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[DnD 5E Discussion] This is the way 5E ends. Not with a bang but a gnome mindflayer.

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Posts

  • TarantioTarantio Registered User regular
    There's a new Unearthed Arcana out.

    https://dnd.wizards.com/articles/unearthed-arcana/subclasses_part2

    You might have heard about an earlier version that was found on their site earlier this week, but this is the official updated release.

    It's got three subclasses: College of Creation bard, Unity Domain cleric, and Clockwork Soul sorcerer.

  • Rhesus PositiveRhesus Positive GNU Terry Pratchett Registered User regular
    WACriminal wrote: »
    The encounter for pacifying the poltergeist doesn't interest me, I'm going to have him be a very half-hearted haunting who really just glad to have people around again. He's going to scrawl, "GET OUT" on the wall, then after a short pause he'll add, "????" to the end, or maybe "DON'T" to the beginning.

    I love this idea

    Moving chairs around a few feet and just putting them back down in the same place

    HEM on the wall in blood opposite a mirror

    [Muffled sounds of gorilla violence]
  • WearingglassesWearingglasses Of the friendly neighborhood variety Registered User regular
    YO

    WHAT'S THE LATEST IN VIDEO GAMES NOW

  • ToxTox I kill threads he/himRegistered User regular
    Tarantio wrote: »
    There's a new Unearthed Arcana out.

    https://dnd.wizards.com/articles/unearthed-arcana/subclasses_part2

    You might have heard about an earlier version that was found on their site earlier this week, but this is the official updated release.

    It's got three subclasses: College of Creation bard, Unity Domain cleric, and Clockwork Soul sorcerer.

    I really really wanna make a Warforged Clockwork Soul hat has clocks for eyes.

    Twitter! | Dilige, et quod vis fac
  • AldoAldo Hippo Hooray Registered User regular
    edited February 2020
    My thoughts

    BARD:
    Geez the writing on the Bard subclass is confusing. I get the idea, but I would have to rewrite it to take away ambiguities if I wanted to actually play with it. I love that it's basically Fantasia - The Class, I can already see my brooms marching towards my enemies. *waves wand around to the tune of the music*



    CLERIC
    So strong! That 2nd domain feature lets you distribute damage from an attack, which makes it a lot easier to deal with spike damage. Can easily foil a DM during complex encounters. I dunno, the focus on community and eternal bonds sounds more like a NPC to me?

    SORCERER
    Awesome to use in a Eberron or Ravnica setting, as it just makes you the ultimate steampunker. One of the features is to have clocks for eyes for Pete's sake! I'm not impressed by the features, though. It is nice that they can take away advantage/disadvantage, but everything else comes off as a bit circumstantial or at the cost of your precious sorcery points that can also be used to oh I dunno... cast a twin fireball. The mental image of the DM going "OK, so the werewolf has advanta--" and a player interrupting with: "tick tock tick tock NO IT DOES NOT tick tock tick tock" is fantastic.

    edit: Re Clockwork sorc: reminds me of Xelors in Dofus: https://www.breakflip.com/fr/dofus/guide/dofus-retro-xelor-guide-de-stuff-sorts-et-element-a-1-29-15257
    nu58ogljbyj5.png

    Aldo on
  • XagarXagar Registered User regular
    edited February 2020
    That Cleric is OP, throw out double blesses that grant people a reaction to halve damage.

    EDIT: Ok it's more like half blesses, but whatever

    Xagar on
  • GlalGlal AiredaleRegistered User regular
    That Bard's flexibility with inspirations is pretty bonkers (no no, you don't just add the die roll, it also gives you Luck!), but I guess that's offset by their 14th level feature being underwhelming to say the least.

  • WearingglassesWearingglasses Of the friendly neighborhood variety Registered User regular
    Damnit, haven't re-reviewed Krenko's Way for the session tomorrow (<15 hours) and prepped notes, why does DM prep work suddenly feel like teacher lesson work?

  • override367override367 ALL minions Registered User regular
    edited February 2020
    point of order, twin fireball, like every other cool thing people think sorcerers can do, they can't actually do

    Sorry my salt for the decision making behind 5e's sorcerer has recently been enhanced when my draconic sorcerer turned into a fucking dragon in pathfinder kingmaker (the character I play in my longest running game is a sorcerer, but the DM has thrown out a few changes, like short rest sorcery point recovery and the ability to create my own spells, that have made the class much better)

    override367 on
  • FryFry Registered User regular
    My interpretation is that you can twin Haste, which is pretty baller

    Though it is bad times if you lose concentration on it

  • furlionfurlion Riskbreaker Lea MondeRegistered User regular
    The rules specifically say no aoe spells for twin spell and that seems fine to me. Twin spell is already super powerful and that would make it basically the only thing worth spending sorcery points on. I do agree that quicken spell not being able to be used to cast two spells in a single turn is some hot bullshit. I let my sorcerer do it anyways.

    sig.gif Gamertag: KL Retribution
    PSN:Furlion
  • override367override367 ALL minions Registered User regular
    like you can't twin dragon's breath, or green flame blade, or chaos bolt, or many of the other spells that can lead to really interesting builds

    I allow twinned AOE's but the effect doesn't stack, you just create two areas the spell effects

  • GoumindongGoumindong Registered User regular
    Quicken lets you cast two spells, just not two spells of first level or higher. You can quicken + Cantrip.

    And even if it doesn't quicken is really good. If you couldn't cast a spell it would read "Spend two sorcery points to take the dodge, disengage, dash, attack, hide, or use an item action if you cast a spell this turn".

    Which would still be really really good.

    wbBv3fj.png
  • fadingathedgesfadingathedges Registered User regular
    I'm running a family game for my wife, sister, and 2 nieces (11 and 13). They are all first time players. My 11y.o. niece is an Alchemist, which is my first experience seeing an Artificer of any kind. At L3, she is essentially a Firebolt bot, while her sister (druid) has comparable defense and cantrip spam with full-speed spell progression and wild shape. I'm considering upgrading the Alchemist to full wizard progression/spell list, and using her alchemist stuff in lieu of a school specialty.

    I'm comfortable that—as the DM in control of the entire universe—I can make this work without making the upgraded Alch overly powerful at the table, while hitting the goal of giving the youngest player more fun options on her turn... but am I missing something? Does Alchemist have some benefit that makes up for the weaker spell progression? Is it mostly in the attunement slots?

  • iguanacusiguanacus Desert PlanetRegistered User regular
    Which version are you using? There's been like 3 or 4 different iterations on the Artificer, and they could swing pretty wildly from one way to the other between revisions.

  • fadingathedgesfadingathedges Registered User regular
    The one in the Eberron:RftLW book.

  • WearingglassesWearingglasses Of the friendly neighborhood variety Registered User regular
    The infusions are the Artificer's main thing. Minor buffs to armor / weapons are there, but there are magical items they can replicate for party usage that may be immensely useful. I'd suggest to help your Artificer fully explore that first before giving her the spell slot buff.

  • override367override367 ALL minions Registered User regular
    I have a full caster artificer in my storm king's thunder game, he still has infusions but has to use spell slots to create them - the level of infusion corresponds to the level of spell required

    Theoretically he can make more infusions than a regular artificer if doesnt want to have any spells for the day

  • iguanacusiguanacus Desert PlanetRegistered User regular
    I'd say Alchemist is the weakest of the published subclasses. Their main subclass feature, Experimental Elixir, gives some minor benefits but to get more than 1 or 2 uses out of them you need to start using your limited spell slots. Compared to the Artillerist who gets their thing for an hour or the Battle Smith's doggo being around forever. This is mostly balanced around the utility aspect though, with the Artillerist and Battle Smith being almost entirely combat focused subclasses. Outside of combat, they don't bring a whole lot to the table outside the base Artificer chassis, where she can toss out a whole slew of buffs and social pillar stuff. A slow fly speed is useless in combat but when you need somebody to get up a sheer wall or check out something hidden in the rafters of a cursed cathedral it's a no check way to accomplish something. Alter Self can get you so many places a normal deception check would never allow.

    I don't think there's any harm in making the entire class a full caster if you want, but I'd make sure she's getting full use out of the infusions she has and maybe instead let her swap out infusions after a long rest instead of level up. This will let her experiment and maybe aid in adventure planing for the group.

  • GaddezGaddez Registered User regular
    So Last tuesday was utterly hilarious for my party in descent because we got our first taste of vehicle combat in avernus.

    Now, I should clarify, my store has two tables going, and the other one had gotten ahead of us and there run in with a demon grinder had led to the party getting stomped pretty badly, so we were all expecting things to be rough.

    How terribly wrong we were.

    Our group, piloting a hellrider bike and a tormentor war buggie ran into the demon grinder and had a fairly straight forward idea for how we would handle this; pelt it's crew from a distance and use our probably better speed/handling to keep away from the things wrecking ball and slashing teeth.

    Sadly, the vagaries of gameplay rules prevented us from doing so, and we found ourselves dealing with it on much more close terms wherein.... it persistantly failed to hit or do anything of note while our team proceeded to obliterate it's crew; between a fireball, people being yeeted out with eldritch blast and us bordering the larger vehicle, I was starting to think that nothing could possibly go wrong when the driver overclocked the engine and sent it hurtling at our one companion in a desperate attempt to wreck both vehicles which would have done a devestating 20d6 of crash damage... and proceeded to whiff.

    We came out of that fight ~one involving a whole truckload of werebeasts~ without a scratch to us or our rides.

    I can't imagine anything going anywhere near as easily as that, but I'd imagine our party is feeling like Avernus might be slightly less dangerous then they'd previously been led to believe.

  • WearingglassesWearingglasses Of the friendly neighborhood variety Registered User regular
    edited February 2020
    So, I ran Krenko's Way Plus© for my party of 5 level twos. Seems like they enjoyed it, even though we started at 5pm and ended at, like, 1 in the morning.

    mattcolvilleiftheyrehappy.gif

    Modifications:
    - I added the questgiver having arranged for a meeting with notorious information broker Slizz Begano, in addition to Falish and Foundry St as the leads. He may not have led them directly to Krenko, but good negotiations will give them a direct route to Falish.
    - In the trip Undercity, they came across a Rakdos cultist dragging an Orzhov priest to... Something. Do they sacrifice time for a quick buck, or dare they incur the wrath of Orzhova? (Narrator: they absolutely went for the quick buck)
    - a Dimir ambush was sprung upon them and Nassius at the drop off site - Nassius was tailed by operatives and half of his escort guard were Dimir spies (the other half got knives to the throats).

    The "final battle"
    The default plan was for the Horror (a powerful monster) to pick up Krenko and Nassius and fly away, leaving the crew with a cliffhanger and another rescue mission next session. They weren't having any of it - the barbarian hotly contested the Krenko grab, and I just realized that the Horror has Terrible Strength stats. It turned into a nailbiter for them as they all did some Cool Shit™ at the end:

    - The Cleric prayed directly to her Patron Saint, who responded with a Sacred Flame that melted the Horror's HP. (Start of a story arc!)
    - The Fighter got what he wanted to do and go "Super Saiyan": break off his frightened status via Heroism from his boss's signet, then Second Wind and Action Surge to hammer into the Horror. Shame he didn't have any fancy one liner.
    - The Bard doing the cold blooded decision to split Krenko's throat to drive off the Horror ("Its mission failed, it should just leave"), it might've partially worked, if the Horror wasn't finished off in the next round.
    - The Druid going in the middle of Swarms of Insects and doing Thunderwave. In hindsight, he realized that if he failed there, he would've been Dead.
    - The Barbarian weaving through the crowd and incurring risky AoOs just to get a shot at the Horror, which he did.

    I also got them a Spooky Painting that gives anyone looking at it Psychic damage ona failed Wis Save. There are seven of these in existence, and they should Not all fall into the possession of a single
    owner!

    EDIT: So, brainstorming again:
    - The Boros Bard, aka the Dimir double agent is now researching actual Ravnica lore and getting ahead of things - (the Magic cards are like a couple years and a big war ahead, and she thought we were post that timeline), so we hashed out the calendar. She's now reading up on important Dimir people, people I had to research myself (Etrata who?)
    - With Nassius Ven, also Dimir agent, alive instead of kidnapped and to be dead, I 'm having trouble making up my mind on what to do with him. He's supposed to go away to make room for the party to be Official Guildpact agents, but since he's still there.... He can deputize them, but I feel it shouldn't be that easy; there has to be mitigating circumstance for it to make sense.
    - The Bard and the Barbarian have received their "Heirlooms". The Barbarian in particular is super stoked, with me having to narrate the typical "parent tells hero to go to basement and retrieve old weapon". The Fighter, Druid, Cleric, and Artificer should have theirs via quests each.

    There are these threads right now they can pursue:

    - The Fighter wants to find the Angel he's chummy with so he could make a case that the Gruul skirmishes their military is fighting isn't what it seems, but the Angel is in the frontlines. Cue the Angel tried for insubordination, the party to attempt to clear her name, and the Fighter to get a second feather to forge into his Heirloom axe.
    - The Cleric found her missing Izzet boss, who apparently was KIDNAPPED in addition to having her Armor project stolen. Her boss now wants help to find out who's behind it. They trace it back to a Senate conspiracy and a robotic construct composed of the special Armor. (This will continue later, ending with Warforged brought into Ravnica).
    - The Druid's master, previously recuperating within ally walls, is now actually a prisoner. Blame Golgari shenanigans. The Druid must first break into his master's area to get a powerup (his Fungal Armor heirloom), and then talk/murder their way into a Rogue Golgari faction's house. (Surprise, it's machinations from a third Golgari party who wants the Rogue house dead, because of course Golgari factions are messed up.)
    - The Artificer's main magmatic vein she wants to research has been overrun by zombies earlier, and if she doesn't clean house neighbors are going to start complaining. They are going to discover, besides the zombies, freshly awoken magma elementals! Who, when absorbed into their specialized Izzet equipment, present a ril gud power source with maybe a Soul (that will tie up with the Warforged project above).
    - The Rakdos that the party messed up before to rescue children has family looking for payback. - it's going to start with a warning sent by a Blood Witch, and maybe segue into a Seven Samurai style defense mission.

    What's a good way of making them pick their next mission? They'll be bound to say "anything's fine, it's up to you DM", but I'd like them to talk amongst themselves to pursue their own goals.

    Wearingglasses on
  • Phoenix-DPhoenix-D Registered User regular
    edited February 2020
    So our bard took out the session boss El Cabong style today. We found a gem that makes things a +1 weapon when attached. The bard, out of things to do, attached it to their lute and smacked the boss with it for the final blow.

    Meanwhile my warlock took 23 points of damage and was like "Eh, this is fine". Also was on fire. Twice.

    We also had a rather pathetic demon promise to give us fire resistance if we let it go. Since I have Fiendish Vigor I went and stood in a campfire to test it out and make sure he actually gave us fire resistance, then healed the damage afterward. Lots of being on fire.

    Phoenix-D on
  • GlalGlal AiredaleRegistered User regular
    Had another Shadowrun-ny session last night. We'd stolen a nav computer last session that turned out to be a way to a weapons manufacturer black site which, upon arrival, promptly fell apart in front of us and turned into more of a rescue mission than infiltration. Turns out they had been doing experiments with extreme magnetic fields, using mass dampeners to keep a chunk of ultradense substance in check and tweaking them to create localised fields.
    They tried using it to break our ship when we approached and only managed to break themselves.

    So when the break-up happens the DM asks us to roll Perception and my character is the only one that makes the check. So of course what he sees is people spilling out of into vacuum, then getting turned into a slurry by the magnetic fields. It's like, you make one nice character and suddenly eeeeeeeeevery single session something has to traumatise them. Won't make that mistake again, murderhobos from here on out!

  • override367override367 ALL minions Registered User regular
    edited February 2020
    Yesterday in SKT my artificer had an extended argument about ethics with his 10 year old half-fiend daughter. The two of them were stuck in a time-dilated demiplane in Gehenna until she hit adulthood (this is a long story involving a wish creating a half-yugoloth cambion that shouldn't exist, and a deal with an arcanaloth named Shemeshka)

    At some point he wanted to figure out if there was a way to use arcane magic to bring his parents back to life, he had a lot of time after all in this plane. I told him that, having access to parts of the impossibly large arcanaloth tower, he could probably get plenty of innocent people whos souls he could experiment on. That's literally the currency down here. He agrees, accepting a fiend's argument that they were all doomed anyway, the arcanaloth just demands all his research results

    When his daughter sees him shoving crystals into a tied up man in their home (a recreation of part of waterdeep) and listens to his explanation, she throws a fit. He spent her entire life up to that point telling her that you can't hurt people just because it makes you feel good, because you can, and that the rights of the individual matter even if nobody is around to see, etc - after all, her impulses are to hurt people for her own amusement being a cambion, it took a while to get her to move beyond that.

    He spun out the standard utilitarian arguments: This guy was doomed anyway, he was a slave, he must be evil to be here anyway, I might do some good with what I learn when we leave this place". It was a good well reasoned argument that went back and forth for a few minutes, I tried to do my best to portray an indignant 10 year old who is preternaturally smart for her age, and in the end I had her scream at him "but we can't pick what other people do to each other, all we can do is decide what WE do to other people, you told me that". She slammed her door, folded space around herself and teleported outside her home, and ran away. (player was surprised I'd been keeping track of every lesson he taught her through each vignette of a crisis point in her development)

    He took after her into the Crawling City, a place he wasn't supposed to go, he was safe in the demiplane after all, to find his daughter confronting an ultraloth (!) and its six nycoloth guards, demanding to let the people in chains that she can see be returned to their home. I had him roll for his daughter. Natural. 20.

    The ultraloth was amused by this... curiosity... being so bold as to demand things of it, but sure. It amused the creature, and his minions send the slaves in the immediate vicinity of the outskirts of the Arcanaloth tower back to their home planes. She told him later that she had to do something, she had to show him that it was worth it to TRY.

    An hour later at the end of the session, now her 19th birthday, artificer having accepted he might be here for the rest of his life, his grandson is born (there are other humans trapped in this fake waterdeep), and... stolen by Shemeshka the arcanaloth. She didn't do anything so crude as steal the baby, she simply waltzed in and informed them they could leave, she had what she needed and would honor her end of the bargain (only keep the girl as long as necessary to get what she needed, and then release her unharmed). She plane shifted everyone in the room back to where the party was...but not the baby

    Artificer is free again, and from the party's point of view, only 3 days have passed. His grandson is the property of the crawling city, a curiosity that shouldn't exist, and he learned that arcanaloths actually are evil and all these deals he keeps making have consequences

    I haven't let a player get a random wish and derail a campaign in a good long while so it was about time, but I enjoy stuff like this, I got a lot of character development out of his nihilistic doctor character, and now he's in his 50s. I did give him a few boons, added some spells to his list, he developed a cheap technique for creating a permanent unseen servant bound to a single building, 50gp for a permanent worker for simple tasks (which will make a good number of dangerous and low paying jobs in cities obsolete once he gets a chance to spread this knowledge around)

    It's good stuff, I'm glad I gave them a deck-of-not-quite-as-many-things

    override367 on
  • SmrtnikSmrtnik job boli zub Registered User regular
    an arcanaloth named Shemeshka)
    Is your DM using NPCs from Dice Camera Action?

    steam_sig.png
  • override367override367 ALL minions Registered User regular
    Smrtnik wrote: »
    an arcanaloth named Shemeshka)
    Is your DM using NPCs from Dice Camera Action?

    I'm the DM in this game, and both yes and no, Shemeshka has been around for a long time, she's been an important Planescape character for a while:
    Shemeshka the Marauder is an important Arcanoloth/Raavasta denizen of Sigil in the Dungeons & Dragons campaign setting of Planescape. Also known as the King of the Crosstrade, Shemeshka leads and directs one of Sigil's greatest network of spies, informants, thieves and assassins, making her one of the most powerful women in the city.

    Despite this, she is best known for appearing to be a vainglorious, frivolous, almost vapidly cruel and mercurial figure, who parades around the city with a small army of sycophants who constantly keep her looking tidy and praising her beauty, even lugging around a large mirror. This appearance is at least partially staged; for example, her attendants are skilled assassin-warriors who leap to her defense if needed or slip away to murder those she indicates, whilst the mirror is actually a powerful artifact, with the ability to spy on any individual she wants no matter their position in the multiverse being only one of its many powers.

    Such is Shemeshka's arrogance that she makes no secret of her true nature, and as far as anyone knows never changes out of her true form of a humanoid fox/jackal. She even goes so far as to wear an ornate "crown" made of the blade-sharp razorvine that grows rampant throughout Sigil, which more than one individual has suggested may be in mockery of the Lady of Pain.

  • SmrtnikSmrtnik job boli zub Registered User regular
    I had no idea, i thought it was a Perkins original. Neat!

    steam_sig.png
  • override367override367 ALL minions Registered User regular
    Perkins may have written it originally

  • WACriminalWACriminal Dying Is Easy, Young Man Living Is HarderRegistered User regular
    Ended up having to reschedule my next Dragon Heist session, which means I've got a few extra weeks of prep time, but already have everything prepped for the next session.

    ...which means it's time to start coming up with NPCs to populate the neighborhood around Trollskull Manor. First up is:

    Phineas Polk
    EG7FEk7W4AYlKql?format=jpg&name=small

    Phineas is the owner, proprietor, and sole artist of Just A Little Polk, a tattoo parlor just across from the Manor, between the Alley and Windborne Way. He's a friendly enough chap, as long as you don't disrupt his sense of routine and organization. Likes: wordplay, mint, whistling. Dislikes: cold weather, bright light, chaos.

    For just 100 gp and 40 hours of downtime (spread out across as long a timeframe as you need, in 4-hour increments), he'll craft a complex work of art on one of your arms that grants you the ability to cast a single cantrip of your choosing, using Constitution as your spellcasting ability for it. A character may only have one such tattoo per arm, and the cost of having a tattoo of this type removed is 200 gp, plus another 40 hours of downtime.

    He will probably branch into 1st- and maybe even 2nd-level spells (full chest/back tattoos) eventually, if the campaign goes on long enough, as well as special types of ink (example: this ink emits bright light for 10 ft and dim light for another 10 ft, this ink can be made invisible as a bonus action, this ink changes color when you ingest poison, etc.).

  • XagarXagar Registered User regular
    I can't buy into that NPC without at least several paragraphs about the biology, history, and culture of porcupine people, and why there is one in Waterdeep. /s

  • WhelkWhelk Registered User regular
    I agree. What happened to his front tooth? Why does he tattoo people when you can't even see if he has tattoos? Does he do traditional or stippling? What's his instagram? Is he free for my next session?

  • GlalGlal AiredaleRegistered User regular
    edited February 2020
    Xagar wrote: »
    I can't buy into that NPC without at least several paragraphs about the biology, history, and culture of porcupine people, and why there is one in Waterdeep. /s
    Can't answer that last bit, but as for everything else...

    Glal on
  • WACriminalWACriminal Dying Is Easy, Young Man Living Is HarderRegistered User regular
    edited February 2020
    And now my Florida Man fighter has asked whether it would be possible for him to acquire an alligator.

    Me, a rube: "Like as an animal companion?"
    Him, an intellectual: "Like as a mount."

    WACriminal on
  • BrainleechBrainleech 機知に富んだコメントはここにあります Registered User regular
    What's dungeon mayhem? I was looking up random stuff on amazon and it popped up as a bought with thing

  • SchadenfreudeSchadenfreude Mean Mister Mustard Registered User regular
    It's a fun little D&D themed card game. A round takes five or ten minutes so easy breezy. There's also one or two expansion packs for it now i think.

    Contemplate this on the Tree of Woe
  • override367override367 ALL minions Registered User regular
    edited February 2020
    I'm working on a homebrew bard class that's less boring than College of Valor but can kind of sort of tank. It has a lot of AC but seems to be on par with both valor and sword bards, I'm looking for criticism/ideas, I have a player that really likes where it is now but I want to make sure it's balanced. I've cribbed some ideas from other homebrew, spoilered for long

    College of Legends:
    Flavor text. You are obsessed with legendary heroes and weapons and adventures - you tell stories and boast about your own legend, rewriting reality with the conviction of your stories - better text goes here!

    College of Legends Training
    You have trained with the flashy weapons favored by the College of Legends as well as the Duelist fighting style, additionally, your bravado and luck work to make you a legend in your own right. You always seem to present an easy target for your enemies with your overconfident swagger, but that perceived vulnerability is just another highlight of your own personal story.

    You are proficient in Medium Armor, Shields, and Martial Weapons that do not require two hands to use. You treat Longswords and Spears as having the Finesse property as long when you are not using a shield. Your Base AC Calculation equals 10 + Your Dexterity Modifier + Your Charisma Modifier and you gain +1 AC while wielding a one-handed weapon and not using a shield.

    You are proficient with all weapons of Legendary or Artifact rarity, regardless of their normal requirements. When you are wielding such a weapon, you use your Charisma for your attack and damage rolls.

    Blade of Misfortune
    When you fight an enemy, you gloat about its misfortune even as you fight it. You tell a tale of each wound being mortal, regardless of how bad it actually is, and magically shape your words into becoming reality.

    When you attack a creature with a weapon attack, you can expend one use of your Bardic Inspiration to gain advantage on the attack and increase the damage of the attack by 1d6 of the weapon's damage type or give yourself 1d6 temporary hitpoints. If this attack hits, attacks against the target within 1 minute deal 1d6 bonus damage of the same type or give the attacker 1d6 tempory hitpoints (attacker's choice). Once 5 dice have been rolled from this feature, the effect ends. If you miss the initial attack, it does not consume a bardic inspiration dice.

    The dice of this attack increases with your bardic inspiration dice to 1d8 at 5th level, 1d10 at 10th level, and 1d12 at 15th level.

    Expert Storyteller
    Beginning at third level, your knowledge of legendary adventures and mythical stories makes you an expert storyteller. Choose one of the following skills you are proficient in:

    Arcana, to better embellish the weaknesses and strengths of your magical foes
    Deception, to better tell a tall tale
    Performance, to capture the hearts of your audience better
    You gain expertise in that skill. If you are already an expert in the chosen skill, choose another Bard skill to gain expertise in. If you are not proficient in any of these skills, you instead gain proficiency in one of them.

    Additionally, at 9th level you know the Legend Lore spell. It counts as a Bard Spell for you and does not count against the number of spells known.

    Weaver of Legends[/b]:
    At 6th level, you gain the ability to defy the story that was written for yourself or others. You to magically incant a reality-shaping legend to empower your allies and lay low your foes:

    When The Blade Struck True Our Hearts Did Grow Bold: Your weapon attacks deal 1d8 additional psychic damage. When you land a critical strike against an opponent, all allies that witnessed the attack within 60 feet gain temporary hit points equal to the damage done for 10 minutes. This feature can only provide temporary hitpoints once per long rest.


    Broken And Beaten Yet Lo' They Fought On!: If there is an ally that is unconscious or has been dead for less than 1 full round within 30 feet of you, you can empower them with a fighting spirit to keep going. As a bonus action, you can roll 2 Bardic Inspiration dice. The ally regains consciousness with twice that number of hitpoints. At the end of their next turn they take Psychic Damage equal to the amount they were healed. If this feature restored them to life, they also gain 3 levels of exhaustion.

    Wounded and bleeding the beast did despair: When you deal damage with Vicious Mockery on a creature that is afflicted by your Blade of Misfortune ability, your Vicious Mockery deals all remaining damage from that feature in addition to its normal effects.

    They Shielded Their Eyes ''Gainst Vampyr's Gaze: When you use your Countercharm ability, you can expend a bardic inspiration dice to and force a creature within 60 feet to immediately reroll a saving throw against Charm, Fear, or Possession, adding the roll of the Inspiration Die to the roll.


    Let me tell you how it really happened!:
    At 14th level, you gain the ability to correct mistakes told in the story of reality. Sometimes the universe gets things wrong, it tells the wrong story, with utter indifference to how you think things were supposed to go. You tell things the way they really happened.

    As a Reaction at the end of another creature's turn you can halt a creature's turn, and reset all events back to the way they were at the start of its initiative count. It may take its turn over again. You can use this Reaction even if you are incapacitated, dead, or in another plane, as long as you were alive and within 120 feet of the creature at the start of its turn - because that's when you actually used your reaction.

    Once this ability has been used it cannot be used until you take a long rest

    I like the mechanic of you making your allies do more damage, it's a bit more maximum damage per inspiration dice than a College of Whispers bard does, but it requires cooperation of your allies, so as a DM I feel like I can easily work around this if it's too bullshit (similarly for the really good legendary weapon feature), but that's my biggest hangup with where it is...

    override367 on
  • SteelhawkSteelhawk Registered User regular
    Damnit. Our Dungeon Dads field trip has been postponed because one of my group can't make it and I'd rather all of us are there. Instead we're having a game missing, once again, our cleric player. So instead of pushing onto the Eye of the All Father and working towards SKT fucking done, I guess we're going to have a filler session in Mirabar... because if I can't even go for drinks with one player down, why should I push ahead with an important plot session one player down? Sigh.

    So. The party (and Harshnag) will be travelling through Mirabar, en route to the mountains. Obviously, they're going to want to collect the 5000gp reward for the Weevil. And this seems like a good opportunity for a shopping episode? What else can we do? They've joined the Harpers... or at least are probationary members. Harper-Adjacent? Maybe the Harpers have something for them to do that can be completed in a few IRL hours? Harshnag has a job for them to do in the city? I dunno....

  • override367override367 ALL minions Registered User regular
    edited February 2020
    Shopping episode is a great filler tbh, aiming for that and playing by ear might be the best bet. If they don't have lore on it, some frost giants/ring of winter stuff is a great idea for the northern setting if they haven't don Bryn Shander. If all else fails, Frost Giant Longship gathering supplies for a planned raid on Ten Towns is a good backup, or if you want some variety, your idea of Harper shenanigans sounds good. Maybe Thayans are up to no good in the north, scouting to investigate the possibility of a Dread Ring being created with all the chaos


    My party just finished weevil, I moved SKT to exandria so I altered it a bunch

    The quest for the weevil was, I decided, fabricated because the guy's a pirate and him and a certain Sovereign's daughter had become an item, so the charges against him are trumped up to say the least due to the incredible disapproval of the sovereign, mamma tal'dorei didn't survive dragons and vecna to see her oldest daughter end up with a pirate

    the party found out about it, met with the young woman (working in a totally not nepotism-driven position in the ministry of commerce in the capital) and she offered to pay them twice the bounty if they help her commit some minor crimes to get him across the sea to safety to talk to friends of hers in the deserts of Marquette, and if they get caught she doesn't know them

    so "The Weevil" traveled across the sea, only to be traveling back in a few months as an "envoy of Ankharel" under a false identity, he's gotten a makeover, and the two of them can resume their relationship

    the party turned over a fake Weevil to the headsman allowing them to double-dip on the reward, they got the fake from the Rogue's contacts with the Clasp (and asked no questions as to who he was), and she split the 5000 gold with them and spilled the beans about the scheme, so now the clasp has leverage against the ministry of commerce

    things workin out well

    override367 on
  • SteelhawkSteelhawk Registered User regular
    I like the idea of sending them deeper into Mirabar, to show off the Upper-Under City dynamic going on there. But I'm afraid of dragging it out and not finishing in one session, which would annoy me as I'm trying not to rush the module, but I'd also very much not want to stretch it out. I want to get it done, and start a new campaign in Baldur's Gate. I also want nothing to do with Artus Cimber and the Ring of Winter. Feh. I thought it was a stupid addition to ToA, and therefore choose to ignore it now in SKT.

    We recently had a market/street/save the people from the corrupt cop adventure in Yartar, so I don't want to replay that hook. So: Deliver the prisoner.... do some shopping.... and have a mini adventure on behalf of the Harpers? No. Wait. Claim Jumpers! On the way into town, have them be attacked by unsavoury types wanting to claim the bounty for themselves. Harshnag night make that much less of a challenge, though. Or wait until they're inside the city, without their giant buddy, and have them be set up to either have the Weevil be snatched (or rescued?) out from under the party!

  • AldoAldo Hippo Hooray Registered User regular
    Be upfront about the schedule you wish to keep OOC? If I know we should only spend one session in this city we could make sure we don't meander to too much bullshit.

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