The General D&D thread

so I designed a random encounter

That is both awesome and creepy.

Huh, wasn't going for creepy but I'll take it :p

So I'm running an evil campaign (in 5e) in a sci-fantasy setting I made. A complication: The party has a mentor NPC, a level 20 Death Cleric named Ira Mankato. The party last session persuaded Ira to use a 9th-level spell slot to teleport them to where they wanted to go-they made a high persuasion check and I was wanting to speed things up anyways. However, I'm trying to think if there's a good reason for her to not do that in the future?

"Fuck you, pay me"

That'd normally make sense, I might go with something like that. It's just that the NPC actually would logically want them to be able to go places quickly and the like (so they can do her bidding and what have you).

I might go with that, as well as some combination of "walking around will make you stronger" and "I don't want to do this for all my minions".

"I have better things to do with my spells. You still have legs. Use them or lose them".

"I didn't prepare that spell today. What? No, I do not take suggestions from underlings about what spells I should prepare in the future."

That one's hilarious...and actually crazy enough to be in-character.

The explanation I'll probably go with is simply that they want to keep their spell slots for emergency use only, and that the player's matters are simply not an emergency by her standards.

—-

Speaking of, one of my players just left that campaign, so I'm wondering if anyone would like to join in? In context:

I'm running a good campaign and an evil campaign side-by-side, and they're competing with each other for the fate of the world. I'm looking for someone to join the evil party. It's in a sci-fantasy setting I made, and has a lot of pop-culture stuff in it (see my signature).

You may be whatever class you want, though some suggestions include: A pokemon trainer class I found, a Sith (a warlock subclass, though I also a Jedi monk subclass I could reskin as that), or a Revised Artificer class I found. But up to you if you wanna do something different.

Edited by Protagonist506 on Apr 15th 2019 at 9:40:59 AM

Well, I mean, you could let them be teleported and then have the adventure be about what happens once they get there. It's usually pretty lame when the GM gives resources to the players (and a high-level spellcaster who wants you to succeed is a resource) and them strips them away with no real in-game reason (and "I won't bother using a single spell to highly speed up the resolution of a task that I want to be done" is no real in-game reason).

The only reasons that wouldn't break disbelief, I think, would be either the missions being explicitly for the purpose of training the main characters, or the mentor being physically unable to teleport them because of the nature of the task (maybe she's sending underlevelled adventurers to solve her problem because her problem is that someone is weakening her magic somehow, or maybe she wants them to investigate a group of high-level spellcasters that are monitoring her and would notice any high-level spell she casts).

Hope I didn't come off as too confrontational, but in my opinion "what's the less thin excuse we can come up with to take away a cool thing from the players?" is not a good question to ask yourself in this situation.

Edited by Cozzer on Apr 16th 2019 at 9:12:22 PM

Well, in this case, my campaign is meant to focus in a great part on survival and travel. Also, I'm doing this as part of "dueling campaigns"-I'm essentially having a good campaign and an evil campaign in competition with each other. Ergo, giving the evil party the ability to teleport to anywhere at-will kind of breaks things. And to be fair I did make it clear at the time that they wouldn't be getting that ability very often.

The explanation for why she's sending underlevelled adventurers out is that Ira herself is already the leader of a vast organization-she has many minions, and the players are among this. However, the party members are the chosen ones of her evil deity (to do evil things on this specific planet), so she does give them special treatment.

Actually, I think that works in and of itself-she knows they're the chosen ones, so she wants them to grow so that they can be really good at being the chosen ones.

Well, if their adventures are already estabilished as being mostly about training and experiencing things, then no further explaination is needed, I'd say.

How is she teleporting them in the first place? There aren't any teleportation spells on the cleric spell list.

The Gate Spell, actually. Though it appears I misread what it actually does (it can only take you to other planes of existence). Oops, oh well.

Frankly, taking the party to specific places is far, far less broken than the infinite cheese that P Cs can pull out with Gate if necessary.

Mainly by gating in celestials that can gate in more celestials, drowning the BBEG in angels.

Been thinking about Summons and the Outer Planes, been also thinking about Exalted. This is what I came up with.

Broke up the Outsiders into five categories: Celestials ("Angels"), Fiends ("Demons"), Fey (as well as Aberrations), Elementals and Things I Don't Care About, like modrons, inevitables, slaadi and whatever the crap. Each of them, save perhaps the last, are summoned in different ways under different kinds of "contracts".

Elementals only accept "Brief Contracts", making them the only thing you can summon with a normal "Summon Monster". They feed upon your magic and a mirror of your will, doing exactly as you want them too in the brief rounds they are there. What they get out of this is a taste of sapience that some of them manage to bring back with them when they return to their home plane.

Angels only accept "Lawless Contracts". In fact, everyone accepts those, except elementals, where a mage brings the angels into this world for a set amount of time aaaand that's it. There is no control over the angels, they do whatever they want, and you are entirely dependent on their relatively abundant good graces.

Demons only accept "Letter Contracts" if you're not willing to unleash them willy-nilly on the world, which most sane people aren't. In the time span they are set to serve you, the demon will follow the exact letter of your commands, and will constantly seek ways to twist your words to their advantage and likely your detriment.

Fey only accept "Spirit Contracts". I also included aberrations because I think they should be Outsiders since they'd make better Shadowfell dwelling counterparts to the fey than whatever boring thing inhabits the Shadowfell currently, but whatever. Things summoned under a Spirit Contract accept to have feelings of positivity and loyalty towards the summoner artificially implanted in them.

This is the Exalted-esgue style of Summoning and it sounds like the best. The fey wants to obey you because it likes you and willingly ("willingly") views you as its superior. It doesn't twist your words and it even shows initiative, trying to anticipate your wants and needs. Keyword, "trying".

The rub is that it's like having a mortal servant, who has their own wants and needs that are placed just as highly as yours, if that mortal servant was an alien minded fey. They have an opinion and a view point, in particular how to best serve you, which may very well be inclined to ignore what you have to say sometimes in favor what they think is best. Again, like a mortal servant but a fairy (or an eldritch abomination).

Dammit, I just learned about the screaming cowboy meme and now I want to make a bard. "I use my bard song, 'AAAAAHHHHHHHH AAHH AAAHHHHHHHH!'"

Lately, I've once again been getting some ideas for running my own campaigns. I have this homebrew setting which I've already thought a fair deal about before, but the thing is, it's a modern fantasy setting. And I don't mean the usual Urban Fantasy 'Earth but with magic', I mean a full-on fantasy world that developed into something resembling the modern day.

I know there's some homebrew materials out there for modern or futuristic D&D settings, but is there any that you'd especially recommend?

Edited by PresidentStalkeyes on Apr 17th 2019 at 1:45:58 PM

First and foremost, you might want to look into their official attempts at such things.

But aside from that and the firearms I know are in the DM's guide, it's not really something I have looked too deeply into; and based on some of my cursory google searches it's not something a lot of other people are falling over themselves to create.

I use firearms in my own campaign setting (a sci-fantasy with a ton of schizo tech). Here's how I do it (and I should note that I'm still making adjustments here and there):

-Firearms, in general, are martial weapons.

-Pistols are reskinned light crossbows without the loading property and with the light property. Hand Crossbows are simple weapons.

-Rifles are heavy crossbows without the loading property.

-Shotguns are martial ranged weapons with a range of 30/60.

-Mundane firearms are usually quaint, civilian-grade weapons. +1 firearms are more modern/tactical looking firearms (IE, AR-15). +2 Firearms are laser weapons, and +3 firearms are plasma weapons.

There are some other attempts at it. Personally, I'd recommend Gifts From Earth.

Edited by Protagonist506 on Apr 17th 2019 at 7:27:27 AM

Personally I like Eberron for the "magic, but more advanced" feel.

I've been thinking of further condensing my homebrew cosmology and ditching the Planes Of Law and Chaos altogether, as well as their associated Outsiders whom don't interest me that much. There will be Heaven and Hell and its various locales, such as the Arboreal Jungle that rings Heaven and the Abyssal Pit that dominates the center of Hell. Some of the Law and Chaos planes will be ported over, such as a broken, war-scarred wasteland beyond the Nine Rings Of Baator called Acheron and the World-Tree Yggdrasil growing in the furthest reaches of Arborea.

"Replacing" them will be the Arcane Chaos (aka Archaos and Arcanarchy), source of all arcane magic, and the Divine Order, source of all divine magic (divine magic is fueled by faith rather than given by a god). (The Natural Balance emerged from the interaction between these two.) I use quotation marks since those were already things in my cosmology; it was their periodic interaction that brought about the material plane, life and finally intelligence. I thought it clashed with the idea of planes to Law and Chaos and my own original(er) ideas won out.

Its fits with my own take on alignment, the S-System especially, which concerns itself more with good and evil and the interpretation as such. I would therefore homebrew that in and say the Chaotic and Lawful are... not quite out, but downplayed. Instead, your character sheet will have you list your belief and how strongly.

Law: You believe in order and rules, Chaos: You believe in freedom and expression, Neutral: You believe none of this applies to you or matters and True Neutral: You believe that a balance should be strived for. You then do the strongly disagree, agree, no opinion quiz on each, are advised not to make the answers contradictory unless you can somehow play that and all and in all it would be given very limited mechanical effect. (Yes, you may strongly agree with Neutral, whereas you are very adamant about none of this mattering.)

Would this be a good place to recap an absolutely crazy session that I just had, or is there another thread that would be better for it?

Think that's about half the topic, actually.

I've just come up with a town concept for my Risen Continent setting (which rose out of the sea ten years ago after being flooded for a millennium): there were 1000-foot-tall trees pre-Flood, and there's a village that was constructed among the treetops after the flood, like a combination of Venice and the Channelwood Age from Myst. Now that the continent has risen, the village is stuck 1000 feet above the ground.

Edit for full write up:

The town of Channelwood is a moderately-sized town nestled among the tops of ancient trees that have stood for millennia, which range from 1000 feet to nearly 2400 feet tall. The town was established during the Great Flood, when the folk who lived and foraged in the shadow of these great trees were forced to migrate their homes. They constructed huts from wood and foliage, with walkways between, and survived off the gifts of the trees, gathering rainwater in large cisterns. They made frequent trade with other islands, selling the fruits and berries they gathered from the time of the Great Flood until the Emergence ten years ago.

After the Emergence, Channelwood became isolated from the rest of the world, with only an occasional Aracokra messenger bringing tidings of continental affairs. No safe method of reaching the ground had yet been devised, and though they are self-sufficient, many Woodfolk lament their inability to leave.

Edited by Yinyang107 on Apr 21st 2019 at 10:21:27 AM