The General D&D thread

Barbarians: "You had me at dismemberment"

So I had a pretty fun one-shot today but now I really want to keep the character going somehow. It was in the same world as our main campaign, focused on a 'church' founded by a major NPC (I say that because it was run out of her house, there was only nine of them and it was comically informal for a religious faction). My character was a Stars Druid whose starmap / druidic focus was a crystal called a Starstone, and whose backstory included searching for belonging and a purpose in life. Long story short two NPC members of the church ended up dying and while she knew Revifify and had the spells slots, she did not have the diamonds. By "screw RAW, this is a oneshot" power, the GM ruled that she could instead use her Starstone, but by reviving them she would sever her connection to the goddess they worshiped. Of course she went through with this, as she could not just stand by and let her comrades die. She successfully bought them back, and their leader reassured her that she was always one of them, but now her connection to the goddess is completely gone.

This was a one shot and these characters were designed to be fairly disposable (that's one-shots for you), but this plot beat worked really well for me and now I kinda wanna explore where her story would go next. Well, perhaps a discussion to have with the GM.

Huh, so zombies with not just the Undead Fortitude but maybe Resistance to physical damage types unless it's a called shot to a limb? Or to keep it simple, beef up Undead Fortitude so the roll it makes is with advantage unless all limbs are removed, and it comes back with: # of remaining limbs X 2 HP or something like that.

Well, just because your PC has severed their connection to their goddess, doesn't mean the reverse is true. If she's suitably impressed she might make them a Divine Soul Sorcerer. Alternately, an ex-druid of the stars might decide to go the tech-tech route, and observe the stars from an academic angle as an Artificer or a Wizard.

I thought I'd made a fun Sky Pirates one shot, but as usual my friends love to scratch at the setting and most of the session went into prepping for their dangerous voyage to salvage an airship caught in the eye of an eternal tornado.

The next session, I want to make a fun navigation challenge where the players have to outrun a competing mercenary airship through mountain passes with storms and peaks. They've already prepared one ace in the hole, which was to buy a pair of migratory Fairy Dragons to follow a safe path, but I'm thinking of letting the PC's who aren't at the rudder contribute by equipping their airship with surf boards that tether back to the ship, to fly ahead and give the ship warning and more guidance.

Here's the question, should it require a Vehicle proficiency to use a surfboard? I don't want to knock the skill of surfers by saying no, but it's also a short campaign and I want them to have fun and chances to contribute. I feel it'd also give the scout player something really fun to justify his being on the ship. I'm tempted to rule it's like a Broom of Flying and just sidestep the issue entirely.

Yeah, there's definitely some fun ideas there

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For the sake of fun and the session running smoothly, I wouldn't require vehicle proficiency.

Something like that, probably, yeah.

That is the face of a man who just ate a kitten. Raw.

Called shots are always a bit of a trouble, so I would perhaps borrow the troll's Loathsome Limbs ability for the zombies. Perhaps they lose a limb every time they succeed in their Undead Fortitude save, only able to be defeated for good once they've no more limbs to spare?

Oh, that sounds good.

That is the face of a man who just ate a kitten. Raw.

FUCKING DOUBLE POST

Edited by theLibrarian on May 12th 2022 at 12:13:47 PM

That is the face of a man who just ate a kitten. Raw.

The design team regarding wild magic, storm and draconic sorcerer: "We can't give the sorcerer extra spells! That would throw off the balance!"

The design team regarding the shadow and divine soul sorcerer: "Well, maybe one extra spell...."

The design team regarding Aberrant Mind and clockwork soul: "So we gave these sorcerers a ton of extra spells.."

Edited by MCE on May 14th 2022 at 4:03:58 AM

My latest Trope page: Shapeshifting Failure

The fact that they didn't go back and give the other sorcerers extra spells in Tasha's is a crime, this is known.

Though admittedly, Divine Soul gets off easy since it gets an entire second spell list to choose from, with the cleric list being frankly a lot better than most of what Sorc's offer.

If someone was dedicated to getting more spells as a sorcerer they can do it with feats.Magic initate,Ritual caster, fey touched and shadow touched can gain you 7 extra spells (also 2 extra cantrips) with a potential to learn 18 more if you can find them in spell books/scrolls. That is taking into account maximising charisma though.Some race (drow, tiefling) also get free spells.

Edited by MCE on May 14th 2022 at 4:24:52 AM

My latest Trope page: Shapeshifting Failure

I'll post more later, but this came in handy for yesterday's session.

https://www.mazegenerator.net/

The players were piloting an airship through a combo of mountain peaks, electric storms and random gusts of wind. To make the flight more perilous I wanted to arrange the mountains and hills (which could be flown over with higher DC checks) into a maze.

I downloaded a hexagonal map, turned the white spaces to transparent and put it in the DM layer, and it was a ton of help arranging the maze itself.

The flight itself was (I think) a lot of fun, they divided up perception, navigation and attack to outrace a rival pirate crew, managing to inflict both damage to a rear propeller and a key sleet storm spell on the deck with the wheel to veer them off course.

Critical Inspiration Die

A D&D 5e Houserule (blatantly) Inspired By Chronicles Of Darkness

Whenever you roll a 1 on a d20, you may request that the DM turn the result into a Critical Failure, making it so you not only fail at whatever objective you sought but an extra detrimental effect is added on top at the DM's discretion. In exchange, you receive one (1) critical inspiration die or just critical die. (At the DM's further discretion, particularly onerous penalties may earn you further dice.) You may spend this die as you would normal inspiration die, adding a d6 to any d20 roll before rolling. You may also spend it on some other things.

After rolling a natural 20, you may spend a critical die to turn the result into a Critical Success, adding an additional benefit at the DM's discretion. (With further discretion, even more dice may be spent to increase the benefit.)

At any time, you may spend two critical dice as a full-round action in order to receive all the benefits of a short rest. You may also spend four dice in order to gain this benefit via a reaction. Eight dice may be spent to gain the benefits of a long rest over the period of a minute, with sixteen being the cost for a full-round long rest.

You may spend one critical die in order to reroll damage dice. You may spend three critical dice in order to reroll a d20 and four in order to force someone else to reroll. You may spend one extra critical die to add or subtract an extra d6 to the reroll. If the skill or tool being rolled is one you are proficient in, reduce the number of dice needed to reroll by one.

If you should somehow still succeed at a task after rolling a 1 and asking for a Critical Failure, or be a Halfling, then your success is marked by some form of complication. Similarly, if you would fail after rolling a nat 20 after asking for a Critical Success, you should still receive some kind of benefit.

Generally, only PC's and perhaps important NPC's collect critical dice. Giving them to legendary creatures is generally considered a dick move. As the DM, feel free to adjust the prices of effects to taste or the size of the die you may add to rolls. Or consider more effects, like letting PC's mess around with the action economy.


Thoughts?

Third session in a row with only social encounters. Im kind of proud of my players for completely mistrusting the friendly and civil character, but spilling all of their secrets to the npc that constantly insulted them (and told them to send a message to their parents, they are surely worried about them). The players are catching on to how i design my npcs^^

Also we do milestone leveling and i had some milestones prepared, but through good roleplay and excellent dice rolls my players might trigger two of these milestones simultaneously or very close together. Both of these events signify potential major turning points in the story, how bad of an idea is it to give two levels at once?

Depends on what levels they are.

A spellcaster that levels up twice in once gets exactly one spell level, so it's not a big change in complexity.

In fact, most 5E classes don't have *that* much increase in complexity from level to level.

But expect people to forget that they just increased their proficiency bonus.

Yeah, I think it does kind of depend what levels they are. But in a number of cases it's probably fine, yeah.

Welp, last night I finally ended my first long campaign. It took us roughly two and a half years, but all my players had a great time and wished it didn't have to end, so I'd call that a success! The lich that was the BBEG managed to kill one player with a Power Word Kill, but I gave him a way to come back through three dice rolls. He got two out of three so I let him come back long enough to use the weapon the gods had provided the party to kill the lich, pulling a Heroic Sacrifice and dying in the act of shooting it. His player told me that I made him tear up a bit describing his faceplate lying on the ground, the only thing left of him.

Edited by theLibrarian on May 22nd 2022 at 3:12:10 AM

That is the face of a man who just ate a kitten. Raw.

Well done! Nice to hear of a campaign that concluded on its own terms instead of just fizzling out.

Mechanically there’s no issue with giving multiple levels at once, as your encounters should be planned out based on the level of the party regardless.

That’s actually one bid advantage of milestone levelling, it makes it so much easier to plan stuff as a DM. I can just saying that the players will be level 4 for a particular stage of the campaign and plan all the counters against a level 4 party, instead of having them level up halfway through the stage and then having to redesign future encounters to keep them a challenge.

The evil campaign in running for my players is continuing on, they’ve taken their first solid step to getting an ally in the duchy by capturing a local castle knight who was raiding local villages. They’ve handed the knight to the Vi Count that they’re hoping to swap to their side to help with the coup/invasion.

They’re now off to a weird magical tower that they’ve been given a key to, just need to import the map into Roll 20 and populate it. That should get them to level 5 in time for their meeting with the one Vi Count they haven’t spoken to yet. They’r going to have to rescue his daughter-in-law from a dragon. The daughter-in-law is going to have a tendency to get kidnaped by evil beings, rescuing her all the time is how they can convince the Vi Count’s son to keep his father out of the upcoming war.

Separate from the campaign I’m running, we had the first full session of the campaign I’m a player in a bit ago. It’s been pretty combat heavy so far, but it’s benefiting a lot from us being a larger party. We’re actually getting character interaction, I’m enjoying just having my character to worry about, plus I like what I’ve gone for (Dragborn paladin with the entertainer background, gladiator variant. He grew up in the gladiator pit of a vampire city before being smuggled to freedom by an order of paladins, the order then all got murdered recently and my character has sworn vengeance and that he won’t make the orders mistake of focusing on helping people escape evil rather than just destroying evil).

"And the Bunny nails it!" ~ Gabrael "If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we." ~ Cyran

My players have reached the "and not bolted down to the floor" stage of looting and moved past it.

The pirate one shot has turned into a 4 session affair (everyone is liking it so no probs), and it didn't take them long to find the location of the hidden MacGuffin they were tasked with finding: it's locked inside a hidden compartment in the Ship's wheel. Since they completely ignored the clues about the fact that it's inside there, and how to open it up (find five gems in five different areas), they started with the project of dismounting the ship's wheel!

I hadn't considered that, and not wanting to just flatly say "no" and since he rolled very well, I warned the Rogue that on examination of the mechanism it would make it impossible to salvage the entire ship since the ship wheel's vault mechanism had been built essentially into the ship as a steering column and be risking setting off 5 traps. Hopefully being pirates the instinct to maximize looting will prevail and they won't just smash and grab. But if they do, it'll be hilarious!

Also, interesting tip: Rings of Mind Shielding can carry a soul inside if the wearer dies. That was a big help giving them info that wasn't just text dumps once they reached the lost ship.

Yeah, as a broad principle when you come across a locked box or door, it's often going to be more practical to just smash it open.

What I generally do is that the smashing things open creates a lot of noise, so you should pick locks and such if you're avoiding getting caught. Also, give them sensitive trap mechanisms that will go off if someone attempts to break it open.

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This reminds me of something: I once attempted to see what would happen if you converted Luigi's Mansion into a D&D dungeon. I never finished, but something that crossed my mind was that, realistically, a person in that sort of situation is going to grab a sledgehammer and just smash open locked doors (or for that matter, pick them) which would allow someone to sequence break that dungeon in half.

To be fair, that's not necessarily a bad thing. The reason why I stopped was because compared to a typical D&D dungeon, Luigi's mansion is rather long. Not the longest, but on the long side.

Edited by Protagonist506 on May 24th 2022 at 2:35:07 AM

"Any campaign world where an orc samurai can leap off a landcruiser to fight a herd of Bulbasaurs will always have my vote of confidence"

So uh, can someone tell me how the spells in a Ring of Spell Storing work? It reads as "This ring stores Spells cast into it, holding them until the attuned wearer uses them. The ring can store up to 5 levels worth of Spells at a time. When found, it contains 1d6 - 1 levels of stored Spells chosen by the DM."

Does this mean that it can hold a certain number of spells from one to five? Or do the cumulative levels have to add up to five? Because I gave a future boss in another campaign a Ring of Spell Storing and gave him two charges of Counterspell, one charge of Shield, and one charge of Magic Missile. Is that too many, or not enough?

That is the face of a man who just ate a kitten. Raw.

Total of five spell levels.
So, it can hold:
(1) level 5 spell,
OR (1) level 4 spell and (1) level 1 spell,
OR (1) level 3 spell and (1) level 2 spell,
OR (1) level 3 spell and (2) level 1 spells,
OR (1) level 2 spell and (3) level 1 spells,
OR (2) level 2 spells and (1) level 1 spell,
OR (5) level 1 spells

You definitely put waaay too many in there.

Alright, I figured but I wasn't sure.

That is the face of a man who just ate a kitten. Raw.

I did it! It's done! 😅 It took 3 weeks and sort-of learning a little javascript, but I managed to make a stand alone html aide for a dungeon puzzle!

The puzzle is meant to work in the chrono room map from here. And this is a link to the html file if anyone wants to give it a whirl (and please let me know what you think).

It's from the set of puzzles a few pages back. When the players enter the room, there are two driftglobes orbiting lazily around a central pillar. As each driftglobe casts a "shadow" which is the color of the opposite globe. The room is ringed with two sets of numbers: one set from 1 to 12, the other from 1 to 31, each painted to match one of the driftglobes. As the driftglobes move around the room, numbers of disappear as they enter the "shadow" of the other colored drift globe.

There's a riddle prompt "You will find me hiding in tomorrow's shadow." They'll be able to download and open the html, then move the sliders to simulate the puzzle.

The solution is: to command the driftglobes into positions where they cast shadows to make the number of the current month disappear, and the number for the day tomorrow disappear.

Edited by Earnest on May 24th 2022 at 8:46:46 AM