Team Four Star General Thread

I do know that does get fixed once they realize that. Part of the problem when doing Dn D live is you don’t have the time to look through a rule book when you forget something.

Oh, wait, it was apparently the Rod of Fireball that was once-per-day, not Cunning Action. Zito's wording was painfully vague.

But yeah, the Nat Oneders are generally really fun and Zito's a great storyteller but he makes some highly questionable choices as a DM. Grant's also great at coming up with off-the-wall and creative turns but he's also the worst at playing a Rogue as intended and it's clear no one at the table understands the rules of Sneak Attack.

Seeing as how I played a Rogue for several months, it's kinda frustrating.

Oh, that's much more reasonable.

The cast of Critical Role also have constant trouble with Sneak Attack, which I don't understand as it's very simple and one of the classes' core features.

I was under the impression everyone made up their own skills using an outline, having never played DND before. Oh well, I would like to start watching these but that's a lot to commit to at this point.

Yeah, about 2 and a half hours once a week is a very big commitment to make. It helps if you put it on 1.25 or 1.5 speed.

Yeah, Unexpectables can be forgiven for stuff like that too since it’s Homebrew and Monty’s first campaign.

I consider the rule flubs more than worth it for the narrative not being a complete mess. What I mean is Zito being able to work around The players going way off plan from time to time.

Recently I was in a game where we spent more time fighting each other than the enemy. It made sense for the characters, but the DM had no idea (in the moment) how to get us back on track. So not having stuff like that is great.

That sounds more like a player issue than anything else.

DM'ing a game of DND is a PBD. You have to strike a fine balance between hijinks and progress.

If your campaign stays on the rails you're doing it wrong. Always expect your players to do something stupid.

The infamous triple nat 1 definitely ruined at one of Zito's boss fights.

In my experience, it's actually pretty rare for GMs to punish critical failures partly to avoid stuff like that. Especially during combat. Also, "ruined."

Edited by Zelenal on Nov 12th 2018 at 5:26:56 AM

That's a poor attitude to have and often leads to lots of frustration and unhappiness.

There's nothing wrong with a GM laying down a rail and the players following it. Preventing any deviation in the rail is bad D Ming, but choosing to go off the rail for no reason other than 'fuck rails' is being a bad player.

My first group struggled with that, refusing to follow anything the DM offered to us. What resulted is the players having nowhere to go, because we didn't actually have plans of our owns or reasons to avoid the plot hooks presented to us. We were just told that the rail was bad for the game.

One of the most important lessons in D&D is learning to live with the rail. Deviate from it when you know you have something you'd rather do, not just to spite your DM.

As long as your players and you agree to the premise, it's not hard. Open communication between the players and the DM over expectations and wants sets the groundwork for the campaign.

& Do TFS use critical failures? That's another thing I dislike. They're not part of 5E's rules for a very good reason - they punish people for trying. And that's really bad when players need to be trying things to move the plot forward.

It also leads to dumb things like Fighters becoming more likely to critical fail as they level up and start making more attacks in the round. I've seen some critical fail rules that are so punishing that the Fighter becomes worse as it gains these extra attacks.

Edited by Saiga on Nov 12th 2018 at 8:47:26 PM

Yes they use critical failures. They call their group the Natural Oneders for a reason.

Out of combat, critical failures usually just lead to whacky hijinks like Wake (Lani's character) not believing the undead are real. In combat, it's usually not too bad since Zito uses a percentile to determine exactly what happens on a critical failure and it's never really hurt them that much.

Yeah, Zito is a decently nice DM, despite what Chat might say at some points. There have been a decent number of times someone should have died, but didn’t thanks to him going easy.

Like that time everyone fell off of a bridge. That really should have been a TPK.

They even RP critical failures. Lani's character Wake was originally conceived to be this generically badass monk dude who's stoic and edgy and cool. But a series of Nat 1s on Knowledge checks resulted in him becoming this hilarious moron who's formidable as shit but can't find his ass with both hands.

At one point, a Crit Fail'd Knowledge check on an undead creature resulted in a running joke that lasted for seasons: Wake doesn't believe in the undead. And goes through crazy logical hoops to rationalize the many undead horrors they keep coming upon.

Between that, Eloy's delightful simple-minded idiocy that is often to the detriment of the group, and Ezra being just terrible in all things combat despite his earnestness, I like to think of TFS at the Table as "Three complete morons dumbassing their way around a fantasy world."

They've also taken out enough bosses through ridiculous and unconventional methods that the group's started referring to it as "Home Alone-ing" the boss fight. Ezra once curbstomped a scary vampire paladin-thing by spreading marbles on the floor.

And yes, I have the utmost sympathy for Zito and what he has to work with at times. On one occasion, he created this cool cursed island storyline where everyone on the island was deer and harming any of the deer would turn you into deer. He had an NPC shoot one of the deer for food and sport in order to illustrate the curse for the party, with the intent that they'd all be shocked and horrified later when the guy started turning into a deer.

And then Wake, upon arriving at the island, promptly stabbed one of the deer in the neck for dinner. The look on Zito's face was priceless.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Nov 12th 2018 at 4:25:48 AM

While I may sometimes question his gameplay decisions, I have mad respect for Zito's skills as a storyteller.

The best part about that last part was how out of the blue it was. Lani rolls for Animal handeling to lure the deer over to pet it. Zito none the wiser lets it happen. Then Lani rolls to hit without anything in between.

How did he NOT see that coming?

Because nothing indicated that one of the players would just randomly kill a dear without provocation. They're not murder hobos.

The minute you make something a really bad idea to do, you idiotproof it. Killing a deer (even unprovoked) is nowhere near unusual player behaviour.

Like, Im not hating on Zito for missing that, most D Ms go through the 'SHIT, didnt think of that' - sometimes multiple times. It's just hilarious

Edited by Saiga on Nov 12th 2018 at 11:04:14 PM

Also that the entire town they were in was deserted with nothing but Deer, who were acting strangely. Literally the entire chat was in shock when Lani stabbed it.

Okay that sounds like Zito had telegraphed it pretty hard

Which makes it funnier