The General D&D thread

Well...I just had my first character death this afternoon in our group's Curse of Strahd campaign. Without spoiling too much, three of our four-person party split to take out one of Strahd's supposedly more important underlings, while a certain vampire hunter and our monk refused to go along. Instead of running into an underling we figured we could take on we encountered The Dragon himself instead, which wasn't helped by the fact that our Wizard had turned traitor awhile ago. My character had his suspicions, but unfortunately we both died before we could tell the rest of the party of her betrayal. My drow rogue was cut in half in the fight, so I can only hope that I'll return as a Drider miniboss later on.

After the fact, it appears that the aforementioned spoiler character knew more than he let on about the situation and let us go and get ourselves killed anyway, so I'm a little miffed at our DM and his roleplaying of a lot of the NPC's decisions throughout the story, really - mostly "allies" being uninformative and uncooperative for no apparent reason, and villains being aggressive at the first sign of insult. Not to mention that he's actually buffed our traitor wizard with some additional spells as a result of her corruption.

Thematically it's all very appropriate for how cutthroat and cruel Co S can be, but it's hard to feel sympathetic for almost any character, PC or NPC, protagonist or antagonist, to the point where Eight Deadly Words is starting to come into play. I'm hoping it rectifies itself soon, but character death's a hard pill to swallow, on top of already feeling like every character we encounter doesn't deserve to survive anyway.

Funnily enough we're doing a 5E Ravenloft campaign soon. Anywhere I can get a sources for what the setting is like there.

A question I wanted to toss out: How do you guys feel about note-passing in a game? I've been experimenting with it in the campaign I'm currently DMing (Storm King's Thunder) and I've been liking the results so far. I think it keeps the group somewhat engaged. Most recent example:

They did the Old Tower event, where the party encounters a female hill giant mourning the theft of her regular beating taker...er... husband. While our wizard was persuading her that the hill giant chieftess was going to give her her husband back, our Bard snuck in behind and snagged the stuff out of the treasure chest inside. I gave her, and her only, a note describing what she got from it. Cue negotiations from the wizard later trying to suss out if there was a spell scroll he could put into his spellbook and if he could get it.

So, in the the last session of the 5E game I'm in my cleric died. Rest in peace, character I played for like two sessions.

But now I have to decide what I'm gonna play as next. I'm kinda between two choices: a druid or a wizard I played before the cleric. Any thoughts on what I should go for?

What subclasses were they? Also what's the party makeup?

I took School of Evocation, IIRC. We currently have a warlock, a ranger and a fighter. There's also the other fighter and the bard, but they haven't been attending for a while.

Wanna say Druid. Between warlock and Ranger (assuming they're a sniper), you guys probably have range covered but could use a healer. Also if you're high enough level to use Dire Wolf form, then, well, there you go.

I've finished reading through Storm King's Thunder, and basically the only negative thing I have to say is that I miss the few pages of concept art they used to put at the very end of the book, like in Out of the Abyss and Princes of the Apocalypse. Makes me wish Wizards would release a whole art book of those; I would buy it in a heartbeat.

For the past week I've DM'ed overall of 20 hours, spanning three different games, without a single combat encounter.

edited 22nd Jan '17 2:28:26 PM by Xeroop

So my buddy and his room mate are gonna be starting a new campaign using rotating D Ms between him and his room mate. Should be fun. I brought up the idea of the setting being a series of large islands/continents that each DM creates and their game will be run on that island, all connected by the Underdark.

I'm gonna be a warlock. Who is a bit of a conniving criminal, and who's patron is a Lovecraftian Great Old One. He'll be, at times, a bit mad.

If your Great Old One warlock is only mad some of the time, you're doing it wrong.

I misspoke. He's only gonna be noticeably mad some of the time. The other time he's gonna run religious cons. "Buy this holy water and your God will speak to you!" (uses telepathy)

edited 22nd Jan '17 4:49:30 PM by MarkVonLewis

I recommend against that. Don't be the guy who is "teh crezzy", nobody likes that.

I won't. I played a Malkavian in a game of Vampire before to good effect and no one was bothered by it. I can play mad characters and not be an annoying ass.

So I had a brilliant idea for my campaign. (my group of my coworker and his room mate and a couple other people on occasion are doing rotating D Ms, so it's like three concurrent campaigns)

If I give them the Deck of Many Things, I'm gonna drop the Donjon card from the Ace of Spades. Instead, drawing that will summon an epic level bard deity. Sporting friendly mutton chops, a couple moles, leather armor, and a cavalry hat.

Fuck yeah

Brilliant!

Here's a question I posed to a thread in the World Building forum regarding the plot of a D&D session I'm running this coming weekend, that maybe you guys could give your two cents on as well.

The first idea I had would be that the Lady wants something unorthodox in exchange of the children, similarly to tooth fairy. Continuing with the tooth fairy idea, I would make the Lady perhaps want a specific tooth, like that of a dragon or a giant. Something that seems like a dangerous enemy and thus wouldn't just turn into a fetch quest of "30 bear teeth". Then again, maybe the giant/dragon would be willing to part with one of their teeth peacefully... again, if they get something in exchange.

I am so proud of myself. Now back to bingeing Inuyasha.

So the Unearthed Arcanas of last couple of weeks have been Sorcerers, Warlocks, and Wizards.

I have relatively little to say about the socrerers. I get that they wanted to have each element to have their own sorcerous origin, filling in the 'gaps' that Storm origin of Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide left, and I like how they're not just palette swaps of each other. The Phoenix origin gives nice flavour in form of the "Drop to 0 HP, come back" feature that the Undying Light warlocks also have. The Sea origin is maybe a tad bit too close to the Storm for my taste.

The Warlock, on the other hand... well, the Hexblade is just awesome. The idea of having a sentient weapon so strong it can act as a warlock patron is cool, and it immediately conjured to my mind an image of a Paladin/Warlock multiclass character, a warrior on a sacred quest to keep the corrupting weapon out of wrong hands while having to resists its temptations himself. Many of the new Eldritch Invocations also seem useful, but due to their situationality I totally can see why they probably won't be printed.

And I was initially sceptic if we really need yet another Wizard Arcane Tradition (then again, I thought so about Bladesinger as well, and boy did that one prove me wrong), but the Lore Mastery had one feature that turned my head immedately: ability to alter your spells in terms of damage type and saving throw. Mechanically simple, but gives endless flavour to your spellcasting when your fireball explodes in a sphere of lightning instead, and your confusion requires a Constitution saving throw instead of Wisdom as you actually weave a cloud of confusion gas on the target.

So, I was playing with a new group. My character was a Dex Paladin, and I chose an Urchin background to get stealth stats, receiving a pet mouse. I decided to be cute about it and name my mouse "Pikachu" as a joke. I also bought mouse-sized chain mail for him.

Anyways, in a fight I had been firing my crossbow for a while and wanted to do something with more flavor. I ask my GM if I can fire Pikachu at an enemy using my crossbow. He allows it. I roll...kills a necromancer gloriously by gnawing his throat out.

You need to get yourself a Bag of Tricks, stat.

Out of curiosity, what EXACTLY are Asmodeus' powers and abilities?

That question is unanswerable in editions where he hasn't been gotten an official stat block, and answerable with 'whatever's in his stat block' in editions where he has. I believe he has a stat block for 3.5 in Fiend Folio II, so... try to find that or somebody who has it.