, I've posted about my character here, dwarven monk based on a character in the Nordic Volsung Saga, but I noticed I did something subconsciously with her backstory which I'm actually quite pleased by:
Nordic myth:
Lofnheidr is daughter of Hreidmar, King of Dwarves, who is murdered by his sons Fafnir and Regin to get their hands on some cursed gold (read the story, it's a pretty good myth). Hreidmar asks his daughters to raise their future sons to avenge him and get the gold back, but the elder sister refuses.
(That is all part of the myth)
Now I noticed that the people I created for the monastery Lofnheidr joins after swearing of all gold and wealth, all in their own way mirror her family, but in ways that are better for her (I don't have a mirror image for Regin, but he's not that important to her backstory):
- Hreidmar is her father, not a bad father mostly (not abusive), but certainly a patriarch who expects unquestioning obedience from his children. When he dies he orders his daughters to raise their sons to avenge him and only when her elder sister says "no" (she doesn't want her children to be killers and especially not to kill her brothers), Lofnheidr realises that saying "No" to their father was ever an option. He dies before she can give her own answer, so as a LG character she is torn between what she wants and whether she is bound by her father's dying request or not. (Her solution for now is a vow of chastity. If she never gets a son, she does not have to decide to obey her father or not. Bit of sidestep copout on her part, but she is growing as a person and I will have her address this when she is a bit higher level)
- The head monk (not a monk himself, more a Rogue Mastermind or Satire Bard, think Yoda in ESB/TLJ, but without any fighting skills himself) has become a substitute father for her, but is not controlling her, but teaching her. His lessons are not to obey his commands, but showing her other points of view, question herself and finding her own answers and in the end deciding for herself whether she should obey him or not in each of his missions.
- Fafnir was her big brother, much older than her, but her family's protector throughout his life. So she hero-worshipped him, while he was not abusive, but distant and never engaged with her on a personal level. Protecting her was more of an expected duty than something he chose to do out of love.
- One of the stronger Monks (most of the other monks are just redshirts) is a half-orc Barbarian turned Monk, who is also protective of her, but he doesn't want her to be safe, he wants her to succeed in her goals. So sometimes that means stepping in when she is in a situation where she needs help, sometimes it means taking a step back and let her take charge, even if it gets her hurt to let her figure things out for herself (DM is doing a pretty good job of playing him as we agreed upon so far, rest of the party is still wondering why he helps sometimes and doesn't other times).
- Lyngheidr is her older sister, current Queen. Lyngheidr is a good person and she and her sister love each other, but she is highly intelligent and charismatic, so the shy and quiet Lofnheidr was always in her shadow and let her do the talking and thinking.
- The last of the monks with any real personality/power, is a silent monk (not mute, but we haven't had her talk yet), who is a Level Insane Drunken Master who basically spends her time taking evil gangs apart. They are good friends but with the other monk's silence, Lofnheidr is forced to be the one to talk and put work into the relationship.
That said, proper 5e rules for ship to ship combat (and hopefully ship stats) is something that would be delicious for me to adapt to my gestating campaign world that I am telling people that I am building.
Edit: Unless they're just a reprinting of the Unearthed Arcana from a while back...
That said, proper 5e rules for ship to ship combat (and hopefully ship stats) is something that would be delicious for me to adapt to my gestating campaign world that I am telling people that I am building.
Edit: Unless they're just a reprinting of the Unearthed Arcana from a while back...
I've got a bit of a conundrum for my curse of strahd game, the party's bard has been pretty definitely-evil for a while but justifying himself (coming up with reasons why he had to kill someone, eg: the bergermeister is crazy), and yesterday he murdered a guy just to steal his appearance with a class ability because he didnt like being covered in fur
Well, on *my* request I don't want this to be a pvp game, the paladin doesn't want that either, but what my character would do would be try to stop his character from being a blatant murderer without even trying to fig-leaf it with violence... but I can't...
I'm considering just using portent dice for the rest of the campaign to fuck him over, since he's in direct opposition to my character at this point (and basically full on neutral evil), either that or bite him and turn him into a wereraven, turning him lawful good, so he can no longer "its what my character would do"
I tried explaining to him that like, our little mans have to work together, and that's hard to do if he's just murdering people willy nilly because...like... no? And he said "I'm sorry me playing my character correctly is hurting your experience". ugh, I shouldnt have picked a good character. Curse of strahd is supposed to be a descent into darkness, even I've accidentally killed a town guard, but that's supposed to be ... not just "I feel like randomly murder hoboing out in the open, at the detriment of the party", with no trauma or reason for doing so
Posts
All I know about it is that there are giants and that Artus Cimber may be equally as useless in this module as he is in ToA.
We only played a few hours of it, so I couldn't give you a nuanced review at all. So far so good, there have been giants, our DM already 3D-printed them (multiples). We're going into our 3rd or 4th session next weekend (if no one cancels) and we will hopefully leave the first village. I think it is a good one because there's plenty of different locations and overland travel to partake in, so you can introduce your party to a lot of other DnD-stuff that isn't in LMoP.
From what I've gleaned from discussions over the last couple years is the biggest challenge for the DM is knowing your players, their characters, and tailoring the module to take their motivations into account to drive the game forward, as it is apparently very sandboxy.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
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I think our DM is going to get lucky as our characters are actively "Good" characters, and aren't necessarily willing to leave folks in the lurch. Hell when we've recovered treasure from goblins we've returned it to the rightful owners, and not kept the loot. We had an argument about killing a trapped owlbear because while its an aberration, is it evil or does it just act like a bear? We decided on the latter and set it free to go do owl bear things, because it's not the owl bears fault it had been trapped, and we wouldn't kill a regular bear in similar circumstances.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
Very. There is multiple directions the plot can go depending on the players and the DMs whim. Artus is down one of the paths and you may never actually run into him.
We go back into the mine, do some exploring and kill an ooze. We end up stumbling upon 5 bugbears in a room around a brassier. We end up kicking ass and taking names, and a bugbear runs in, lays eyes on us and runs off. Fuck. We go track him down and end up in a big chamber where we find the "black spider" and one of the dwarfs. We call out the black spider, and he tries to weasel out of it. I'm playing a Paladin of the Common Man (Homebrew), am able to get within 30ft of him and use my channel divinity "Turn the Bourgeoisie" successfully, so he tries to now get away from us for the next 10 turns, and with where I'm standing he can't get to either door, so he hides in a corner. At that point the DM has us roll initiative.
This is where we find out we were dumb. As soon as we saw the black spider we completely forgot about other enemies. We get ambushed by 4 large spiders and 3 bugbears in a surprise. The spiders web both our casters, and the bugbears are able to drop one, the character who is my little sister in game between their surprise on the first round and getting to go first in initiative due to us all sucking. the picture below is the start of round 3 I believe.
Anyways, due to some good rolls, strategy and sheer luck we start turning the tide. The weird thing is though while we're being attacked by enemies the Dwarf who should be our ally is also attacking. We think he is maybe dominated. Due to sheer luck our Druid is using moonbeam and ends up hitting the Dwarf at one point, and mother fucking surprise it's a doppelganger! We were all just like "holy shit!" and the DM goes, "Who else in this adventure has acted weird like this...". We realize a character we had encountered at Cragmaw keep was a doppelganger as well, and we had captured and turned them in at Waterdeep. Oops.
Anyways, we persevere, burn all of our spells, and end up killing all the mooks and the doppelganger. We start in on the Black Spider and he goes invnisible and runs. Through more luck and some good rolls we're able to run him down and kill him.
At this point we called it after a 6 hour game (with breaks for food and BSing). What a great fucking day. We're going to short rest and then finish clearing out the mine. Can't wait to see what else is in here!
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
When one of the kids said that they didn't have a place to live I just said "oh, well, I don't really sleep, you can have my room in Trollskull Manor, you might need to hire a coach, here's 50 gold pieces, I have to go back to my party"
Later when we return to the manor I had to get the "YOU CAN'T JUST KEEP CHILDREN YOU FIND ON THE STREET" speech (the same one I had an NPC give them in my game, because there they took the ghost Rosevalda from Dead House home with them and fucking resurrected her in Neverwinter, the priest was the one who told them "just because you found a dead kid and resurrected them doesn't mean you can keep them". They didn't listen of course and dragged her to Chult and sent her to wizard school)
Turned out they had plot relevant information so for the low price of 3 magic items, free room and board, and 50 gold pieces I managed to get the information that a few silver pieces would have gotten us. I'm so good at this!
In 20 years those kids are the ones going to be saving the world as an adventuring group. You done good.
That would actually be really fun to play if there is a TPK. Flash forward 15 years or so and now everyone is playing those kids as characters.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
The deal with the zhentarim was a good one for them; they'd come away from it with a tenth share of the treasure that while initially appearing small given the work they put in, it was made clear to them that it would still be an absurd haul that any dragon would be pleased to snooze on, and that the majority of the wealth would be used to defuse Laerals wrath and also further Zhentarim interests in the sword coast (and rather importantly delisting the resident manshoon clone). As a result, the players came away with 10 bank slips for 5k g each deposited around the city, in adition to a plethora of minor magic items to further future adventures.
Good times and partying at the Trollskull manor however wound up going sideways pretty quick, since the one player there found himself discussing matters with Laeral who was angry that the players had effectively let a criminal syndicate run off with some 150k gold and Jarlaxle baenre was yukking it up with a staff that acted as a VIP stamp for dragons to enter the city; about the only reason she wasn't blasting them to nothing was that their actions had also undermined Manshoon's efforts in the city and thrown the Xanathar guild for a loop. As such she made it clear to them that it was in their best interests to think about how to be good upstanding citizens going forward.
After that, the players got to see the items that the Zhents had left for them and included:
The players were feeling pretty good at this time as they also spent time buying a crap ton of spells from a local wizardry supplier, along with the neccesary components when another guest arrived at the tavern; a money lender who was rather voluminous and in need of a group of adventurers to drop off something for him to a person in skullport (artists concept seen in spoilers below):
At first my players were politely asking what was in it for them, given that a trip to skullport would have to mean a trip through undermountain, and when it became clear that they wouldn't be motivated by altruism, heroism or offers to talk to laeral on their behalf, Mirt (in probably one of my finest moments of subtlety) admitted that he wasn't really able to offer a reward that would entice them given that they had so much money in those banks.
The look in the player's eyes as he immediately caught the implication without me having to spell it out to him was one of those moments that makes GMing so very very worthwhile.
Next week should be fun as well; we're going to be looking at refilling the party (also a crap ton of character creation stuff) and one of my players had suggested that they handle this as a job fair.
A job fair sounds awesome. I'd love to make up like 3 characters with personality and be "interviewed" by an adventuring party and have them decide who they liked. I would also like to interview characters!
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
Paul
Pete
George
John
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Fighter the Wizard. Rogue the Fighter, Bard the Barbarian, and Cleric the Rogue
Might I suggest taking inspiration from the slave rebellions of Brazil and Haiti? Voodoo priests and dance-fighting monks staging guerilla actions from a magic jungle? Yes, please!
I was using the original lineup of the Beatles. The lone arcane user is the member of the band who got kicked out for not fitting in.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
The best part is that the one player is a transmuter wearing the goggles, the billowing cape and the dread helm so he's basically cosplaying as batman at this point.
[christian bale voice] If you could be a tree what kind of tree would you be!?!?![/christian bale voice]
So rather than play anything I had planned I basically had a one-on-one adventure for the bard with an audience as he joined a cult.
That sounds frustrating for a DM. I'd be frustrated, anyway. Or maybe annoyed is a better term.
So now I've entered the dnd subgame
After I directed them, the DM wanted an exhaustive list of everything my character keeps in her bedroom
At the end of the session, events so far in trollskull manor (which would be a few hours after the children made themselves at home in my character's room:
- A gunshot was heard downstairs as the pudgy boy that think's hes a wizard (Jenx) fired my Lantanese firearm (which he stole), accompanied by him "I CAST MAGIC MISSILE" and then "oh shit!"
- The other boy, Squidley, stole 5 vials of Alchemist's Fire from my alchemy workbench, a Heavy Crossbow, an explosive crossbow bolt (as per fireball), and some of my character's undergarments
- The girl Nat tattled on both of them and was waiting patiently for one of the party to show up to inform on them. She also ratted on some of the employees in the adjacent establishment owned by the party skimming gold, with the assistance of my familiar (!) who had been using the money to buy expensive gems
The session ended with city watch whistles blowing in trollskull alley and Jenx and Squiddly bursting into the tap room insisting they did nothing wrong
it's these kids, I was familiar with them from Chris perkins' stream but didnt know they were in the module. Also as in Perkins' game, the DM is planning on us having a session where we play as the kids, and one person plays as a mysterious unrevealed monster that is friends with one of them (?). It sounds fun.
oh and we found out Xanathar's identity. The party's wizard is raising a horde of skeletons to unleash into his lair. The kids found the fact that we have an basement full of undead "awesome!". So far from how Squiddly (the tiefling) is presented, his alignment is "chaotic suicidal" so I am expecting keeping them alive is going to be hardmode for this campaign, like keeping dogmeat alive in Fallout 1
The girl? A paladin in the making.
And that boy is a wizard, don't tell him no different. Give him a book.
Sunless Citadel spoilers:
For the room with the big mama rat, there was a tripped & jammed pit trap in front of a door with a little ledge. We managed to hear/smell scratching on the other side of it, but they weren't able to open the door and quieted down after a bit. I got our ranger who wanted nothing more than to kick the door down to tie a rope to the handle and open it from the other side of the trap as the bard and I stood, ready to ambush whatever came through, which turned out great. Apparently we could also have been diseased.
Meepo is soooo adorable. It's gonna be fun when I tell him that we don't need him to read Draconic anymore, since I'm taking the warlock feature to read languages.
We also had what I feel could be a good recurring joke - the ranger kicks a door and gets hit by a trap, and says "There was no way this could have been avoided." Later on, after hours of convincing people to be super careful and stay on track of the previous adventurers, I stupidly trip a trap myself and he says the line again.
The biggest point of contention was loot splitting, these peeps are THIRSTY oh so thirsty for treasure. I arbitrarily split up the treasure, which people assented to about half the time.
so far he's gotten a wand of web and a pistol from me, and he has enough smokepowder for 28 shots
at least, i assume so, the watch might be upset about that....
You gave a kid a gun and expect nothing horrible to happen?
he stole it from my character's bedroom, look you can't expect a fey creature who JUST found out firearms exist when she looted one off a dead drow to have a gun safe
Okay granted I have an extradimensional storage unit summonable at any time from a tiny chest figurine, but that's where important stuff is kept like *checks onenote inventory list*
6 fancy bottles of wine
unidentified eggs from the far realm
giant glass sphere full of acid
comatose goblin cult fanatic
collection of eye-patches
marbles
stuff like firearms and wands of magic missiles just get left on the floor or in a sock drawer, I described it to my DM like "a skyrim player character emptying their inventory in breezehome"
and then I put 3 street urchins who believe they're adventurers in that room as their new home
sorry there's two goblins in there, monks that drank a potion that keeps them asleep forever, they're crazy and violent and when woken up went crazy and were furious the world hadn't ended yet, so I knocked them out and gave them the rest of the sleeping potion and put them in my tiny chest. My character's plan is to reincarnate them as something else when I get the extra cash and get around to it, since their prophecy insists that they will be goblins at the end of days. Just killing them isn't good enough, this is like winning an internet argument for my character
also it's a running gag where I attempt to sell them to every horrified shopkeeper we encounter, at least until we got back to waterdeep because I'm a member of the magists and protectors in good standing and that would be illegal
I just hit level 5 and I'm swapping out one of my disciplines and gaining a new one
atm I have
Psionic Restoration
Psychic Assault
Psychic Phantoms
What two disciplines do you think I should pick up? I need an AoE and I was thinking about picking up some uber-utility with Nomadic Mind (focus changed to expertise on things I already have compared to anything, and i have to know the language before I can speak it), and maybe Mastery of Ice for AoE?
There was one discipline which have you a low cost line aoe, and focusing on it gave you ability to ignore difficult terrain and perma-slowfall, that one seemed very good.
In short, Angel disappeared, baby woke up, Devil was angry. I was really unlucky with my rolls during combat (as in I hit the Devil once during multiple attacks/rounds, but it was a sneak attack with a special arrow, so it did a bit of damage. I did crit on opening the locked doors to take the baby outside), but most of the time I was running with a baby in my arms, dodging attacks to get him to safety. Barbarian attacked the Devil with his cursed axe... which was counterproductive. He then used my +2 shortsword as I wasn't using it and it was the next best weapon. Paladin and Cleric managed to do really well against him. Paladin was knocked out several times, lost both his arms and some other parts of his body (result of some epic suicide attacks) and did massive damage against the Devil. He died in the end and was buried a hero. The Cleric managed to redeem himself and moved up to LN. Barbarian, Cleric and Rogue all survived.
And thus ended our first crusade. I had fully been planning for my Rogue to have died during the last mission, having become depressed with war and all the innocents victims it had claimed, but protecting the child was more important.
And for some reason a lot of cheese puns.
Also we're starting up our regular D&D campaign again, I've posted about my character here, dwarven monk based on a character in the Nordic Volsung Saga, but I noticed I did something subconsciously with her backstory which I'm actually quite pleased by:
Nordic myth:
Lofnheidr is daughter of Hreidmar, King of Dwarves, who is murdered by his sons Fafnir and Regin to get their hands on some cursed gold (read the story, it's a pretty good myth). Hreidmar asks his daughters to raise their future sons to avenge him and get the gold back, but the elder sister refuses.
(That is all part of the myth)
Now I noticed that the people I created for the monastery Lofnheidr joins after swearing of all gold and wealth, all in their own way mirror her family, but in ways that are better for her (I don't have a mirror image for Regin, but he's not that important to her backstory):
- Hreidmar is her father, not a bad father mostly (not abusive), but certainly a patriarch who expects unquestioning obedience from his children. When he dies he orders his daughters to raise their sons to avenge him and only when her elder sister says "no" (she doesn't want her children to be killers and especially not to kill her brothers), Lofnheidr realises that saying "No" to their father was ever an option. He dies before she can give her own answer, so as a LG character she is torn between what she wants and whether she is bound by her father's dying request or not. (Her solution for now is a vow of chastity. If she never gets a son, she does not have to decide to obey her father or not. Bit of sidestep copout on her part, but she is growing as a person and I will have her address this when she is a bit higher level)
- The head monk (not a monk himself, more a Rogue Mastermind or Satire Bard, think Yoda in ESB/TLJ, but without any fighting skills himself) has become a substitute father for her, but is not controlling her, but teaching her. His lessons are not to obey his commands, but showing her other points of view, question herself and finding her own answers and in the end deciding for herself whether she should obey him or not in each of his missions.
- Fafnir was her big brother, much older than her, but her family's protector throughout his life. So she hero-worshipped him, while he was not abusive, but distant and never engaged with her on a personal level. Protecting her was more of an expected duty than something he chose to do out of love.
- One of the stronger Monks (most of the other monks are just redshirts) is a half-orc Barbarian turned Monk, who is also protective of her, but he doesn't want her to be safe, he wants her to succeed in her goals. So sometimes that means stepping in when she is in a situation where she needs help, sometimes it means taking a step back and let her take charge, even if it gets her hurt to let her figure things out for herself (DM is doing a pretty good job of playing him as we agreed upon so far, rest of the party is still wondering why he helps sometimes and doesn't other times).
- Lyngheidr is her older sister, current Queen. Lyngheidr is a good person and she and her sister love each other, but she is highly intelligent and charismatic, so the shy and quiet Lofnheidr was always in her shadow and let her do the talking and thinking.
- The last of the monks with any real personality/power, is a silent monk (not mute, but we haven't had her talk yet), who is a Level Insane Drunken Master who basically spends her time taking evil gangs apart. They are good friends but with the other monk's silence, Lofnheidr is forced to be the one to talk and put work into the relationship.
http://dnd.wizards.com/products/tabletop-games/rpg-products/ghosts-saltmarsh
I absolutely agree.
That said, proper 5e rules for ship to ship combat (and hopefully ship stats) is something that would be delicious for me to adapt to my gestating campaign world that I am telling people that I am building.
Edit: Unless they're just a reprinting of the Unearthed Arcana from a while back...
$5 says that's exactly what they're doing.
Well, on *my* request I don't want this to be a pvp game, the paladin doesn't want that either, but what my character would do would be try to stop his character from being a blatant murderer without even trying to fig-leaf it with violence... but I can't...
I'm considering just using portent dice for the rest of the campaign to fuck him over, since he's in direct opposition to my character at this point (and basically full on neutral evil), either that or bite him and turn him into a wereraven, turning him lawful good, so he can no longer "its what my character would do"
I tried explaining to him that like, our little mans have to work together, and that's hard to do if he's just murdering people willy nilly because...like... no? And he said "I'm sorry me playing my character correctly is hurting your experience". ugh, I shouldnt have picked a good character. Curse of strahd is supposed to be a descent into darkness, even I've accidentally killed a town guard, but that's supposed to be ... not just "I feel like randomly murder hoboing out in the open, at the detriment of the party", with no trauma or reason for doing so