Tynnanseldom correct, never unsureRegistered Userregular
So last night my players finished their prison break. They used Silence to create a zone where they could corrode the locks on the cell doors, bash them open, and subdue the nearby guards without drawing broader attention. One guard managed to run far enough to create noise, so they had to act quickly to dissuade further attention in a very "we had a slight... weapons malfunction... How are you?" moment. It was a neat use of party abilities, especially since I was being strict about spell components because their focuses had been confiscated.
Then they decided to wait in nearby shadows to ambush pirate guards arriving for their shift change, which would have worked beautifully except the party's Bard noticed some swarms of bats roosting on a ceiling nearby and decided to slap them using Mage Hand. Most of the party failed stealth checks to avoid being noticed by the startled bats (who had just been sleeping!), and then failed dexterity saves to avoid being bitten up by the bats as they swarmed before fleeing the area. Everyone who took damage had to make a CHA saving throw to avoid screaming in panic, which they promptly failed. So instead of a well-positioned ambush, most of the party was screaming in panic as a cloud of bats fled the cave tunnels. They did manage to win the next battle, but it was a lot closer than it needed to be. All this over two swarms of bats I tossed into a dark corner on a whim while I finished making the map!
In Star Wars, the Tusken Raiders (Sand People) are generally thought of as raiders and scavengers by the races that live in cities.
In A New Hope, some raiders attack Luke and they are considered bad.
In Attack of the Clones, Anakin slaughters an entire village of Tusken, and it is generally acknowledged he was the bad guy in that scenario.
So orcs can be bad, or Yuan-ti can, but they don't need to be portrayed as universally bad.
Thing is, I've always felt that way. When I first DM'ed, I had the players encounter a group of orcs fleeing their homes being torched by troglodytes. When the orcs crossed the road the players were on, they immediately leapt to the attack without looking to see what the orcs were like. I guess I always had the idea that different races could be multifaceted, but never really thought it out till now.
I suspect the reason that part falls flat for a lot of people is because you could easily believe that Tusken Raiders are an old-school zero-nuance 'always chaotic evil' race.
We literally never see them or hear them discussed in any context violent murdering kidnappers, no one ever says why they're dicks or anything.
They're just weird (possible a nasty racist caricature) humanoids who will murder any other living being given any chance to whatsoever, and kidnap and torture you to death over the course of months if they can manage it, apparently.
Honestly even with the movie framing it could be interpreted as 'it's bad that Anakin killed in anger' rather than 'it's bad that Anakin went all genocidal'.
God, everything to do with Anakin in all three of those movies is awful.
This isn't actually true in the greater EU for the Sand people; in KOTOR you can actually talk with them via a translator and learn that they're ultra hostile to all non-indigenous life because an alien race basically destroyed the ecology of the planet and even 4000 years later they were still grinding that axe.
Magical made or born negative energy whatevers that are destructive hateful p-zombies, can fill that 'what if' while being way far away from "Your weird looking tribal neighbors are inherently evil" I think?
Okay... but weren't orcs originally a magically created race made by a god to be evil monsters?
This is the part about this argument I can't seem to understand.
In LotR they were basically this, specifically created/turned evil. In D&D? I think they eventually got a creation myth as servents of Gruumsh, but by that point very many races had some sort of creation myth and/or progenitor god, so it kind of falls flat for me. Orcs can be militaristic, and even prefer a form of civilization that's less modern/euro-centric, but why do they need to be inherently evil?
Basically orcs are klingons.
Orcs in D&D were created to kill and die so that they can provide an afterlife army for Gruumsh in his war against Maglubyiet
in the lore, with many arrows, orcs don't have to do this, it takes some serious ... American Style CIA action... by the drow to get them to go to war
It's interesting this discussion and changes are taking off as I just listened to an audiobook chapter where Drizzt was basically like "Mielikki tells me that all orcs and goblins are evil, that should I happen upon a goblin infant that I should dash it against the rocks. This has not filled me with righteousness towards that end, but has filled me with doubt towards my god. I can but follow my morality, and my morality tells me that that goblins, orcs, and even ogres are not inherently evil. If I find a nest of goblin children I will do my best to help them, not slay them. If I see a goblin being tortured in a human city I will stop it, with violence if necessary, and argue the morality of my actions with whatever magistrate I face. I know this is good, regardless of whatever biases my goddess might have towards the children of Gruumsh" (paraphrased)
The lore supports a more nuanced view of orc than the Monster Manual provides, and it's even hinting that the goodly gods own biases are just as responsible for the state of things re: orcs as anything the orcs are doing, as such, I'm glad they're making changes
I mean it's still problematic in the"there are some good ones" kind of way, but the fact that Many Arrows lived in peace for a hundred years and this cultural shift had even the clerics of Gruumsh not wanting any kind of war (trade led to a far better quality of life than orcs of the sword coast had ever known). I want a Silver Marches campaign that extends the lore further, that covers the new Kingdom of Many Arrows and the slowly repairing relations between them and the dwarfholds and human kingdoms
Crawford is inspiring a lot of confidence in me that they will be making a lot of great changes while still respecting the lore
Ammusingly, this whole thing was actually touched upon in the novel "war in tethyr" which had an Orog that insisted that it was a paladin of torm and while most of the characters didn't believe him he was unflinchingly loyal and working towards the cause of good; it's even implied that at one point he was able to heal another character by channeling Ao.
This was considered a particularly bold move in the days of 2e when only humans could be paladins and needed a retardedly massive charisma score.
If we're moving towards exandrian lore as crawford suggests we might be, orc tribes are shitty because they want to be, and the orc rage of gruumsh is a cultural thing that is complete bullshit that hasn't been true for a thousand years, but is a convenient excuse for any bad behavior
In this lore, nothing stops an orc from going "Yeah you know, living "toxic masculinity: the culture" isn't fun, I'm leaving" (in Exandria there are goliaths and humans etc hanging out with orc mountain tribes too, because to some people "toxic masculinity: the culture" sounds right up their alley)
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webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
edited June 2020
Oh man, I had a perfect wizard moment last night. We got ambushed by 4 plant like shambling horror-esque monsters. Each with a ton of HP (as the guy who went first crit and between dice and special abilities did like 60+ damage and the thing was still standing). We're level 8 so that is a bit scary, then the horrors went and did around 20ish damage each if they could hit, and they could engulf too. So it's my turn, and I'm able to get the whole group of them with a hypnotic pattern, and since they're so tall I can cast it above the heads of the front line fighters. 3 of the 4 failed. At that point we just spent the next 20 minutes mopping them up. It went from a potentially super punishing combat to one where I spent a 2nd level spell slot and called it good.
Oh man, I had a perfect wizard moment last night. We got ambushed by 4 plant like shambling horror-esque monsters. Each with a ton of HP (as the guy who went first crit and between dice and special abilities did like 60+ damage and the thing was still standing). We're level 8 so that is a bit scary, then the horrors went and did around 20ish damage each if they could hit, and they could engulf too. So it's my turn, and I'm able to get the whole group of them with a hypnotic pattern, and since they're so tall I can cast it above the heads of the front line fighters. 3 of the 4 failed. At that point we just spent the next 20 minutes mopping them up. It went from a potentially super punishing combat to one where I spent a 2nd level spell slot and called it good.
As a DM, when my players pull off a rout like that I tend to ask them "Would you be okay doing this last bit narratively and saving us all the time? you've crushed them."
Had a Fun one in ghost's of salt marsh; the players had stumbled into the smugglers hideout and went to have a ball fighting this wizard and his goon swarm; they were a bit beat up and I wanted them to win, so I tried to avoid just obliterating them in favor of making the fight interesting. And it was one heck of a nailbiter; the party had tons of AC due to the preponderence of shield and chain and a loxodon barbarian, but in the end their simply wasn't enough bodies to soak up the damage and they collectively got knocked out, disarmed and tied up.
When they awoke after a short rest, they found the wizard leading the smugglers standing on a soap box insisting to his sole remaining goon that this was a brilliant idea, as he proceeded to begin monologuing at them his backstory.
Unfortunately for poor Sanbalet however, the Loxodon was not in the mood for story time and proceeded to immediately snap his bonds and then begin drowning him in the nearby surf.
Oh well. Maybe I'll have the wizard come back as a ghost and haunt them with his gloating monologue :P
In my new avernus game I had a lot of fun in the first session, playing as the world's most pathetic level 1 vampire who can't enter a home or business where somebody lives without an invitation, but im not enough of a vampire to die in sunlight, and oddly the DM ruled that rivers don't really bug me unless I fall in one, but I have to be careful in the tub because if it springs a leak I will take acid damage (I dont think this is something that can actually happen, but I was warned about it, although if he starts rolling dice when we long rest in the inn I'm going to squint at him)
Hes using the Grim Hollow transformations with some modifications, jonesing for blood after the apparent destruction of Alturel I bribed a teenager with my last coin to let me drink some of his blood so I could get my fix, since I'm immune to conventional healing
I have no idea why I'm doing this to myself playing a character with so many weaknesses, vampirism isn't what its cracked up to be (it's fun though!)
Welp, ran the one-shot today and flew by the seat of my pants, making it all up as I went because I didn't plan anything. Was supposed to be a train heist (I ditched the murder mystery idea because it was a lot of work and I'm lazy), get in, find the package, get out. Before I could even suggest the quest-giver's plan to glide in on hang gliders they said they'd blow the track and pick through the wreckage. I told them the game would be over in five minutes if they did that lol. So they agreed to hang glide in, and they decided to start from the rear of the train and work their way up. Things were going smoothly, they weren't causing a ruckus at all, until I made the mistake of making a random NPC passenger one of those super friendly, "Hi, I'm Elfo!" kinda people. That pissed the cleric off so he shot him in the face, in a room full of people. Chaos ensued, they left and disconnected that car. After that the entire party went full murderhobo, reverting back to their baser instincts. They murdered their way to the front until I threw a wyvern at them. They smartly left that car, so I had the ceiling open and the wyvern flew out. Nearly killed the cleric with it's first two attacks (if he hadn't been a warforged, the poison would have killed him for sure.) The party defeated it by taking potshots and ducking inside where it couldn't reach them. Once they got what they came for they used their hang gliders to exit. I had them get picked up by some roving halflings on dinosaurs working for their employer, but they felt like things had been too easy and were expecting me to throw something nasty at them, so I had three people charge at them from the woods. A werebear, a wereboar, and a weretiger. The wereboar infected our goblin rogue and nearly killed her with his charge, and the bear just wouldn't fucking die (very few magical weapons or damage spells). The lycanthropes also murdered several of the halflings and their dinosaurs, and some of the player dinos too. Eventually some of the halfling scouts had come back and rescued the party and they were able to escape and head back to where they were going. I'm not happy with how I feel I did, but everyone else seemed to have fun so that's what's important!
In my new avernus game I had a lot of fun in the first session, playing as the world's most pathetic level 1 vampire who can't enter a home or business where somebody lives without an invitation, but im not enough of a vampire to die in sunlight, and oddly the DM ruled that rivers don't really bug me unless I fall in one, but I have to be careful in the tub because if it springs a leak I will take acid damage (I dont think this is something that can actually happen, but I was warned about it, although if he starts rolling dice when we long rest in the inn I'm going to squint at him)
Hes using the Grim Hollow transformations with some modifications, jonesing for blood after the apparent destruction of Alturel I bribed a teenager with my last coin to let me drink some of his blood so I could get my fix, since I'm immune to conventional healing
I have no idea why I'm doing this to myself playing a character with so many weaknesses, vampirism isn't what its cracked up to be (it's fun though!)
Personally I really enjoyed 4E's take on folkloric vampire weaknesses: they're disinformation spread by vampires.
Amatuer Vampire Hunter: "Stay back, foul creature of the night! I've got garlic!"
*vampire grabs garlic clove and tosses it over his shoulder*
Amatuer Vampire Hunter: "Ohhhhh nooooo."
In my new avernus game I had a lot of fun in the first session, playing as the world's most pathetic level 1 vampire who can't enter a home or business where somebody lives without an invitation, but im not enough of a vampire to die in sunlight, and oddly the DM ruled that rivers don't really bug me unless I fall in one, but I have to be careful in the tub because if it springs a leak I will take acid damage (I dont think this is something that can actually happen, but I was warned about it, although if he starts rolling dice when we long rest in the inn I'm going to squint at him)
Hes using the Grim Hollow transformations with some modifications, jonesing for blood after the apparent destruction of Alturel I bribed a teenager with my last coin to let me drink some of his blood so I could get my fix, since I'm immune to conventional healing
I have no idea why I'm doing this to myself playing a character with so many weaknesses, vampirism isn't what its cracked up to be (it's fun though!)
Personally I really enjoyed 4E's take on folkloric vampire weaknesses: they're disinformation spread by vampires.
Amatuer Vampire Hunter: "Stay back, foul creature of the night! I've got garlic!"
*vampire grabs garlic clove and tosses it over his shoulder*
Amatuer Vampire Hunter: "Ohhhhh nooooo."
I'm reminded of one of the Hazards in Costume Fairy Adventures:
Oh No, Not ROWAN!
Someone has deployed a charm of rowan to ward against fairies! It doesn’t work, but by Fae Law you must pretend it does lest the humans replace its use with something that does.
Each fairy must take 1 stress selling her “vulnerability” in the most extravagant fashion possible, or suffer 3 Stress from paranoia wondering if the Fae Queen’s agents saw you ignoring the rowan.
In my new avernus game I had a lot of fun in the first session, playing as the world's most pathetic level 1 vampire who can't enter a home or business where somebody lives without an invitation, but im not enough of a vampire to die in sunlight, and oddly the DM ruled that rivers don't really bug me unless I fall in one, but I have to be careful in the tub because if it springs a leak I will take acid damage (I dont think this is something that can actually happen, but I was warned about it, although if he starts rolling dice when we long rest in the inn I'm going to squint at him)
Hes using the Grim Hollow transformations with some modifications, jonesing for blood after the apparent destruction of Alturel I bribed a teenager with my last coin to let me drink some of his blood so I could get my fix, since I'm immune to conventional healing
I have no idea why I'm doing this to myself playing a character with so many weaknesses, vampirism isn't what its cracked up to be (it's fun though!)
Personally I really enjoyed 4E's take on folkloric vampire weaknesses: they're disinformation spread by vampires.
Amatuer Vampire Hunter: "Stay back, foul creature of the night! I've got garlic!"
*vampire grabs garlic clove and tosses it over his shoulder*
Amatuer Vampire Hunter: "Ohhhhh nooooo."
I told my party that if I ever turn into a blood crazed monster that they can kill me by pointing 3 hand mirrors at me and rolled a 23 on my deception
In Star Wars, the Tusken Raiders (Sand People) are generally thought of as raiders and scavengers by the races that live in cities.
In A New Hope, some raiders attack Luke and they are considered bad.
In Attack of the Clones, Anakin slaughters an entire village of Tusken, and it is generally acknowledged he was the bad guy in that scenario.
So orcs can be bad, or Yuan-ti can, but they don't need to be portrayed as universally bad.
Thing is, I've always felt that way. When I first DM'ed, I had the players encounter a group of orcs fleeing their homes being torched by troglodytes. When the orcs crossed the road the players were on, they immediately leapt to the attack without looking to see what the orcs were like. I guess I always had the idea that different races could be multifaceted, but never really thought it out till now.
I suspect the reason that part falls flat for a lot of people is because you could easily believe that Tusken Raiders are an old-school zero-nuance 'always chaotic evil' race.
We literally never see them or hear them discussed in any context violent murdering kidnappers, no one ever says why they're dicks or anything.
They're just weird (possible a nasty racist caricature) humanoids who will murder any other living being given any chance to whatsoever, and kidnap and torture you to death over the course of months if they can manage it, apparently.
Honestly even with the movie framing it could be interpreted as 'it's bad that Anakin killed in anger' rather than 'it's bad that Anakin went all genocidal'.
God, everything to do with Anakin in all three of those movies is awful.
This isn't actually true in the greater EU for the Sand people; in KOTOR you can actually talk with them via a translator and learn that they're ultra hostile to all non-indigenous life because an alien race basically destroyed the ecology of the planet and even 4000 years later they were still grinding that axe.
Yeah, I know. Going futher into that old Legends lore, it was implied at one point that Tatooine is the true human homeworld, and that humans in the galaxy are descended from a predecessor race that the Rakata took as slaves (and modified? They did a lot of that) while those left behind became the Tusken Raiders.
... Now you play pretty good fiddle, son / but give the devil his due / I bet a fiddle of gold against your soul / I think I'm better than you...
That is almost exactly his backstory:
Titania went down to Faerûn, she was looking for an act to steal
She was in a bind ‘cos she was way behind and was willing to make a deal
When she came across a Tiefling standing at a crossroads playin’ it hot
And Titania jumped upon a hickory stump and said: “Boy, let me tell you what:
“I guess you’re here to bargain your immortal soul away,
If you agree to come with me you’ll soon learn how to play
Now you play passable fiddle, boy, but join my band of fey
You’ll get a pochette of gold, and to keep your soul, and make music every day.”
The Tiefling said, “I’m Barry, and it don’t take much thought:
I’ll join your band, for who in this land, would deny the Seelie Court?”
Barry, you just wanted to learn to be a Bard
Titania has ensnared you and now she holds all the cards
You joined her service willingly and now to get away
Your soul is just the first thing you will pay…
... Now you play pretty good fiddle, son / but give the devil his due / I bet a fiddle of gold against your soul / I think I'm better than you...
That is almost exactly his backstory:
Titania went down to Faerûn, she was looking for an act to steal
She was in a bind ‘cos she was way behind and was willing to make a deal
When she came across a Tiefling standing at a crossroads playin’ it hot
And Titania jumped upon a hickory stump and said: “Boy, let me tell you what:
“I guess you’re here to bargain your immortal soul away,
If you agree to come with me you’ll soon learn how to play
Now you play passable fiddle, boy, but join my band of fey
You’ll get a pochette of gold, and to keep your soul, and make music every day.”
The Tiefling said, “I’m Barry, and it don’t take much thought:
I’ll join your band, for who in this land, would deny the Seelie Court?”
Barry, you just wanted to learn to be a Bard
Titania has ensnared you and now she holds all the cards
You joined her service willingly and now to get away
Your soul is just the first thing you will pay…
It's okay, I've got an out for you:
You'll just need to get multiple sets of arms attached.
Simple question: How does a 5E Glabrezu grant wishes? I know I could just say they have the wish spell or can make contracts like a devil, but the Monster Manual makes them out to be tempters who grant wishes but gives them no mechanical basis to do so, not even a variant sidebar like genies have.
Is the implication in 5E lore supposed to be that you summon a glabrezu, "wish" for wealth, and the glabrezu runs down the street to rob the bank to grant your wish?
Simple question: How does a 5E Glabrezu grant wishes? I know I could just say they have the wish spell or can make contracts like a devil, but the Monster Manual makes them out to be tempters who grant wishes but gives them no mechanical basis to do so, not even a variant sidebar like genies have.
Is the implication in 5E lore supposed to be that you summon a glabrezu, "wish" for wealth, and the glabrezu runs down the street to rob the bank to grant your wish?
It already robbed a bank at some other point, has a hoard, and tries to tempt people with its mound of gold.
More difficult question: What's the largest size category that can fit in a magic circle? The text of the spell says "You create a 10-foot-radius, 20-foot-tall cylinder of magical energy centered on a point on the ground that you can see within range." That gives you a circle with a 20-foot-diamater. Huge creatures occupy a 15 × 15 foot space, which makes me think they should fit in a magic circle, but if you draw the magic circle's space on a grid it doesn't give you a room to fit a Huge creature unless you count squares that aren't fully in the spell's 10-foot-radius, and if you do count those squares then you could also fit a Gargantuan creature that takes up a 20 × 20 foot space.
Of course this is all ignoring that the spell specifies it creates a 20-foot-tall cylinder and that size categories tell you more about the space it takes up on a grid in game terms than it does the actual dimensions of a creature. Some Huge creatures are shorter than 20 feet, others taller. Could creatures that are taller than 20 feet hypothetically be considered to be forced to kneel to fit in the cylinder?
Simple question: How does a 5E Glabrezu grant wishes? I know I could just say they have the wish spell or can make contracts like a devil, but the Monster Manual makes them out to be tempters who grant wishes but gives them no mechanical basis to do so, not even a variant sidebar like genies have.
Is the implication in 5E lore supposed to be that you summon a glabrezu, "wish" for wealth, and the glabrezu runs down the street to rob the bank to grant your wish?
It already robbed a bank at some other point, has a hoard, and tries to tempt people with its mound of gold.
If you use Summon Greater Demon to bring in a Glabrezu and make a deal, does it have the gold on it's person, or do you have to send it back and resummon it after it gets out the gold? I guess you could contact the Glabrezu first with Sending and let it know to get its gold ready before you summon it, alternatively.
Honestly though I'm leaning towards just giving them Wish or a Wish-like unique ability with the restriction that it only works once per month, once per individual, has to be fufilled with as awful an interpretation as possible, and forces the person making the wish to make a save or become Chaotic Evil.
Simple question: How does a 5E Glabrezu grant wishes? I know I could just say they have the wish spell or can make contracts like a devil, but the Monster Manual makes them out to be tempters who grant wishes but gives them no mechanical basis to do so, not even a variant sidebar like genies have.
Is the implication in 5E lore supposed to be that you summon a glabrezu, "wish" for wealth, and the glabrezu runs down the street to rob the bank to grant your wish?
It already robbed a bank at some other point, has a hoard, and tries to tempt people with its mound of gold.
If you use Summon Greater Demon to bring in a Glabrezu and make a deal, does it have the gold on it's person, or do you have to send it back and resummon it after it gets out the gold? I guess you could contact the Glabrezu first with Sending and let it know to get its gold ready before you summon it, alternatively.
Honestly though I'm leaning towards just giving them Wish or a Wish-like unique ability with the restriction that it only works once per month, once per individual, has to be fufilled with as awful an interpretation as possible, and forces the person making the wish to make a save or become Chaotic Evil.
Even better, they stash it in a place where the summoner can definitely get it from if they kill a bunch of people. They use guile and the promise of riches to corrupt and damn the mortals foolish enough to summon them. They've got plans on plans on plans for this. If the temptation of riches don't
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webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
More difficult question: What's the largest size category that can fit in a magic circle? The text of the spell says "You create a 10-foot-radius, 20-foot-tall cylinder of magical energy centered on a point on the ground that you can see within range." That gives you a circle with a 20-foot-diamater. Huge creatures occupy a 15 × 15 foot space, which makes me think they should fit in a magic circle, but if you draw the magic circle's space on a grid it doesn't give you a room to fit a Huge creature unless you count squares that aren't fully in the spell's 10-foot-radius, and if you do count those squares then you could also fit a Gargantuan creature that takes up a 20 × 20 foot space.
Of course this is all ignoring that the spell specifies it creates a 20-foot-tall cylinder and that size categories tell you more about the space it takes up on a grid in game terms than it does the actual dimensions of a creature. Some Huge creatures are shorter than 20 feet, others taller. Could creatures that are taller than 20 feet hypothetically be considered to be forced to kneel to fit in the cylinder?
I would certainly allow something like that. If they are forced to squeeze though, it's going to add insult to injury and they are going to be EXTRA pissed.
You could certainly tone it down by limiting the choice of familiar to something specific - everyone in this village has crabs etc
Or using the 2nd ed version of the spell, where it's actually an animal and if it dies the owner loses HP (in 2e they had 2-4 HP).
You also didn't get to choose what form it took, something just showed up after you did the ritual.
You could certainly tone it down by limiting the choice of familiar to something specific - everyone in this village has crabs etc
Or using the 2nd ed version of the spell, where it's actually an animal and if it dies the owner loses HP (in 2e they had 2-4 HP).
You also didn't get to choose what form it took, something just showed up after you did the ritual.
Lesser Restoration should sort that out. :biggrin:
It's for one of the races in my setting, specifically, Oldblood Humans (Who are drawing on the Picts/celts etc, and have a connection to the Fae). So whatever they summon, it'll be fae. I might say it has to be some sort of woodland mammal or something - no deploying owls or similar (Plus, fairy weasels!).
I dont mind if it's fairly strong, as long as it's within strength for the rest of my setting's races, i just didn't want to accidentally snap the game balance in half - but as far as i can tell the big risks are: Help action and Touch spells. So if i rule out owls, and say it has to be some sort of small woodland mammal (Rats, badgers, weasels, ferrets, foxes, etcera), that probably gives it a nice thematic feel and solves most of the potential risks - and hey, if players get clever with it, that's cool! Players should be allowed to do strong things.
Second question: One of hte races is going to be Mer. Seasnake Merfolk. I want to give them a venom spit. Compartive thing would be Dragonborn's breath attacks. If it's a spell attack roll that's single target rather than a cone, is bumping the dice up to d8 or d10s too strong?
For comparison:
Breath Weapon: You can use your action to exhale destructive energy. Your Draconic ancestry determines the size, shape, and damage type of the exhalation.
When you use your breath weapon, each creature in the area of the exhalation must make a saving throw, the type of which is determined by your Draconic ancestry. The DC for this saving throw equals 8 + your Constitution modifier + your Proficiency Bonus. A creature takes 2d6 damage on a failed save, and half as much damage on a successful one. The damage increases to 3d6 at 6th level, 4d6 at 11th level, and 5d6 at 16th level.
Seems like loosing the AoE and being able to miss competely are pretty big downsides, so bumping the dice up, or maybe giving it Proficncey bonus uses/short rest while sticking to d6s would be ways to rebalance it? (Poking around, it looks like the breath weapon is considered pretty underpowered, so pushing the dice up seems reasonble. I might actually make it 3d6 to start with, and increasing from there - that way it's a pretty attractive option, but not one that seems too broken - it's a cute nuke)
Edit: Duh. Bump the dice to 3d6, make it a bonus action, keep it limited to being an attack roll (probably working off Con), reloads on short rest. Very strong, but not gamebreaking, and Sea snakepeople who can spit venom at you is awesome. I'll probably give it like a 20ft range or similar - feels right for what's basically just hacking a lump of venom at people, and means no sniping anyone with it.
I mean drow get a first and second level spell, plus all the elf bullshit. I would worry about it
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Zonugal(He/Him) The Holiday ArmadilloI'm Santa's representative for all the southern states. And Mexico!Registered Userregular
edited June 2020
For my Eberron campaign I gave a lot of races ritual spells as part of their racial features.
Elves for example:
Elf Features
-- Ability Score Increase: Your Dexterity, Intelligence, or Wisdom increases by 1 (your choice).
-- Age: Although elves reach physical maturity at the same age as humans, the elven understanding of adulthood goes beyond physical growth to encompass worldly experience. An elf typically claims adulthood around the age of 75, and can live to be 250 years old.
-- Alignment: Elves of Khorvaire love freedom, variety, and self-expression, so they lean strongly towards the gentler aspects of chaos. They value and protect others' freedom as well as their own, and are good more often than not. Aerenal Elves lean more towards lawful neutrality, as they are accustomed to a softer but more rigid society. Valenar Elves generally embrace a chaotic neutral lifestyle, as suits their nomadic warrior people.
-- Size: Elves range from under 5 to over 6 feet tall and have slender builds. Your size is Medium.
-- Speed: Your base walking speed is 30 feet.
-- Fey Ancestry: You have advantage on saves against being charmed, and magic can't put you to sleep.
-- Soul of Antiquity: You have proficiency in History.
-- Trance: Elves meditate deeply, remaining semiconscious, for 4 hours a day in place of sleeping. You gain the same benefit that a human does from 8 hours of sleep.
-- Languages: You can speak, read, and write Common and Elvish.
Aerenal Elf
-- Aerenal Spell Training: You know one cantrip of your choice and one 1st-level ritual spell from either the bard, cleric or wizard spell list. Your spellcasting ability for both of these spells is dependent on which class they're chosen from (intelligence for wizard, wisdom for cleric, & charisma for bard).
-- Extra Language: You can speak, read, and write one extra language of your choice.
-- Necrotic Resistance: You have resistance to necrotic damage.
-- Theocratic: You are proficient in Religion. In addition, whenever you make an Intelligence (Religion) check regarding the Undying Court you are considered to have expertise in the Religion skill.
Drow
-- Darkvision: Accustomed to the darkness of the underground and the dim conditions of Xen'drik jungles, you have superior vision in dark and dim conditions. You can see in dim light within 60 feet of you as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light. You can't discern color in darkness, only shades of gray.
-- Jungle Dweller: Growing up in the tree-villages of Xen’drik has left an impact. You don’t treat jungle terrain as difficult terrain.
-- Drow Weapon Training: You have proficiency with boomerangs, shortswords, & spiked-chains.
-- Mask of the Wild: You can attempt to hide even when you are only lightly obscured by foliage, heavy rain, falling snow, mist, and other natural phenomena.
Khorvaire Elf
-- Elven Combat Training: You are proficient with one martial weapon of your choice and light armor.
-- Elven Spell Training: You know one cantrip of your choice and one 1st-level ritual spell from the wizard spell list. Intelligence is your spellcasting ability for both of them.
-- Extra Language: You can speak, read, and write one extra language of your choice.
In planning my next D&D campaign I've found myself thinking about the styles of the DMs whose games I've played in over the last couple of years. For my purposes here I'm going to refer to the DMs with false names:
Stefano
Heavy on exploration of dungeon environments and their hazards (I've gotten a lot of use out of my ten foot pole), investigation into multiple leads, and problem solving to get past obstacles. When treasure is found it is frequently in the form of vast amounts of coin in hard to reach areas, necessitating figuring out how to actually retrieve it. Combat is common, but usually tactically simple. Roleplaying is light and we're generally given a summary of what an NPC said instead of Stefano acting it out (the group in general doesn't seem to be that interested in acting out their characters, though).
Caleb
Very roleplay heavy, to the point that we only ever had three combats, with the first in the sixth session (I was starting to wonder if we would ever fight anyone; it did free my wizard up to take a lot of noncombat spells, though). Lots of small worldbuilding details and scene setting. Frequent scenarios where there would be a social event with many NPCs to interact with (such as a party or a short demonstration at a mage college) or where we would have to wait on something and look around for things to do around the area to kill time (in one session I and another player looked around the wealthier part of a city and browsed in a bookstore while another character went on a date with the daughter of a leatherworker and another character went to get passenger reservations for the party on a ship coming into port the next day; the next session largely took place during the voyage and involved my low charisma gnome wizard badly trying to flirt with a gnome lady before going to watch a guy make barrels as the rest of the party just amused themselves giving a member of the crew a hard time). The only complaint I have is that the first few sessions took place in an area conducive to whacky situations, and after departing the rest of the world seemed more like a typical fantasy setting.
Adrian
This one was odd. The players were given the option to play as any creature Adrian didn't deem too powerful. He allowed me to play as a dybbuk (from Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes) warlock who could invoke their patron to cast any spell on the warlock spell list once per week. There was a lot of world building and locations to go to, but getting access to nearly any location was trivially easy thanks to public access teleportation circles linking every city and kings who would allow us to come right into their throne rooms whenever we wanted. The pace was extremely fast, too; I missed one session and when I attended next time I was informed that one character had become a weredragon and had obtained the intelligent sword Blackrazor and was being followed around by a demigoddess and another character was trapped in Carceri and had been replaced with a disguised chain devil and they had gotten a mechanical horse and carriage and a city had gotten blown up. It was an interesting experience, for sure, but it largely seemed like Adrian had established a few major locations and characters beforehand but made everything else up as he went. As a result there were times where it felt like the player characters had little agency while NPCs could do whatever Adrian wanted them to do. One of the other players was particularly bothered when he summoned a treant only for Adrian to declare that the enemy NPC destroyed it instantly without rolling any dice. There wasn't really any combat at all, the exploration was shallow, and there wasn't so much roleplaying as there was exposition. On the plus side, Adrian seemed like a nice dude who let me play a bizarre character who could dimension door at will, possess corpses, summon lesser demons, and got its pact patron to cast power word kill on a king I didn't like when I otherwise only had access to 3rd level spells.
Posts
Then they decided to wait in nearby shadows to ambush pirate guards arriving for their shift change, which would have worked beautifully except the party's Bard noticed some swarms of bats roosting on a ceiling nearby and decided to slap them using Mage Hand. Most of the party failed stealth checks to avoid being noticed by the startled bats (who had just been sleeping!), and then failed dexterity saves to avoid being bitten up by the bats as they swarmed before fleeing the area. Everyone who took damage had to make a CHA saving throw to avoid screaming in panic, which they promptly failed. So instead of a well-positioned ambush, most of the party was screaming in panic as a cloud of bats fled the cave tunnels. They did manage to win the next battle, but it was a lot closer than it needed to be. All this over two swarms of bats I tossed into a dark corner on a whim while I finished making the map!
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This isn't actually true in the greater EU for the Sand people; in KOTOR you can actually talk with them via a translator and learn that they're ultra hostile to all non-indigenous life because an alien race basically destroyed the ecology of the planet and even 4000 years later they were still grinding that axe.
Ammusingly, this whole thing was actually touched upon in the novel "war in tethyr" which had an Orog that insisted that it was a paladin of torm and while most of the characters didn't believe him he was unflinchingly loyal and working towards the cause of good; it's even implied that at one point he was able to heal another character by channeling Ao.
This was considered a particularly bold move in the days of 2e when only humans could be paladins and needed a retardedly massive charisma score.
In this lore, nothing stops an orc from going "Yeah you know, living "toxic masculinity: the culture" isn't fun, I'm leaving" (in Exandria there are goliaths and humans etc hanging out with orc mountain tribes too, because to some people "toxic masculinity: the culture" sounds right up their alley)
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As a DM, when my players pull off a rout like that I tend to ask them "Would you be okay doing this last bit narratively and saving us all the time? you've crushed them."
When they awoke after a short rest, they found the wizard leading the smugglers standing on a soap box insisting to his sole remaining goon that this was a brilliant idea, as he proceeded to begin monologuing at them his backstory.
Unfortunately for poor Sanbalet however, the Loxodon was not in the mood for story time and proceeded to immediately snap his bonds and then begin drowning him in the nearby surf.
Oh well. Maybe I'll have the wizard come back as a ghost and haunt them with his gloating monologue :P
Hes using the Grim Hollow transformations with some modifications, jonesing for blood after the apparent destruction of Alturel I bribed a teenager with my last coin to let me drink some of his blood so I could get my fix, since I'm immune to conventional healing
I have no idea why I'm doing this to myself playing a character with so many weaknesses, vampirism isn't what its cracked up to be (it's fun though!)
Personally I really enjoyed 4E's take on folkloric vampire weaknesses: they're disinformation spread by vampires.
Amatuer Vampire Hunter: "Stay back, foul creature of the night! I've got garlic!"
*vampire grabs garlic clove and tosses it over his shoulder*
Amatuer Vampire Hunter: "Ohhhhh nooooo."
I'm reminded of one of the Hazards in Costume Fairy Adventures:
Oh No, Not ROWAN!
Someone has deployed a charm of rowan to ward against fairies! It doesn’t work, but by Fae Law you must pretend it does lest the humans replace its use with something that does.
Each fairy must take 1 stress selling her “vulnerability” in the most extravagant fashion possible, or suffer 3 Stress from paranoia wondering if the Fae Queen’s agents saw you ignoring the rowan.
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"Tell them we're allergic to silver! We'll sell it after we're done butchering them!"
I told my party that if I ever turn into a blood crazed monster that they can kill me by pointing 3 hand mirrors at me and rolled a 23 on my deception
Yeah, I know. Going futher into that old Legends lore, it was implied at one point that Tatooine is the true human homeworld, and that humans in the galaxy are descended from a predecessor race that the Rakata took as slaves (and modified? They did a lot of that) while those left behind became the Tusken Raiders.
That is almost exactly his backstory:
Titania went down to Faerûn, she was looking for an act to steal
She was in a bind ‘cos she was way behind and was willing to make a deal
When she came across a Tiefling standing at a crossroads playin’ it hot
And Titania jumped upon a hickory stump and said: “Boy, let me tell you what:
“I guess you’re here to bargain your immortal soul away,
If you agree to come with me you’ll soon learn how to play
Now you play passable fiddle, boy, but join my band of fey
You’ll get a pochette of gold, and to keep your soul, and make music every day.”
The Tiefling said, “I’m Barry, and it don’t take much thought:
I’ll join your band, for who in this land, would deny the Seelie Court?”
Barry, you just wanted to learn to be a Bard
Titania has ensnared you and now she holds all the cards
You joined her service willingly and now to get away
Your soul is just the first thing you will pay…
“It, uh, means something much cooler in Infernal.”
It's okay, I've got an out for you:
You'll just need to get multiple sets of arms attached.
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I swear after I read this, I heard the drum hit and hi-hat. Like, with my physical ears. Viscerally.
Is the implication in 5E lore supposed to be that you summon a glabrezu, "wish" for wealth, and the glabrezu runs down the street to rob the bank to grant your wish?
did you paint that yourself or is that the new tech for Hero Forge? Because that looks good
It already robbed a bank at some other point, has a hoard, and tries to tempt people with its mound of gold.
Of course this is all ignoring that the spell specifies it creates a 20-foot-tall cylinder and that size categories tell you more about the space it takes up on a grid in game terms than it does the actual dimensions of a creature. Some Huge creatures are shorter than 20 feet, others taller. Could creatures that are taller than 20 feet hypothetically be considered to be forced to kneel to fit in the cylinder?
If you use Summon Greater Demon to bring in a Glabrezu and make a deal, does it have the gold on it's person, or do you have to send it back and resummon it after it gets out the gold? I guess you could contact the Glabrezu first with Sending and let it know to get its gold ready before you summon it, alternatively.
Honestly though I'm leaning towards just giving them Wish or a Wish-like unique ability with the restriction that it only works once per month, once per individual, has to be fufilled with as awful an interpretation as possible, and forces the person making the wish to make a save or become Chaotic Evil.
Even better, they stash it in a place where the summoner can definitely get it from if they kill a bunch of people. They use guile and the promise of riches to corrupt and damn the mortals foolish enough to summon them. They've got plans on plans on plans for this. If the temptation of riches don't
I would certainly allow something like that. If they are forced to squeeze though, it's going to add insult to injury and they are going to be EXTRA pissed.
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Thats what it looks like in the viewer on the website (you can use it to make tokens too!)
The printed ones look like this (blurry photo)
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Or using the 2nd ed version of the spell, where it's actually an animal and if it dies the owner loses HP (in 2e they had 2-4 HP).
You also didn't get to choose what form it took, something just showed up after you did the ritual.
Lesser Restoration should sort that out. :biggrin:
I dont mind if it's fairly strong, as long as it's within strength for the rest of my setting's races, i just didn't want to accidentally snap the game balance in half - but as far as i can tell the big risks are: Help action and Touch spells. So if i rule out owls, and say it has to be some sort of small woodland mammal (Rats, badgers, weasels, ferrets, foxes, etcera), that probably gives it a nice thematic feel and solves most of the potential risks - and hey, if players get clever with it, that's cool! Players should be allowed to do strong things.
Second question: One of hte races is going to be Mer. Seasnake Merfolk. I want to give them a venom spit. Compartive thing would be Dragonborn's breath attacks. If it's a spell attack roll that's single target rather than a cone, is bumping the dice up to d8 or d10s too strong?
For comparison:
Breath Weapon: You can use your action to exhale destructive energy. Your Draconic ancestry determines the size, shape, and damage type of the exhalation.
When you use your breath weapon, each creature in the area of the exhalation must make a saving throw, the type of which is determined by your Draconic ancestry. The DC for this saving throw equals 8 + your Constitution modifier + your Proficiency Bonus. A creature takes 2d6 damage on a failed save, and half as much damage on a successful one. The damage increases to 3d6 at 6th level, 4d6 at 11th level, and 5d6 at 16th level.
Seems like loosing the AoE and being able to miss competely are pretty big downsides, so bumping the dice up, or maybe giving it Proficncey bonus uses/short rest while sticking to d6s would be ways to rebalance it? (Poking around, it looks like the breath weapon is considered pretty underpowered, so pushing the dice up seems reasonble. I might actually make it 3d6 to start with, and increasing from there - that way it's a pretty attractive option, but not one that seems too broken - it's a cute nuke)
Edit: Duh. Bump the dice to 3d6, make it a bonus action, keep it limited to being an attack roll (probably working off Con), reloads on short rest. Very strong, but not gamebreaking, and Sea snakepeople who can spit venom at you is awesome. I'll probably give it like a 20ft range or similar - feels right for what's basically just hacking a lump of venom at people, and means no sniping anyone with it.
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It'd be weaker than Variant Human, as V.Human can take Ritual Caster (Wizard) with their free 1st-level feat.
So, I think its totally okay.
Elves for example:
It's Def not going to be the only feature old blood humans get. Man but by the book humans are so boring
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Stefano
Heavy on exploration of dungeon environments and their hazards (I've gotten a lot of use out of my ten foot pole), investigation into multiple leads, and problem solving to get past obstacles. When treasure is found it is frequently in the form of vast amounts of coin in hard to reach areas, necessitating figuring out how to actually retrieve it. Combat is common, but usually tactically simple. Roleplaying is light and we're generally given a summary of what an NPC said instead of Stefano acting it out (the group in general doesn't seem to be that interested in acting out their characters, though).
Caleb
Very roleplay heavy, to the point that we only ever had three combats, with the first in the sixth session (I was starting to wonder if we would ever fight anyone; it did free my wizard up to take a lot of noncombat spells, though). Lots of small worldbuilding details and scene setting. Frequent scenarios where there would be a social event with many NPCs to interact with (such as a party or a short demonstration at a mage college) or where we would have to wait on something and look around for things to do around the area to kill time (in one session I and another player looked around the wealthier part of a city and browsed in a bookstore while another character went on a date with the daughter of a leatherworker and another character went to get passenger reservations for the party on a ship coming into port the next day; the next session largely took place during the voyage and involved my low charisma gnome wizard badly trying to flirt with a gnome lady before going to watch a guy make barrels as the rest of the party just amused themselves giving a member of the crew a hard time). The only complaint I have is that the first few sessions took place in an area conducive to whacky situations, and after departing the rest of the world seemed more like a typical fantasy setting.
Adrian
This one was odd. The players were given the option to play as any creature Adrian didn't deem too powerful. He allowed me to play as a dybbuk (from Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes) warlock who could invoke their patron to cast any spell on the warlock spell list once per week. There was a lot of world building and locations to go to, but getting access to nearly any location was trivially easy thanks to public access teleportation circles linking every city and kings who would allow us to come right into their throne rooms whenever we wanted. The pace was extremely fast, too; I missed one session and when I attended next time I was informed that one character had become a weredragon and had obtained the intelligent sword Blackrazor and was being followed around by a demigoddess and another character was trapped in Carceri and had been replaced with a disguised chain devil and they had gotten a mechanical horse and carriage and a city had gotten blown up. It was an interesting experience, for sure, but it largely seemed like Adrian had established a few major locations and characters beforehand but made everything else up as he went. As a result there were times where it felt like the player characters had little agency while NPCs could do whatever Adrian wanted them to do. One of the other players was particularly bothered when he summoned a treant only for Adrian to declare that the enemy NPC destroyed it instantly without rolling any dice. There wasn't really any combat at all, the exploration was shallow, and there wasn't so much roleplaying as there was exposition. On the plus side, Adrian seemed like a nice dude who let me play a bizarre character who could dimension door at will, possess corpses, summon lesser demons, and got its pact patron to cast power word kill on a king I didn't like when I otherwise only had access to 3rd level spells.