Sure, but my question is, with the following DC scale for ability checks:
Very easy - 5
Easy - 10
Medium - 15
Hard - 20
Very hard - 25
Nearly impossible - 30
Is the unspoken intent here that this is the difficulty when doing skill checks, ie, ability check + proficiency + other bonuses, or is a WIS 20 character having a 50% chance of making a WIS check really "medium" difficult?
Must be a skill checks, otherwise "Nearly Impossible" would be literally impossible.
Natural 20's are always successes, though. And Natural 1's are always failures. So, no matter how able or skilled you are there is always a 5% of chance of success or failure.
Which is different than saying all 20's are critical sucesses, giving you something else on top of your success.
It's all checks, you're kindof expected to regularly fail things you're not actually trained to do. The difficulty ranges remain static across the leveling because you actually get better at stuff and eventually folks with expertise get to a point where only very hard and nearly impossible are able to stop you.
A DC 25 athletics check is just as impossible for a level 20 wizard as a level 1 wizard
I see too many DMs that arbitrarily make every check borderline impossible so the rogue or bard can still fail them with regularity, and it basically means everyone else in the party never has a chance
Your expert characters are probably going to succeed at most checks they have expertise in. That's how it is supposed to go, don't make every insight check a 22 because the Cleric is good at it, because the wizard should have a shot. Don't give every NPC opposing the players a pile of expertises to beat them, my avernus dm does this and I hate it. Players are EXCEPTIONALLY good at the things they are good at, Random-Shopkeeper in Starting-Village shouldn't have +8 to deception
The difficulty to climb that cliff face is 15 that doesn't change cause you leveled and gained strength or proficiency bonus on athletics it just means you're more likely to be able to climb it. Things have difficulty that are static and don't change as you level.
The difficulty to climb that cliff face is 15 that doesn't change cause you leveled and gained strength or proficiency bonus on athletics it just means you're more likely to be able to climb it. Things have difficulty that are static and don't change as you level.
This was true in 4E as well and it was a source of contention for some people with the way numbers scaled.
The idea though was that what your characters were supposed to be doing in the various tiers should change. Climbing a rock wall is always going to be a DC 15 (or whatever, can't remember the numbers) but eventually your characters would have like a +15 Athletics and literally couldn't fail. But the idea was that by the time they had those bonuses, the DM wasn't supposed to be challenging them with rock walls. They were supposed to be making them climb living colossi in the middle of a spellstorm or whatever.
5E doesn't have explicit tiers and doesn't scale in the same way though so it's all muddier, as is 5E's way.
That's why I was confused at the lack of scaling. Saying something is "Medium" difficulty when it doesn't take into account character levels or skills is a meaningless metric if you're still forced to do mental math to figure out if what you're asking might actually be a Serious Problem for a couple of characters.
Challenge Rating isn't perfect, but at least it's a rough guideline.
That's why I was confused at the lack of scaling. Saying something is "Medium" difficulty when it doesn't take into account character levels or skills is a meaningless metric if you're still forced to do mental math to figure out if what you're asking might actually be a Serious Problem for a couple of characters.
Challenge Rating isn't perfect, but at least it's a rough guideline.
"medium" difficulty means in general. It's not supposed to be like CR, it's supposed to keep DM's grounded. The challenge for sliding down a slippery hill without falling over doesn't get harder as the characters get better at doing thing, it remains a "medium" challenge forever
but per my point earlier, it probably remains a 50/50 for your wizard at max level without blowing a spell
Yeah, it's actually a lot easier to think of it as like, how would a commoner speak of this legend? How difficult were the feats of the heroes. Were they almost impossible was it beyond what most could do, was it something they've seen another skilled commoner do, is it something they could do, is it something anyone could do?
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gavindelThe reason all your softwareis brokenRegistered Userregular
Now i'm imagining a D&D oneshot where everyone plays buck-toothed commoners with nothing but a wagon and a burning hatred for small game animals on their deadly trip through strange lands.
O'ringen's Trail - dysentery provided free of charge.
Now i'm imagining a D&D oneshot where everyone plays buck-toothed commoners with nothing but a wagon and a burning hatred for small game animals on their deadly trip through strange lands.
O'ringen's Trail - dysentery provided free of charge.
One of the best D&D one-shots I ever ran was where each player was a 0-level commoner working a farm.
It was a horror story in which a single goblin was killing live-stock on the farm.
Let me tell y'all, its real easy to crank the fear factor up when everyone has just 4 hp and no defensive stats at all
I started my curse of strahd game (pre-strahd ruling barovia) with the characters as teenagers in Barovia (they ended up dying and being resurrected 400 years after strahd's turning) skipping through time until they were in early 20s and it Sergei and Tatyana's wedding was announced, building a small amount of renown each time
so the first fight they faced was as level 1 (of 4) commoners. A level 1 commoner has 3 "I don't die" points, not hitpoints, and they were up against a pair of mangy wolves
The second threat, during the vignette 2 years later, was a wounded goblin scout. They tripped her with a rope concealed in some brush and instead of killing her dragged her back to town and nursed her back to health. Third vignette, a few years later, her working on the farm, Rogue proposes marriage because she's a fucking good thief and he appreciates that
Cut to, last session, now 402 years in the future, strahd's barovia, just finished amber temple, etc - they started tracking down the mysterious swamp witch, Baba Lysaga, the woman who killed the warlock originally, they follow the rumors of the swamp witch to berez to find........
Rogue's goblin wife! Kept herself alive with goat blood rituals for 400 years, learned it from Lysaga, who's fucked off to the Barovian feywild because Goblin Wife is a hardcore dangerous swamp witch that scares her. Stole her chicken hut.
Speaking of Cos...we killed Irena last week. I felt really bad about that. We were at the decision point where either Irena could have been saved by her true love and her soul escaped the horrible cycle of rebirth that is Ravenloft or.... something else.
I stayed agonizingly quiet at this point because I knew the whole story behind the soul-ed and soulless in Ravenloft and how Irena was Tatiana reborn again and again. I didn't want to influence the party's actions here because our DM has slipping that info to us in small hints. Continued behind the spoiler just in case.
What I didn't know was the two outcomes possible here.
So, we're at the Abbey at the blessed pond trying to find Irena's boyfriend Sergei. Turns out Sergi was not a real boy anymore but rather reconciled with his original life/soul as Strahds brother and Tatiana's love.
He found a way to escape the horror of Ravenloft and waited for his love to join him.
We get her there and they have a reunion while standing knee deep in the pond.I back off, with difficulty my DM both laughed at and appreciated, I shut up and let the rest of the players handle the narrative. I thought here is where the rest of the players learn about the cycle of souls being reborn and the whole story behind Strahd and his brother and Tatiana/Irena. Nay nay.
Instead, this was where we would SAVE Irena. If only we let her and Sergei embrace and be together. Nope, the party, having seen enough of how Ravenloft fucks us over, decided the the spirit coming up out of the holy lake was an evil spirit and stopped them from being together.
Strahd, catching wind of what was about to happen, appears as a giant cloud and drops a fuck-off lightning bolt on ththe pond. Obliterating the holy site, Sergei and Irena, and dropping almost all of us to less than 10hp. We agonize for a bit and try to heal her but, of course, it was too late.
And here the DM let's us know OOC that this was a scripted moment. If we had let the two embrace, they would have sunk into the pool and forever escape the curse and their souls would finally have lived happily ever after. But nope. We meddles because we have been taught to trust nothing in this world and now their souls are doomed to once again be reborn and go through all this shit again.
I genuinely felt really bad about this one. If this was a computer game I'd be going to look for a previous save.
If I wanted to read a novel about Lolthite drow society and the Underdark, what would be my best bet? I'm seeing an older novel about Drizzt called Homeland and a newer one called Archmage that apparently is a prequel to Out of the Abyss.
archmage is a good one for newer events happening that have happened in published modules, I believe that's the one that sets off Out of the Abyss. Homeland trilogy is largely dedicated to (noble) Drow society
the newest 5 books are all about how much of a lie that society is, and we see things from the point of view of the common drow, who mostly don't give a shit about Lolth. Even Lolthian priestesses among the commoners are willing to discuss their faith in a more frank manner, and treat males with more respect (basically, all of the worst aspects of drow society are a thousand times worse among the nobility)
My campaign is set in Exandria, where Lolthite drow society is pretty much in shambles and losing ground to various aberrations. I thought it would be interesting to read about how Lolthite drow society is presented in the Forgotten Realms and imagine how the corresponding civilizations in Exandria would react to their own fall.
One major difference is that, whereas driders in default D&D are outcasts cursed by Lolth, in Exandria they come into being when drow desperate for the strength to survive drink from rare pools of her divine blood. I could imagine these driders still being scorned for relying on scavenging for Lolth's blood as opposed to improving their martial and magical skills.
I also spent an unprecedented amount of time yesterday statting up a new monster; a giant drider vampire warlock who can turn drow she kills into drider vampire spawn. I intend for her to have been a failed experiment by a desperate drow city who wanted to convert weak drow into drider footsoldiers without needing Lolth's blood to produce them.
drow society as presented in Homeland trilogy is more or less identical to the Exandrian drow, with the exception that their drow society is under constant siege in Exandria where it isn't in FR
in the book archmage or the one right before it the matron mother of the city just fills the place with demons to cause chaos and it's kind of about that fucked for a while
override367 on
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gavindelThe reason all your softwareis brokenRegistered Userregular
Drow always feel so confused to me. Like teenaged "I want to be dark and edgy and wear a trenchcoat but also I want to be accepted and have friends and not be devoured by my slavemaster's pet tarantula" confused. Are drow supposed to be a reflection of a dark and decadent society beneath the earth? A horror story of oppression by blood thirsty underworld savages? Madmen cultists burning the world for their god? An excuse for some seriously heavy-duty femdom roleplay? Half of these versions of their society collapse in fifty years of treachery; the other half become a variant on excursions into the Faewild with bondage thrown in.
Drow got shafted on racial powers with sunlight sensitivity in 5e, and suddenly they dropped to the bottom of the stack. Time to go be a tiefling so I can explain how oppressed I am to my friends as we murder a demigod.
Drow always feel so confused to me. Like teenaged "I want to be dark and edgy and wear a trenchcoat but also I want to be accepted and have friends and not be devoured by my slavemaster's pet tarantula" confused. Are drow supposed to be a reflection of a dark and decadent society beneath the earth? A horror story of oppression by blood thirsty underworld savages? Madmen cultists burning the world for their god? An excuse for some seriously heavy-duty femdom roleplay? Half of these versions of their society collapse in fifty years of treachery; the other half become a variant on excursions into the Faewild with bondage thrown in.
Drow got shafted on racial powers with sunlight sensitivity in 5e, and suddenly they dropped to the bottom of the stack. Time to go be a tiefling so I can explain how oppressed I am to my friends as we murder a demigod.
the Drow always seem to come together against common threats in the FR before they hit calamity, and as the stories go on and you get some more nuance, every drow house has its own level of "Devotion" to the spider queen, with the house all the way at the top that effectively runs the city mostly going through the motions. Of course they believe in the spider queen, she gives them power, but almost everything they do is rooted in pragmatism and not worship. They openly violate Lolth's supposed edicts, by doing things like kidnapping fighters and priestesses from doomed houses that are *supposed* to be wiped out by the law, and nobody calls them on it because they have the biggest stick.
Something I appreciate, given how hard they emphasize the incredible coordination of Drow forces in combat, is that they very rarely leave soldiers behind if they can avoid it, and even the loss of a dozen common drow soldiers in a battle is reported to the matron mother of the city and seen as a failure. Sure, they feel that way because losses are seen as failures on their part (although all the drow-perspective stories in the 2014-2017 books, when the weapons master of Xorlarrin falls, his friends legitimately mourn his loss in a way they are not emotionally equipped to handle, and so turn it all to anger, because Toxic Masculinity for lack of a better term is forced on all Drow, male and female), not because they care about the people, but given how they're typically portrayed you would think that in warfare the houses would be constantly stabbing each other in the back - where as they seem to reserve disagreements (that lead to bloodshed) until everyone is back in the city and has the safety of their walls
I feel like over the years Salvatore has gone into plenty of detail on the knifes edge between utter chaos and the maintaining of order necessary to actually have a civilization.
The final plotline in (what was supposedly) Salvatore's last book being the acceptance of the fact that their society and civilization would be a true powerhouse if not for their mad worship of a crazy goddess, one who's perfectly happy to give cleric powers to anyone who exalts her, regardless of whether or not they care about spiders (they didn't even used to like spiders, the demon spider thing was a *punishment*, it'd be like if Christians constantly depicted jesus with the thing that killed... oh nevermind)
edit: I wish Salvatore had had the stuff about how drow commoners live way back when, the absolute insanity of ambitious houses like Drizzt's are as alien to the way of life of a Menzoberranzan commoner as they are to us. Quiet moments like Zaknafaen and his girlfriend lying in bed despairing over the hopelessness of their city, about how it feels like there's no way out and no future worth a damned for their entire species, shit like that makes the whacko bondage gang at the top feel more real, because *none of them* enjoy their way of life, except the true sadists like Drizzt's mother and the male wizards whove found a life of relative freedom in their art
Drow always feel so confused to me. Like teenaged "I want to be dark and edgy and wear a trenchcoat but also I want to be accepted and have friends and not be devoured by my slavemaster's pet tarantula" confused. Are drow supposed to be a reflection of a dark and decadent society beneath the earth? A horror story of oppression by blood thirsty underworld savages? Madmen cultists burning the world for their god? An excuse for some seriously heavy-duty femdom roleplay? Half of these versions of their society collapse in fifty years of treachery; the other half become a variant on excursions into the Faewild with bondage thrown in.
Drow got shafted on racial powers with sunlight sensitivity in 5e, and suddenly they dropped to the bottom of the stack. Time to go be a tiefling so I can explain how oppressed I am to my friends as we murder a demigod.
the Drow always seem to come together against common threats in the FR before they hit calamity, and as the stories go on and you get some more nuance, every drow house has its own level of "Devotion" to the spider queen, with the house all the way at the top that effectively runs the city mostly going through the motions. Of course they believe in the spider queen, she gives them power, but almost everything they do is rooted in pragmatism and not worship. They openly violate Lolth's supposed edicts, by doing things like kidnapping fighters and priestesses from doomed houses that are *supposed* to be wiped out by the law, and nobody calls them on it because they have the biggest stick.
Something I appreciate, given how hard they emphasize the incredible coordination of Drow forces in combat, is that they very rarely leave soldiers behind if they can avoid it, and even the loss of a dozen common drow soldiers in a battle is reported to the matron mother of the city and seen as a failure. Sure, they feel that way because losses are seen as failures on their part (although all the drow-perspective stories in the 2014-2017 books, when the weapons master of Xorlarrin falls, his friends legitimately mourn his loss in a way they are not emotionally equipped to handle, and so turn it all to anger, because Toxic Masculinity for lack of a better term is forced on all Drow, male and female), not because they care about the people, but given how they're typically portrayed you would think that in warfare the houses would be constantly stabbing each other in the back - where as they seem to reserve disagreements (that lead to bloodshed) until everyone is back in the city and has the safety of their walls
I feel like over the years Salvatore has gone into plenty of detail on the knifes edge between utter chaos and the maintaining of order necessary to actually have a civilization.
The final plotline in (what was supposedly) Salvatore's last book being the acceptance of the fact that their society and civilization would be a true powerhouse if not for their mad worship of a crazy goddess, one who's perfectly happy to give cleric powers to anyone who exalts her, regardless of whether or not they care about spiders (they didn't even used to like spiders, the demon spider thing was a *punishment*, it'd be like if Christians constantly depicted jesus with the thing that killed... oh nevermind)
edit: I wish Salvatore had had the stuff about how drow commoners live way back when, the absolute insanity of ambitious houses like Drizzt's are as alien to the way of life of a Menzoberranzan commoner as they are to us. Quiet moments like Zaknafaen and his girlfriend lying in bed despairing over the hopelessness of their city, about how it feels like there's no way out and no future worth a damned for their entire species, shit like that makes the whacko bondage gang at the top feel more real, because *none of them* enjoy their way of life, except the true sadists like Drizzt's mother and the male wizards whove found a life of relative freedom in their art
So in my Exandria campaign I've established there are numerous drow refugees from a destroyed city, one where most of the nobility died. As of right now I've only said that they are occupying a portion of the ruins of a minotaur labyrinth city and are largely keeping to themselves. The drow NPCs I have detailed are a wizard from the destroyed city who hates all gods, a priestess of Erathis who has completely rebelled against Lolthite society, a tunnel witch who has come from one of the last major drow cities to try and lead the drow in conquering the area, and a former Lolthite priestess in training who converted to worship of the Raven Queen (but has carried over certain ideas from her training under a priestess of Lolth, resulting in a heretical sect).
As someone who clearly knows a lot more about the representation of the drow in literature than I do, how would you portray these drow refugees? Would they be stand-offish as I've so far portrayed them, would they be more open, would they even want to participate in a society where they aren't on top, etc?
edit: I wish Salvatore had had the stuff about how drow commoners live way back when, the absolute insanity of ambitious houses like Drizzt's are as alien to the way of life of a Menzoberranzan commoner as they are to us. Quiet moments like Zaknafaen and his girlfriend lying in bed despairing over the hopelessness of their city, about how it feels like there's no way out and no future worth a damned for their entire species, shit like that makes the whacko bondage gang at the top feel more real, because *none of them* enjoy their way of life, except the true sadists like Drizzt's mother and the male wizards whove found a life of relative freedom in their art
Did you read "Relentless"? Because this is exactly the sort of detail he goes in to.
It also has a pretty incredible "twist" if you can call it that regarding the true nature of Lolth.
In the 4E book Menzoberranzan does it do a deep dive into the city and if they have towns or outposts or hamlets as well as a breakdown of their society?
I remember the book that came out in the 90's and how proto edgelord it was but I just remember some of the items [as well as making drider jokes from then
I still want to get it just for the lore if the above is true in some fashion
edit: I wish Salvatore had had the stuff about how drow commoners live way back when, the absolute insanity of ambitious houses like Drizzt's are as alien to the way of life of a Menzoberranzan commoner as they are to us. Quiet moments like Zaknafaen and his girlfriend lying in bed despairing over the hopelessness of their city, about how it feels like there's no way out and no future worth a damned for their entire species, shit like that makes the whacko bondage gang at the top feel more real, because *none of them* enjoy their way of life, except the true sadists like Drizzt's mother and the male wizards whove found a life of relative freedom in their art
Did you read "Relentless"? Because this is exactly the sort of detail he goes in to.
It also has a pretty incredible "twist" if you can call it that regarding the true nature of Lolth.
yeah I was saying that if that stuff had been earlier it would have been better
there are a lot of people on reddit that are mad at the ending but I just want a published module about what the fuck is going to happen to the drow next
Drow always feel so confused to me. Like teenaged "I want to be dark and edgy and wear a trenchcoat but also I want to be accepted and have friends and not be devoured by my slavemaster's pet tarantula" confused. Are drow supposed to be a reflection of a dark and decadent society beneath the earth? A horror story of oppression by blood thirsty underworld savages? Madmen cultists burning the world for their god? An excuse for some seriously heavy-duty femdom roleplay? Half of these versions of their society collapse in fifty years of treachery; the other half become a variant on excursions into the Faewild with bondage thrown in.
Drow got shafted on racial powers with sunlight sensitivity in 5e, and suddenly they dropped to the bottom of the stack. Time to go be a tiefling so I can explain how oppressed I am to my friends as we murder a demigod.
the Drow always seem to come together against common threats in the FR before they hit calamity, and as the stories go on and you get some more nuance, every drow house has its own level of "Devotion" to the spider queen, with the house all the way at the top that effectively runs the city mostly going through the motions. Of course they believe in the spider queen, she gives them power, but almost everything they do is rooted in pragmatism and not worship. They openly violate Lolth's supposed edicts, by doing things like kidnapping fighters and priestesses from doomed houses that are *supposed* to be wiped out by the law, and nobody calls them on it because they have the biggest stick.
Something I appreciate, given how hard they emphasize the incredible coordination of Drow forces in combat, is that they very rarely leave soldiers behind if they can avoid it, and even the loss of a dozen common drow soldiers in a battle is reported to the matron mother of the city and seen as a failure. Sure, they feel that way because losses are seen as failures on their part (although all the drow-perspective stories in the 2014-2017 books, when the weapons master of Xorlarrin falls, his friends legitimately mourn his loss in a way they are not emotionally equipped to handle, and so turn it all to anger, because Toxic Masculinity for lack of a better term is forced on all Drow, male and female), not because they care about the people, but given how they're typically portrayed you would think that in warfare the houses would be constantly stabbing each other in the back - where as they seem to reserve disagreements (that lead to bloodshed) until everyone is back in the city and has the safety of their walls
I feel like over the years Salvatore has gone into plenty of detail on the knifes edge between utter chaos and the maintaining of order necessary to actually have a civilization.
The final plotline in (what was supposedly) Salvatore's last book being the acceptance of the fact that their society and civilization would be a true powerhouse if not for their mad worship of a crazy goddess, one who's perfectly happy to give cleric powers to anyone who exalts her, regardless of whether or not they care about spiders (they didn't even used to like spiders, the demon spider thing was a *punishment*, it'd be like if Christians constantly depicted jesus with the thing that killed... oh nevermind)
edit: I wish Salvatore had had the stuff about how drow commoners live way back when, the absolute insanity of ambitious houses like Drizzt's are as alien to the way of life of a Menzoberranzan commoner as they are to us. Quiet moments like Zaknafaen and his girlfriend lying in bed despairing over the hopelessness of their city, about how it feels like there's no way out and no future worth a damned for their entire species, shit like that makes the whacko bondage gang at the top feel more real, because *none of them* enjoy their way of life, except the true sadists like Drizzt's mother and the male wizards whove found a life of relative freedom in their art
So in my Exandria campaign I've established there are numerous drow refugees from a destroyed city, one where most of the nobility died. As of right now I've only said that they are occupying a portion of the ruins of a minotaur labyrinth city and are largely keeping to themselves. The drow NPCs I have detailed are a wizard from the destroyed city who hates all gods, a priestess of Erathis who has completely rebelled against Lolthite society, a tunnel witch who has come from one of the last major drow cities to try and lead the drow in conquering the area, and a former Lolthite priestess in training who converted to worship of the Raven Queen (but has carried over certain ideas from her training under a priestess of Lolth, resulting in a heretical sect).
As someone who clearly knows a lot more about the representation of the drow in literature than I do, how would you portray these drow refugees? Would they be stand-offish as I've so far portrayed them, would they be more open, would they even want to participate in a society where they aren't on top, etc?
If they're not nobles, they'd be living in absolute, abject terror of both nobles of another city finding them and taking them as slaves, or being discovered by Syngorn. Drow believe their surface cousins are incredibly evil, they believe they feast on the flesh of infants and the kinds of things drow do as torture, they do for fun (which, yeah some drow do, but that's the exception not the rule). They believe they were driven underground to avoid extinction because of their genocidal surface brothers.
Noble Drow would almost certainly seek out a large clan of goblins or something, subjugate them, and use them to maintain their desired lifestyle (commoners would have an inclination to do the same thing, but probably lack the slave task masters and skilled strike groups necessary)
Thing is they wouldn't really be wrong in their, based on how I read Syngorn, I think the surface elves would assume this was a trick to get them to lower their guard or something
There are drow that live in human society in Tal'dorei and just live their lives like anyone else, so there is a way forward for their society. Tal'dorei has huge sparsely populated regions that have easy access to cave systems and are downright peaceful compared to the underdark where they could make their lives, but most drow know NOTHING about the surface and would be fucking terrified at trying to find a safe place
Yeah, going by the Tal'Dorei book neither Syngorn nor Kraghammer seem like particular tolerant places. I was honestly a little shocked at how shitty Kraghammer is to non-dwarves, and if I recall correctly the standard practice in Syngorn is to kill drow on sight (plus half-elves are derisively known as "Illbloods"). Lyrengorn and Uthodurn sound much, much nicer.
I don't recall ever hearing that drow are terrified of surface elves in Tal'Dorei, but given Syngorn I guess it makes sense. One of my players is running a shadar-kai. I wonder how the drow would react to them.
I havent seen anything to prove or disprove it, but I think Matt probably kept that part
fear of the surface races by employing the good old fascist projection strategy keeps the bulk of their society from just saying "well fuck this" and moving to the surface
the only time most drow would see surfacers is during a war, in which case they'd be facing surfacers seeking vengeance, because ofc Lolth's followers would have started it, probably brutally. A big thing in the Homeland books is how much Drizzt is taught to hate surface elves, and how he revels in the idea of sneaking up to the surface to kill some of them in a great battle
Just learned there's a real animal called the scaly foot snail that lives in undersea volcanic vents and grows iron armor on its shell and flesh due to symbiotic bacteria. My desire to get a giant snail miniature just increased 100%.
I've been playing a lot of Baldur's Gate 3, and for my last session I run before I get swamped by schoolwork I want to incorporate a lot of verticality to the battle map, especially since one of my players runs a shadar-kai monk with the mobile feat.
I usually use removable adhesive to stick Dungeon Tiles to a piece of black posterboard, so this time I'm cutting up pieces of an older, beat-up posterboard to stack on top of one another before adhering the tiles on top. I've decided that each piece of posterboard beneath a tile results in an elevation increase of 5 feet. At present I've got some water directly on the main posterboard, then the surrounding shore at 5 feet, then stairs that elevate at a slope to a platform at 25 feet.
It's...honestly a lot more time consuming than I expected. I'm sure I could have figured out an easier way to do this, but I'll post my results when I'm finished.
Hexmage-PA on
+5
webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
I'm pretty sure I didn't post this back in the holiday forums, but I finally got my Dispel dice. They are amazing!
I would LOVE to spend $$$ on snazzy dice. But that is one expense that I simply cannot justify.
Good for you!
Yea It was a Birthday present to myself back in 2019. I will say, I wish other dice used the same font and size that these do. They are SO easy to read.
I would LOVE to spend $$$ on snazzy dice. But that is one expense that I simply cannot justify.
Good for you!
Yea It was a Birthday present to myself back in 2019. I will say, I wish other dice used the same font and size that these do. They are SO easy to read.
This has been my #1 reason why I stopped buying 'fancy' dice, after getting a set where each die is about the size of a ping-pong ball. I don't have time to squint at my dice in my old-ass age!
Bonus, the dice are individually dangerous enough to be a real thrown threat at my players when they do stupid shit.
Nips on
+8
webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
I would LOVE to spend $$$ on snazzy dice. But that is one expense that I simply cannot justify.
Good for you!
Yea It was a Birthday present to myself back in 2019. I will say, I wish other dice used the same font and size that these do. They are SO easy to read.
This has been my #1 reason why I stopped buying 'fancy' dice, after getting a set where each die is about the size of a ping-pong ball. I don't have time to squint at my dice in my old-ass age!
Bonus, the dice are individually dangerous enough to be a real thrown threat at my players when they do stupid shit.
Yea I've set aside all my dice that have unpainted numbers. They are exclusively for giving to new folks getting into D&D now.
I would LOVE to spend $$$ on snazzy dice. But that is one expense that I simply cannot justify.
Good for you!
Yea It was a Birthday present to myself back in 2019. I will say, I wish other dice used the same font and size that these do. They are SO easy to read.
I see a lot of beautiful dice on my Instagram feed and fully 83% look useless in a practical game situation.
I would LOVE to spend $$$ on snazzy dice. But that is one expense that I simply cannot justify.
Good for you!
Yea It was a Birthday present to myself back in 2019. I will say, I wish other dice used the same font and size that these do. They are SO easy to read.
I see a lot of beautiful dice on my Instagram feed and fully 83% look useless in a practical game situation.
I have looked at so many dice on Etsy and I want all of them. The glass ones in particular
I got 20 sets of dice for $20 online (from wish or something like that). They took a month to arrive but at least 10 of the sets have nice high contrast numbers.
+1
webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
I have enough dice now that I only buy a new set anymore for a long term campaign, for a new character. Honestly these ones don't match the character I'll be playing in the Rhyme campaign later this year when we can all get back together. I still need to find a set for that character.
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Natural 20's are always successes, though. And Natural 1's are always failures. So, no matter how able or skilled you are there is always a 5% of chance of success or failure.
Which is different than saying all 20's are critical sucesses, giving you something else on top of your success.
You know. Its been really hard to get that house rule out of my head.
A DC 25 athletics check is just as impossible for a level 20 wizard as a level 1 wizard
I see too many DMs that arbitrarily make every check borderline impossible so the rogue or bard can still fail them with regularity, and it basically means everyone else in the party never has a chance
Your expert characters are probably going to succeed at most checks they have expertise in. That's how it is supposed to go, don't make every insight check a 22 because the Cleric is good at it, because the wizard should have a shot. Don't give every NPC opposing the players a pile of expertises to beat them, my avernus dm does this and I hate it. Players are EXCEPTIONALLY good at the things they are good at, Random-Shopkeeper in Starting-Village shouldn't have +8 to deception
In this edition it is.
The difficulty to climb that cliff face is 15 that doesn't change cause you leveled and gained strength or proficiency bonus on athletics it just means you're more likely to be able to climb it. Things have difficulty that are static and don't change as you level.
This was true in 4E as well and it was a source of contention for some people with the way numbers scaled.
The idea though was that what your characters were supposed to be doing in the various tiers should change. Climbing a rock wall is always going to be a DC 15 (or whatever, can't remember the numbers) but eventually your characters would have like a +15 Athletics and literally couldn't fail. But the idea was that by the time they had those bonuses, the DM wasn't supposed to be challenging them with rock walls. They were supposed to be making them climb living colossi in the middle of a spellstorm or whatever.
5E doesn't have explicit tiers and doesn't scale in the same way though so it's all muddier, as is 5E's way.
Challenge Rating isn't perfect, but at least it's a rough guideline.
"medium" difficulty means in general. It's not supposed to be like CR, it's supposed to keep DM's grounded. The challenge for sliding down a slippery hill without falling over doesn't get harder as the characters get better at doing thing, it remains a "medium" challenge forever
but per my point earlier, it probably remains a 50/50 for your wizard at max level without blowing a spell
O'ringen's Trail - dysentery provided free of charge.
One of the best D&D one-shots I ever ran was where each player was a 0-level commoner working a farm.
It was a horror story in which a single goblin was killing live-stock on the farm.
Let me tell y'all, its real easy to crank the fear factor up when everyone has just 4 hp and no defensive stats at all
so the first fight they faced was as level 1 (of 4) commoners. A level 1 commoner has 3 "I don't die" points, not hitpoints, and they were up against a pair of mangy wolves
The second threat, during the vignette 2 years later, was a wounded goblin scout. They tripped her with a rope concealed in some brush and instead of killing her dragged her back to town and nursed her back to health. Third vignette, a few years later, her working on the farm, Rogue proposes marriage because she's a fucking good thief and he appreciates that
Cut to, last session, now 402 years in the future, strahd's barovia, just finished amber temple, etc - they started tracking down the mysterious swamp witch, Baba Lysaga, the woman who killed the warlock originally, they follow the rumors of the swamp witch to berez to find........
Rogue's goblin wife! Kept herself alive with goat blood rituals for 400 years, learned it from Lysaga, who's fucked off to the Barovian feywild because Goblin Wife is a hardcore dangerous swamp witch that scares her. Stole her chicken hut.
I stayed agonizingly quiet at this point because I knew the whole story behind the soul-ed and soulless in Ravenloft and how Irena was Tatiana reborn again and again. I didn't want to influence the party's actions here because our DM has slipping that info to us in small hints. Continued behind the spoiler just in case.
So, we're at the Abbey at the blessed pond trying to find Irena's boyfriend Sergei. Turns out Sergi was not a real boy anymore but rather reconciled with his original life/soul as Strahds brother and Tatiana's love.
He found a way to escape the horror of Ravenloft and waited for his love to join him.
We get her there and they have a reunion while standing knee deep in the pond.I back off, with difficulty my DM both laughed at and appreciated, I shut up and let the rest of the players handle the narrative. I thought here is where the rest of the players learn about the cycle of souls being reborn and the whole story behind Strahd and his brother and Tatiana/Irena. Nay nay.
Instead, this was where we would SAVE Irena. If only we let her and Sergei embrace and be together. Nope, the party, having seen enough of how Ravenloft fucks us over, decided the the spirit coming up out of the holy lake was an evil spirit and stopped them from being together.
Strahd, catching wind of what was about to happen, appears as a giant cloud and drops a fuck-off lightning bolt on ththe pond. Obliterating the holy site, Sergei and Irena, and dropping almost all of us to less than 10hp. We agonize for a bit and try to heal her but, of course, it was too late.
And here the DM let's us know OOC that this was a scripted moment. If we had let the two embrace, they would have sunk into the pool and forever escape the curse and their souls would finally have lived happily ever after. But nope. We meddles because we have been taught to trust nothing in this world and now their souls are doomed to once again be reborn and go through all this shit again.
I genuinely felt really bad about this one. If this was a computer game I'd be going to look for a previous save.
the newest 5 books are all about how much of a lie that society is, and we see things from the point of view of the common drow, who mostly don't give a shit about Lolth. Even Lolthian priestesses among the commoners are willing to discuss their faith in a more frank manner, and treat males with more respect (basically, all of the worst aspects of drow society are a thousand times worse among the nobility)
One major difference is that, whereas driders in default D&D are outcasts cursed by Lolth, in Exandria they come into being when drow desperate for the strength to survive drink from rare pools of her divine blood. I could imagine these driders still being scorned for relying on scavenging for Lolth's blood as opposed to improving their martial and magical skills.
I also spent an unprecedented amount of time yesterday statting up a new monster; a giant drider vampire warlock who can turn drow she kills into drider vampire spawn. I intend for her to have been a failed experiment by a desperate drow city who wanted to convert weak drow into drider footsoldiers without needing Lolth's blood to produce them.
in the book archmage or the one right before it the matron mother of the city just fills the place with demons to cause chaos and it's kind of about that fucked for a while
Drow got shafted on racial powers with sunlight sensitivity in 5e, and suddenly they dropped to the bottom of the stack. Time to go be a tiefling so I can explain how oppressed I am to my friends as we murder a demigod.
the Drow always seem to come together against common threats in the FR before they hit calamity, and as the stories go on and you get some more nuance, every drow house has its own level of "Devotion" to the spider queen, with the house all the way at the top that effectively runs the city mostly going through the motions. Of course they believe in the spider queen, she gives them power, but almost everything they do is rooted in pragmatism and not worship. They openly violate Lolth's supposed edicts, by doing things like kidnapping fighters and priestesses from doomed houses that are *supposed* to be wiped out by the law, and nobody calls them on it because they have the biggest stick.
Something I appreciate, given how hard they emphasize the incredible coordination of Drow forces in combat, is that they very rarely leave soldiers behind if they can avoid it, and even the loss of a dozen common drow soldiers in a battle is reported to the matron mother of the city and seen as a failure. Sure, they feel that way because losses are seen as failures on their part (although all the drow-perspective stories in the 2014-2017 books, when the weapons master of Xorlarrin falls, his friends legitimately mourn his loss in a way they are not emotionally equipped to handle, and so turn it all to anger, because Toxic Masculinity for lack of a better term is forced on all Drow, male and female), not because they care about the people, but given how they're typically portrayed you would think that in warfare the houses would be constantly stabbing each other in the back - where as they seem to reserve disagreements (that lead to bloodshed) until everyone is back in the city and has the safety of their walls
I feel like over the years Salvatore has gone into plenty of detail on the knifes edge between utter chaos and the maintaining of order necessary to actually have a civilization.
The final plotline in (what was supposedly) Salvatore's last book being the acceptance of the fact that their society and civilization would be a true powerhouse if not for their mad worship of a crazy goddess, one who's perfectly happy to give cleric powers to anyone who exalts her, regardless of whether or not they care about spiders (they didn't even used to like spiders, the demon spider thing was a *punishment*, it'd be like if Christians constantly depicted jesus with the thing that killed... oh nevermind)
edit: I wish Salvatore had had the stuff about how drow commoners live way back when, the absolute insanity of ambitious houses like Drizzt's are as alien to the way of life of a Menzoberranzan commoner as they are to us. Quiet moments like Zaknafaen and his girlfriend lying in bed despairing over the hopelessness of their city, about how it feels like there's no way out and no future worth a damned for their entire species, shit like that makes the whacko bondage gang at the top feel more real, because *none of them* enjoy their way of life, except the true sadists like Drizzt's mother and the male wizards whove found a life of relative freedom in their art
So in my Exandria campaign I've established there are numerous drow refugees from a destroyed city, one where most of the nobility died. As of right now I've only said that they are occupying a portion of the ruins of a minotaur labyrinth city and are largely keeping to themselves. The drow NPCs I have detailed are a wizard from the destroyed city who hates all gods, a priestess of Erathis who has completely rebelled against Lolthite society, a tunnel witch who has come from one of the last major drow cities to try and lead the drow in conquering the area, and a former Lolthite priestess in training who converted to worship of the Raven Queen (but has carried over certain ideas from her training under a priestess of Lolth, resulting in a heretical sect).
As someone who clearly knows a lot more about the representation of the drow in literature than I do, how would you portray these drow refugees? Would they be stand-offish as I've so far portrayed them, would they be more open, would they even want to participate in a society where they aren't on top, etc?
Did you read "Relentless"? Because this is exactly the sort of detail he goes in to.
It also has a pretty incredible "twist" if you can call it that regarding the true nature of Lolth.
I remember the book that came out in the 90's and how proto edgelord it was but I just remember some of the items [as well as making drider jokes from then
I still want to get it just for the lore if the above is true in some fashion
yeah I was saying that if that stuff had been earlier it would have been better
there are a lot of people on reddit that are mad at the ending but I just want a published module about what the fuck is going to happen to the drow next
If they're not nobles, they'd be living in absolute, abject terror of both nobles of another city finding them and taking them as slaves, or being discovered by Syngorn. Drow believe their surface cousins are incredibly evil, they believe they feast on the flesh of infants and the kinds of things drow do as torture, they do for fun (which, yeah some drow do, but that's the exception not the rule). They believe they were driven underground to avoid extinction because of their genocidal surface brothers.
Noble Drow would almost certainly seek out a large clan of goblins or something, subjugate them, and use them to maintain their desired lifestyle (commoners would have an inclination to do the same thing, but probably lack the slave task masters and skilled strike groups necessary)
Thing is they wouldn't really be wrong in their, based on how I read Syngorn, I think the surface elves would assume this was a trick to get them to lower their guard or something
There are drow that live in human society in Tal'dorei and just live their lives like anyone else, so there is a way forward for their society. Tal'dorei has huge sparsely populated regions that have easy access to cave systems and are downright peaceful compared to the underdark where they could make their lives, but most drow know NOTHING about the surface and would be fucking terrified at trying to find a safe place
I don't recall ever hearing that drow are terrified of surface elves in Tal'Dorei, but given Syngorn I guess it makes sense. One of my players is running a shadar-kai. I wonder how the drow would react to them.
fear of the surface races by employing the good old fascist projection strategy keeps the bulk of their society from just saying "well fuck this" and moving to the surface
the only time most drow would see surfacers is during a war, in which case they'd be facing surfacers seeking vengeance, because ofc Lolth's followers would have started it, probably brutally. A big thing in the Homeland books is how much Drizzt is taught to hate surface elves, and how he revels in the idea of sneaking up to the surface to kill some of them in a great battle
I usually use removable adhesive to stick Dungeon Tiles to a piece of black posterboard, so this time I'm cutting up pieces of an older, beat-up posterboard to stack on top of one another before adhering the tiles on top. I've decided that each piece of posterboard beneath a tile results in an elevation increase of 5 feet. At present I've got some water directly on the main posterboard, then the surrounding shore at 5 feet, then stairs that elevate at a slope to a platform at 25 feet.
It's...honestly a lot more time consuming than I expected. I'm sure I could have figured out an easier way to do this, but I'll post my results when I'm finished.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
Good for you!
Yea It was a Birthday present to myself back in 2019. I will say, I wish other dice used the same font and size that these do. They are SO easy to read.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
This has been my #1 reason why I stopped buying 'fancy' dice, after getting a set where each die is about the size of a ping-pong ball. I don't have time to squint at my dice in my old-ass age!
Bonus, the dice are individually dangerous enough to be a real thrown threat at my players when they do stupid shit.
Yea I've set aside all my dice that have unpainted numbers. They are exclusively for giving to new folks getting into D&D now.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
I see a lot of beautiful dice on my Instagram feed and fully 83% look useless in a practical game situation.
I have looked at so many dice on Etsy and I want all of them. The glass ones in particular
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981