After looking at the Freedom of Speech thread in Debate & Discourse I think I've found the perfect quote to illustrate a Chaotic Good individual:
"If we fight for something and get it, what if X happens? Better to keep everything as it is and not risk it."
And again, we wonder why nothing ever gets fixed.
We lose 100% of the fights we're too scared to take on, we miss all of the shots we don't take. If you want to sit around and keep asking "what if" because everything might blow up in our faces and decide it's not worth fighting back, then that's your choice. But even if it blows up in our face sometime in the future thanks to whatever or whoever or whyever, we took a stand and did something to try and fix things instead of moping around, thinking everything is terrible and doomed.
We need to fight back even if things get bad or worse in the future.
I've always used alignment as a rough idea of a character's morality and how they might act in a situation. Sure, maybe once you get into the specifics of a character's motivations and beliefs it gets iffy, but it can still serve a use in general. In my opinion, it's just shorthand for how a character will view most situations
I just don't use alignment mechanically. I don't want something so abstract having a mechanical effect. Alignment should be for roleplaying and story telling.
I like the idea of exploring the ideas of alignment in the story, especially if the facets of a character's alignment become at odds. I still have the idea to have a Lawful Good Paladin lead a rebellion against a tyrannical king. Sure, maybe rebellion might not be traditionally Lawful, but helping the people get free from oppression is no doubt Good. Or maybe your belief in Good effects your belief in Lawful, i.e. laws exist for the good of all and must be fair and just.
I'd also add that an LG character doesn't have to and wouldn't necessarily arrest a CG character for stealing food. Immediately throwing some poor, starving orphan in jail might be Lawful, but it's not really Good. The LG character can pay for the bread (no longer a crime if it's been bought), or make a donation to the orphanage so they csn buy food for a while so they don't have to steal, or petition the local lord or a nearby shrine for aid for the orphanage. There's so many things you can do within the 'constraints' of LG.
I've always used alignment as a rough idea of a character's morality and how they might act in a situation. Sure, maybe once you get into the specifics of a character's motivations and beliefs it gets iffy, but it can still serve a use in general. In my opinion, it's just shorthand for how a character will view most situations
I just don't use alignment mechanically. I don't want something so abstract having a mechanical effect. Alignment should be for roleplaying and story telling.
I like the idea of exploring the ideas of alignment in the story, especially if the facets of a character's alignment become at odds. I still have the idea to have a Lawful Good Paladin lead a rebellion against a tyrannical king. Sure, maybe rebellion might not be traditionally Lawful, but helping the people get free from oppression is no doubt Good. Or maybe your belief in Good effects your belief in Lawful, i.e. laws exist for the good of all and must be fair and just.
I'd also add that an LG character doesn't have to and wouldn't necessarily arrest a CG character for stealing food. Immediately throwing some poor, starving orphan in jail might be Lawful, but it's not really Good. The LG character can pay for the bread (no longer a crime if it's been bought), or make a donation to the orphanage so they csn buy food for a while so they don't have to steal, or petition the local lord or a nearby shrine for aid for the orphanage. There's so many things you can do within the 'constraints' of LG.
This is how I've always rolled in D&D, no matter the edition.
Finally did our first Strahd session. I changed up the start because I know how much they overthink everything and was right to do so.
After chasing some Vistani bandits in to the mist, they spent 90 minutes barely moving and trying to solve the mystery of every single thing they came across.
I had them stumble across madame Eva’s camp in the mist before arriving in Barovia to allow for some exposition, after which they got a lot more confident.
When they stayed in the camp for they night they woke up to find it gone and Barovia in the distance.
They are obsessed with the toys, collecting each one they come across. They are also now terrified of the bard who, upon coming across the first doll, plunged her knife in to its back and ripped it open thinking something important was inside.
It capped off with a cinematic fight at the end with Strahd attempting to abduct Ireena and heckling them from on top of a mausoleum while wolves attacked.
All in all a good session! They’re very annoyed they have to wait a month before the next one.
Edit: Oh, and the stupid jerks got lucky af and got a hold of the Icon of Ravenkind, the priest’s holy relic for her character story, right from the start.
Just a picture from our Curse of Strahd game this saturday. Would love to see some pictures from when you all play. Best part of taking the picture? You dont have to be in it :biggrin:
I wish I'd taken a photo from the end of our last session, our current 5h Ed campaign wrapped up (well, came to a point where we can put it on pause to play something else for a while at least) with a fight against an angry Rakshasa that we'd failed to kill a few sessions ago, complete with a bunch of his devil buddies. The battle map was almost the size of the full table to accommodate our guild's hall getting blown open and devils fighting recruits and adventurers spilling out of the dormitories.
Yes our DnD games are at roll20, usually we play DnD once a week for about 2 - 2,5 hours and once a month we have a live session with old school pen and paper rpg's. Sometimes it's even homebrew :biggrin:
So, my level 10 party finished our almost year-long campaign over the weekend. Had a pretty delightful conclusion so I figured I'd share.
My character (a former war criminal disguised as the Paladin he killed, now redeemed) and the party (Bard, Hexblade, Sorcerer, Cleric, Artificer) were trying to stop the BBEG from opening a door to what we assume OOC is the Astral Plane and becoming a god. She's got undead powers and a dracolich under her control.
The final battle takes place in a long room in front of a big ol' magic portal that's spinning up, and the dragon between us and her. Thanks to our entrance strategy, I'm still invisible, and I decide to use that to sidestep the dragon and go for the alpha strike. Unfortunately, I still end up caught in a couple of blasts, including a Cloudkill, thanks to the others trying to stay close to me and my auras. But I see my chance when she teleports out of range. At this point she's taken a bit of damage from Artificer pot shots and the like but nothing major.
I stand up, move the rest of my speed towards her, and then pop my secret weapon: Misty Step, which the DM didn't know Ancients Paladins can learn. Wulfric the Paladin poofs into existence right in her face, now plainly visible, +2 magic greatsword in hand.
Critical hit. Plus smite. Plus the sword does extra radiant damage since I had cast a spell this turn. 96 total damage, which breaks her Death Ward. Attack 2 brings her down. She's got an annoying little mechanic that keeps her alive another couple of turns until the Cleric ends her for good, meanwhile the dracolich used its breath weapon on Wulfric and puts him to 2 failed death saves.
BBEG goes down, the Bard gets Wulfric up. He Lays on Hands himself to get to ~50% health, and now it's dragon time. Dracolich has taken quite a bit of damage since the others had it as priority, but it's still one breath attack from downing someone or killing them outright (12d10 damage is no joke!). Wulfric baits the dragon away from the others a bit, and lines up for his first hit on this thing.
Critical hit. Plus smite. We're all cracking up at this point. DM didn't even bother adding up the damage because it was overkill, especially with two more attacks (Extra Attack plus GWM trigger).
My character made 3 attacks in that whole fight. And we use Roll20 so it's not wonky dice. That said, if not for those crits, we'd have been in real trouble. The rest of the party was rolling very poorly. The Sorcerer got dominated, the Artificer was on single digit health, and a lot of our healing was exhausted.
Sadly, the Cleric felt compelled to walk through the portal, and when the Warlock refused to go through, his patron abandoned him and cast Feeblemind on him as a parting gift. Wulfric and the Artificer smashed the portal even though I kinda wanted to go through it (but Wulfric wasn't going to abandon his best friend, the Bard). Epilogues are still to come, but our best guess is Cleric is gonna be a god.
Dnd is tomorrow for me, starting my new character.
Nervous, feel he's to generic. I don't have a good excuse for why he joins or why my other character leaves. Don't know how get got the power to control lighting (I'm that storm barbarian sub class)
Dnd is tomorrow for me, starting my new character.
Nervous, feel he's to generic. I don't have a good excuse for why he joins or why my other character leaves. Don't know how get got the power to control lighting (I'm that storm barbarian sub class)
Hopefully it all works out?
In general players end up fleshing themselves out through the game and personalities will develop. So i wouldnt worry too much about that.
Barbarians and storm barbarians arent too common as it stands so no worries about that.
As for how you got the power to control lighting? You got mad and the sky itself bowed to your rage.
Just a picture from our Curse of Strahd game this saturday. Would love to see some pictures from when you all play. Best part of taking the picture? You dont have to be in it :biggrin:
Are you gaming with Stephen Baldwin? (front right)
Mine arrived today. It was strange, they sent me a UPS tracking code Friday and it arrived by normal mail today. The tracking number they sent me said it was invalid all weekend long.
Mine arrived today. It was strange, they sent me a UPS tracking code Friday and it arrived by normal mail today. The tracking number they sent me said it was invalid all weekend long.
Had a chance to look in the book? My copy is not here yet but it looks like there could be some good stuff.
Very briefly. My favorite take away at the moment is the background for having a famous adventurer as a parent. We had already joked about our next campaign being filled with my bard’s illegitimate kids...this might make that happen.
The art looks great. I really liked some of the monsters and equipment too. Kegbot will probably show up in a few games.
At a certain point (post Aeofel & Binwin), AQI went from a fun marketing thing by the D&D & PA people to a serious business kind of thing. It makes sense that the book would only cover the serious part.
If anything about AQI can be considered overly serious. I mean, one of the players on stream recently was a can of potatoes wearing a 76ers hat!
There's a couple of nice spells in it, Gift of Gab in particular, but otherwise it's pretty uninteresting (I say as someone who hasn't followed AI at all).
Oops, I just checked again and I was wrong. Kurtz is credited as Binwin in the Full Acquisitions Inc Cast list before the Table of Contents. Wheaton/Aeofel is there as well.
I haven’t seen either character mentioned by name in the main text however.
Mine arrived today. It was strange, they sent me a UPS tracking code Friday and it arrived by normal mail today. The tracking number they sent me said it was invalid all weekend long.
It's an error in their email generation. If you look at the email it says (well, mine did at any rate) that it's being sent by USPS. Then they give you a number and a link to UPS. Plugging the number they gave me into the USPS tracker worked fine.
EDIT - Anyone with hands on the book know if there are rules for leveling up the professions if you're rolling a non-standard character? We're starting a campaign this weekend and the DM is allowing us to use the book. We're starting at level 6 - just wondering if you still start as a level 1 documancer, say, or if there's guidance for mid-levels.
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
After culling my store DnD games from 7 to 3, I have been much happier running DnD. The best thing is I have restricted DnD to one day, on a Wednesday and no other time. Greatly improving my personal sanity by up to 13 points. Running so few sessions though means I have had to put a charge on people playing on my games for the first time ever in my life, but everything filled up so quickly it really surprised me. Even though I have been repeatedly tempted to add a fourth session, I am just much happier running fewer but longer sessions. Longer sessions really do improve the play experience considerably it has to be said: 1.5 hours wasn't enough time to get anything done if I wanted people to have a chance to roleplay a character or do anything that wasn't move the plot forward.
I've always favored longer sessions. I know that sometimes it's not feasible, but long sessions are the best.
Currently, I consider myself very lucky to have two IRL groups. One which meets only a few times a year, but we have epic weekend bender sessions. The other meets every three weeks for three-ish hours at a time.
I very much appreciate meeting more often with new friends, but I still long for those bender sessions with my old friends.
Session went....okay? It was really awkward being a fish out of water, especially when the group was wrapping up a plotline by meeting the Duke and bringing people back from the dead. It was.... something.
Also one of our groups characters decided to get high before meeting the Duke. My group is a bunch of goofballs and I love them for it but man does it sometimes make it hard to play a serious character. I had to roleplay "you guys are the Heroes of the town? Seriously?".
At the risk of sounding grumpy and old, I still think the whole Dragonborn of Bahamut 3.5 idea/prestige class was really cool. In my own setting I'd run with that idea, but per dragonflight instead of limiting it to followers of one lawful good deity.
my game is in exandria, and one of my players has a Researcher background, he has a line of credit (2000g) and 2 grad students (basically) to assist with research. One of them has history proficiency and one has arcana. The party ran into a secret vampire who runs the local branch of the country-wide thieves guild, and the player convinced one of his research assistants to become a vampire because she's so interested in them so now the party has a vampire nerd they have to cart around in a coffin. They did a solid for the vampire lord so he told the spawn that she's free to act however she wants.
Expectation: Cool vampire minion to kill things for me
Reality: Bookish vampire minion who is every bit as terrified of fighting as before, only now needs a constant source of blood to survive and explodes in daylight. They found her hiding on the ceiling (vampire spider climb) because she saw a spider when they convinced her to go into a room ahead of the party in a dungeon. Not a giant spider, a regular spider.
Player thinking they can turn their background-provided commoner NPCs into useful hitpoint sponges, hah
I have to admit though he's gotten a lot out of those two, they basically exist to give advantage on certain INT checks, however through dialogue revealed the historian was a military history buff, so when a "Defend the town" scenario came up he put that guy in charge of coordinating the townsfolk to build fortifications. I had to have everyone take 5 and quickly research effective improv fortifications from historical battles
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Tynnanseldom correct, never unsureRegistered Userregular
Have a whole story arc where the vampire grad student has to contend with a cantankerous thesis committee.
Who's playing Acquisitions Incorporated on Roll20? I'm really psyched for the Adventure Addon, totally trying to use it to rope some friends into D&D for the first time. And I love how the maps came out.
In case any of y'all are anxious to play, you don't have to wait for a book: http://roll20.io/AcqIncPA (As my handle suggests, yes, I'm from Roll20 and I cleared this with Tube)
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Powerpuppiesdrinking coffee in themountain cabinRegistered Userregular
Who's playing Acquisitions Incorporated on Roll20? I'm really psyched for the Adventure Addon, totally trying to use it to rope some friends into D&D for the first time. And I love how the maps came out.
In case any of y'all are anxious to play, you don't have to wait for a book: http://roll20.io/AcqIncPA (As my handle suggests, yes, I'm from Roll20 and I cleared this with Tube)
Playing in my weekly Roll20 game right now. Thanks for making it so easy to get my weekly game in. I've played with the same group since the 20+ years. Now most of us have kids and a few have moved across the US; Roll20 let's us still get together.
Posts
Given my groups, Chaotic Neutral as a runner-up isn't surprising, either...
Steam, various fora: Ivellius
League of Legends: Doctor Ivellius
Twitch, probably another place or two I forget: LPIvellius
I just don't use alignment mechanically. I don't want something so abstract having a mechanical effect. Alignment should be for roleplaying and story telling.
I like the idea of exploring the ideas of alignment in the story, especially if the facets of a character's alignment become at odds. I still have the idea to have a Lawful Good Paladin lead a rebellion against a tyrannical king. Sure, maybe rebellion might not be traditionally Lawful, but helping the people get free from oppression is no doubt Good. Or maybe your belief in Good effects your belief in Lawful, i.e. laws exist for the good of all and must be fair and just.
I'd also add that an LG character doesn't have to and wouldn't necessarily arrest a CG character for stealing food. Immediately throwing some poor, starving orphan in jail might be Lawful, but it's not really Good. The LG character can pay for the bread (no longer a crime if it's been bought), or make a donation to the orphanage so they csn buy food for a while so they don't have to steal, or petition the local lord or a nearby shrine for aid for the orphanage. There's so many things you can do within the 'constraints' of LG.
This is how I've always rolled in D&D, no matter the edition.
After chasing some Vistani bandits in to the mist, they spent 90 minutes barely moving and trying to solve the mystery of every single thing they came across.
I had them stumble across madame Eva’s camp in the mist before arriving in Barovia to allow for some exposition, after which they got a lot more confident.
When they stayed in the camp for they night they woke up to find it gone and Barovia in the distance.
They are obsessed with the toys, collecting each one they come across. They are also now terrified of the bard who, upon coming across the first doll, plunged her knife in to its back and ripped it open thinking something important was inside.
It capped off with a cinematic fight at the end with Strahd attempting to abduct Ireena and heckling them from on top of a mausoleum while wolves attacked.
All in all a good session! They’re very annoyed they have to wait a month before the next one.
Edit: Oh, and the stupid jerks got lucky af and got a hold of the Icon of Ravenkind, the priest’s holy relic for her character story, right from the start.
Damn you kids and your fancy doo-dads!
:biggrin:
Yes our DnD games are at roll20, usually we play DnD once a week for about 2 - 2,5 hours and once a month we have a live session with old school pen and paper rpg's. Sometimes it's even homebrew :biggrin:
My character (a former war criminal disguised as the Paladin he killed, now redeemed) and the party (Bard, Hexblade, Sorcerer, Cleric, Artificer) were trying to stop the BBEG from opening a door to what we assume OOC is the Astral Plane and becoming a god. She's got undead powers and a dracolich under her control.
The final battle takes place in a long room in front of a big ol' magic portal that's spinning up, and the dragon between us and her. Thanks to our entrance strategy, I'm still invisible, and I decide to use that to sidestep the dragon and go for the alpha strike. Unfortunately, I still end up caught in a couple of blasts, including a Cloudkill, thanks to the others trying to stay close to me and my auras. But I see my chance when she teleports out of range. At this point she's taken a bit of damage from Artificer pot shots and the like but nothing major.
I stand up, move the rest of my speed towards her, and then pop my secret weapon: Misty Step, which the DM didn't know Ancients Paladins can learn. Wulfric the Paladin poofs into existence right in her face, now plainly visible, +2 magic greatsword in hand.
Critical hit. Plus smite. Plus the sword does extra radiant damage since I had cast a spell this turn. 96 total damage, which breaks her Death Ward. Attack 2 brings her down. She's got an annoying little mechanic that keeps her alive another couple of turns until the Cleric ends her for good, meanwhile the dracolich used its breath weapon on Wulfric and puts him to 2 failed death saves.
BBEG goes down, the Bard gets Wulfric up. He Lays on Hands himself to get to ~50% health, and now it's dragon time. Dracolich has taken quite a bit of damage since the others had it as priority, but it's still one breath attack from downing someone or killing them outright (12d10 damage is no joke!). Wulfric baits the dragon away from the others a bit, and lines up for his first hit on this thing.
Critical hit. Plus smite. We're all cracking up at this point. DM didn't even bother adding up the damage because it was overkill, especially with two more attacks (Extra Attack plus GWM trigger).
My character made 3 attacks in that whole fight. And we use Roll20 so it's not wonky dice. That said, if not for those crits, we'd have been in real trouble. The rest of the party was rolling very poorly. The Sorcerer got dominated, the Artificer was on single digit health, and a lot of our healing was exhausted.
Sadly, the Cleric felt compelled to walk through the portal, and when the Warlock refused to go through, his patron abandoned him and cast Feeblemind on him as a parting gift. Wulfric and the Artificer smashed the portal even though I kinda wanted to go through it (but Wulfric wasn't going to abandon his best friend, the Bard). Epilogues are still to come, but our best guess is Cleric is gonna be a god.
Nervous, feel he's to generic. I don't have a good excuse for why he joins or why my other character leaves. Don't know how get got the power to control lighting (I'm that storm barbarian sub class)
Hopefully it all works out?
In general players end up fleshing themselves out through the game and personalities will develop. So i wouldnt worry too much about that.
Barbarians and storm barbarians arent too common as it stands so no worries about that.
As for how you got the power to control lighting? You got mad and the sky itself bowed to your rage.
Are you gaming with Stephen Baldwin? (front right)
I wonder if there is anything worth stealing for very tail end of Curse of Strahd.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
Comics, Games, Booze
Had a chance to look in the book? My copy is not here yet but it looks like there could be some good stuff.
The art looks great. I really liked some of the monsters and equipment too. Kegbot will probably show up in a few games.
Comics, Games, Booze
I'm curious if Scott Kurtz lent his IP, or if he was even asked, to have Binwin Bronzebottom, founding intern of Aquisitions Inc, in the book.
Yikes. What about Aeofel/Wheaton?
Law and Order ≠ Justice
ACNH Island Isla Cero: DA-3082-2045-4142
Captain of the SES Comptroller of the State
At a certain point (post Aeofel & Binwin), AQI went from a fun marketing thing by the D&D & PA people to a serious business kind of thing. It makes sense that the book would only cover the serious part.
If anything about AQI can be considered overly serious. I mean, one of the players on stream recently was a can of potatoes wearing a 76ers hat!
Oops, I just checked again and I was wrong. Kurtz is credited as Binwin in the Full Acquisitions Inc Cast list before the Table of Contents. Wheaton/Aeofel is there as well.
I haven’t seen either character mentioned by name in the main text however.
It's an error in their email generation. If you look at the email it says (well, mine did at any rate) that it's being sent by USPS. Then they give you a number and a link to UPS. Plugging the number they gave me into the USPS tracker worked fine.
EDIT - Anyone with hands on the book know if there are rules for leveling up the professions if you're rolling a non-standard character? We're starting a campaign this weekend and the DM is allowing us to use the book. We're starting at level 6 - just wondering if you still start as a level 1 documancer, say, or if there's guidance for mid-levels.
Currently, I consider myself very lucky to have two IRL groups. One which meets only a few times a year, but we have epic weekend bender sessions. The other meets every three weeks for three-ish hours at a time.
I very much appreciate meeting more often with new friends, but I still long for those bender sessions with my old friends.
Still I kind of want to make one or a Tabaxi and play 5e
Also one of our groups characters decided to get high before meeting the Duke. My group is a bunch of goofballs and I love them for it but man does it sometimes make it hard to play a serious character. I had to roleplay "you guys are the Heroes of the town? Seriously?".
Expectation: Cool vampire minion to kill things for me
Reality: Bookish vampire minion who is every bit as terrified of fighting as before, only now needs a constant source of blood to survive and explodes in daylight. They found her hiding on the ceiling (vampire spider climb) because she saw a spider when they convinced her to go into a room ahead of the party in a dungeon. Not a giant spider, a regular spider.
Player thinking they can turn their background-provided commoner NPCs into useful hitpoint sponges, hah
I have to admit though he's gotten a lot out of those two, they basically exist to give advantage on certain INT checks, however through dialogue revealed the historian was a military history buff, so when a "Defend the town" scenario came up he put that guy in charge of coordinating the townsfolk to build fortifications. I had to have everyone take 5 and quickly research effective improv fortifications from historical battles
In case any of y'all are anxious to play, you don't have to wait for a book: http://roll20.io/AcqIncPA
(As my handle suggests, yes, I'm from Roll20 and I cleared this with Tube)
She’d probably do okay in the snake pit ...
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
Playing in my weekly Roll20 game right now. Thanks for making it so easy to get my weekly game in. I've played with the same group since the 20+ years. Now most of us have kids and a few have moved across the US; Roll20 let's us still get together.
Comics, Games, Booze